I recently purchased a virtual reality headset. I remember dreaming about a
future when this technology would be possible. When I was a kid (back in the
1980’s), I used to follow the scientific advancements on head and hand
tracking. Bluetooth wasn’t even a thing, so there was no way to understand how
the hands would be involved yet. Back then, you were lucky if you could get
the red and blue colored glasses to work with your environment. The challenges
were real.
A few decades passed and I also studied Virtual Reality markup languages and
dabbled in the primitive technology of the day.
Al of those challenges have vanished in the 40 years that have passed.
I have spent the last few days holed up in a virtual reality drawing and
animation studio called Quill. I’ve been learning the
environment and tools and I have been very impressed. I’ve been able to create
some fun and creative artwork already in only a few days’ worth of practice.
Cyber
Christmas Tree created entirely in Virtual Reality
My fist
drawing in Quill – It looks better in 3D
I’m still learning, but I found a great creator named Goro
Fujita. He makes spectacular work and produces
high quality tutorials and conducts live streaming where he teaches his
techniques.
It’s amazing to be surrounded by your artwork. The image of the Christmas tree
above is a distant camera view, but I work on it by shrinking myself and
standing under the tree. I can then look up and see it towering over my head.
Oculus TV has a Quill viewer plugin that opens up an entire world of amazing
animations and vignettes. It’s been so much fun watching these.
I was playing the first episode of Vader Immortal and saw a Quill animation
when a wise woman put her hand on my forehead and began to tell the story of
how Mustafar became a volcano planet.
You can see similar animation in the opening titles to Amazon’s Wheel of
Time series, as well, though I don’t think they used Quill for that one.