Fans of Baobab Studios virtual reality (VR) content offering will be able to enjoy them even more with the launch of the Baobab VR app for Android and iOS.
Well known for its VR short Invasion! featuring bubbling alien duo Mac and Cheez, the launch of the app also includes an additional feature, iPhone users can send Mac and Cheez stickers to each other through iMessage.
Powered by Littlstar’s platform technology, the Baobab VR app will let users watch Invasion! for free, either in VR with a compatible headset, or in 360-degrees. It’ll also feature a sneak peek at the next episode in the series, Asteroids!
As an added bonus for Littlstar users, Baobab Studios content will be available in a premium branded channel across Littlstar’s apps for head-mounted displays (HMDs), mobile, console and more.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of Baobab Studios, reporting back with the latest announcements.
A sneak peak from a familiar face on Wednesday’s visit to Life In 360° and that familiar face is Baobab Studios.
If you’ve followed VRFocus for sometime you’ll know we’ve charted Baobab Studios’s adventures involving their property INVASION! Which began life as a smaller presentation before the company received a lot of funding and it was also announced that a big screen adaptation of the adventure was to occur.
It’s bunny star was quite the draw, as VRFocus described it in an preview: “Within the first few minutes you’ll meet your new friend, who curiously bounds up towards the camera, set upon a frozen lake, to meet you. Baobab Studios wants you to connect with this cutesy critter through proximity over anything else, and it’s not hard to form a bond with the Pixar-esque creation when you feel like it’s really in front of you.”
The sequel ASTEROIDS! was announced back in December and debuted at the The Sundance Film Festival. Thankfully for those not at the event Baobab Studios have now released a 360 degree “sneak peak” as to what further adventures await.
VRFocus will return on Friday with another 360 degree video, and of course check bac throughout today for more news and features relating to the world of virtual reality technologies and entertainment.
Oculus have started their 2017 Creators Lab Summit and kicked it off by announced the participants for this year’s program. The VR for Good Initiative was announced alongside Oculus’ Creators lab to foster cirtual reality (VR) content creation.
Non-profit organisations and up-and-coming filmmakers were able to apply to take part in the 2017 Creators Lab, and now the full list of participants has been confirmed. You can see the full list of filmmakers and their partnered non-profit causes below:
Lindsay Branham Non-profit: International Justice Mission
Ryan Hartsell Non-profit: Male Cancer Awareness Campaign
Jess Kantor Non-profit: Infinite Flow
Armando Kirwin Non-profit: Mercy Ships
Fabiano Mixo Non-profit: GO Campaign
Gayatri Parameswaran Non-profit: Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining
Sadah Espii Proctor Non-profit: Malala Fund
Oculus have also confirmed their Advisory Board, who will help mentor the filmmakers and their projects.
Gabo Arora, LightShed
Shannon Carroll, Vivid Story
Jess Engel, Within
Maureen Fan, Baobab Studios
Loren Hammonds, Tribeca Film Festival
Bryn Mooser, RYOT
Barry Pousman, Variable Labs
Yelena Rachitsky, Oculus
Mary Spio, CEEK VR
Joanne Sprague, Facebook
Rose Troche, Filmmaker
Oculus hopes the filmmakers will be able to amplify the importance of the non-profit causes, while also providing a valuable opportunity to young filmmakers who can work within the virtual reality (VR) medium with 360 degree video and more.
It’s certainly exciting to see such growth in the medium – and for such excellent causes. For more on the 2017 Creators Lab, the causes and participants, please see the Oculus blog.
For everything on VR, make sure to keep checking VRFocus.
By now it’s trite to call any CG VR film studio “the Pixar of VR,” but one reason for that pervasive comparison is that Pixar’s waxy-textured, brightly-colored, hard-edged geometry has become a dominant style for big-budget CG films. But we hear over and over about how ‘VR is a completely new medium’; doesn’t it deserve a new look? Baobab Studios‘ latest work, Rainbow Crow, is starting to branch out from that style with a unique new look that taps into VR’s strengths.
Executive-produced by and starring the voice of John Legend, Rainbow Crow is Baobab’s latest CG VR film project following shorts INVASION! and ASTEROIDS!. The piece is an interpretation of a Native American folktale about how the modern day crow came to be. The video you’ll see below introduces the tale, but all the visuals are concept art.
Baobab has exclusively given Road to VR the first captures from the actual rendering within the experience itself, showing their new visual style which uses what they’re calling a soft “dithering” approach combined with strongly stylized lighting. Although they say it’s still a work in progress, you can see that it’s quite beautiful and different than their prior work, and many the Pixar-esque CG VR film pieces we’ve seen elsewhere.
This dithering effect, which you can see predominantly in the tail of Becky the skunk, actually works uniquely well in VR because it makes objects like the tail semi-transparent which reads especially well thanks to 3D; it shows the volume of the object in a more tangible way than a solid object. It also ‘leaks’ light and color from objects behind, melding disparate elements of the scene into what the studio is calling a dreamy “storybook” look.
Baobab says that the effect came about through a back and forth between the company’s art and tech teams. The concept artist mocked up a look which explored some fuzzy edges for softer objects like foliage and fur.
‘Rainbow Crow’ concept art | Photo courtesy Baobab Studios
This style was well received, and the tech team set about seeing if they could devise a method for efficiently achieving the look in real-time. Once that was proven out, the technique was taught to the digital artists to begin employing it throughout Rainbow Crow’s development.
Accompanying the dithering effect is Rainbow Crow’s stylized lighting, which you can see has also been impressively replicated from the vision laid down in the concept art. Whereas the Pixar style often takes a realistic approach to lighting, Rainbow Crow’s warm, over-exposed lighting enlivens the scene with emotion. Again, this ’emotional lighting’ approach feels uniquely suited to VR because it colors (literally and figuratively) the entire scene around you, no matter where you look. It suggests a feeling that realistic-lighting would not, and purposefully sets the stage as warm and glowy for a narrative which hinges on the prospect of an eventual cold and eternal Winter.
As part of the story, eternal Winter sets upon the world of ‘Rainbow Crow’ (screenshot) | Photo courtesy Baobab Studios
Both the dither and the emotional lightning play to the stage-like setup that Baobab has constructed to tell the story of Rainbow Crow. As Road to VR’s Paul McAdory recently put it in his preview of the piece at TriBeca:
The experience begins and ends on a patch of grass in the woods. Rainbow Crow’s forest circumscribes the viewer. The first chapter of a project that will ultimately encompass at least three situates you in the center of a small clearing, a sort of audience dais, and treats the enclosing flora as a stage, kliegs included.
As the viewer you are encompassed by the dense forest, with only indirect light bouncing under the canopy from the periphery. You’re situated down low compared to some nearby mounds and built-up foliage on every side. Lighting against each of the surrounding faces of geometry helps guide your eye as the action moves, and the mounds offer a way for the characters to work the stage vertically rather than just horizontally.
At least in the few short minutes of Rainbow Crow’s first chapter, the visuals and stage-like set haven proven to be both a unique visual treat and an effective communication of emotion and direction. I’m looking forward to seeing how these approaches are applied in future chapters of Rainbow Crow, especially as the story takes the viewer out into space to follow the character’s journey to find out what’s causing the eternal Winter.
VR is a whole new medium. I’m hopeful that Baobab’s exploration of new visual styles in VR film will encourage others in the space to do the same. Maybe then we can stop the oversimplified comparisons to Pixar, and instead focus on what CG VR film does differently, not what it does the same.
John Legend is coming to VR. News of the multi-talented artist’s involvement in Baobab Studios’ latest, Rainbow Crow, spread last week. To recap, Rainbow Crow is an adaptation of a Lenape Native American tale, and Legend’s starring as the eponymous varicolored bird, writing and performing original songs and serving as executive producer.
He’s pretty involved, in other words. Baobab, meanwhile, is the studio behind INVASION! and ASTEROIDS!, both of which are helmed by CCO Eric Darnell who is known for writing and directing four Madagascar films and directing Antz (1998). I had the chance to sit down with Darnell and Baobab CEO Maureen Fan to preview Rainbow Crow’s first chapter on a Vive ahead of its premiere at the TriBeCa Film Festival’s Virtual Arcade.
The experience begins and ends on a patch of grass in the woods. Rainbow Crow’s forest circumscribes the viewer. The first chapter of a project that will ultimately encompass at least three situates you in the center of a small clearing, a sort of audience dais, and treats the enclosing flora as a stage, kliegs included. The question of how (and how much) to direct a viewer’s gaze remains an ongoing and well documented challenge in narrative VR experiences.
Darnell’s tack in the nearly five minute piece I demoed borrows from lighting techniques associated with theatre: spotlights, for lack of a better word, illuminate characters and their immediate surroundings and call the viewer’s gaze. Plants and animals end in soft, dithered edges, buttressing the environment’s visual continuity and pronouncing what Darnell described as Rainbow Crow’s “storybook” aesthetic: “We wanted something that felt magical, like a storybook” that you can walk into and inhabit.
The action proper involves two animal friends, a butterfly and a skunk named Becky, brought to your clearing by their hunt for summer flowers. Lighthearted shenanigans ensue when John Legend’s titular rainbow crow is heard singing and seen flying across the distant canopy. The scene ends as the story threatens to begin in earnest: winter arrives, snow falls, and the narrator, voiced by Randy Edmonds, warns of an imminent crisis.
‘Rainbow Crow’ concept art | Photo courtesy Baobab Studios
The remaining chapters will run five-to-twelve minutes and are slated for release in 2017 at dates yet to be determined. Baobab’s Maureen Fan noted that runtimes have not been nailed down because they depend principally on where the “natural cutting points in the story are”; hence, too, the possibility of more than three chapters. Whatever the final length and number, the chapters’ acceptable time range is informed by “what consumers are saying makes them comfortable,” Fan said, adding, “It varies between headsets how long they want to be in there.” Since Baobab is committedly platform agnostic, the studio has to account for comfort across rigs.
Inevitably, future chapters will be more visually dynamic than the first, which was for its short duration inhabiting the same virtual scenery. There will be a cave the animals take shelter in and nominate a hero from, a crystal (or is it something else?) palace in the sky, outer space, and more, according to Darnell. Baobab says they’re also working to add a level of interactivity to every chapter. After the first ended, I demoed a build that included a version of this interactivity, which consisted of waving my Vive controllers around to produce snow flurries out their ends.
‘Rainbow Crow’ concept art | Photo courtesy Baobab Studios
What I saw felt very much like an appetizer. It got me interested in where the story’s going, and in how interactivity and Legend’s songs will be incorporated, but it didn’t fill me up or leave me with a particularly sweet taste in my mouth. Next to Penrose Studios’ latest—which I had previewed earlier in the day—Rainbow Crow’s first chapter couldn’t help but feel short and static. I would not describe myself as having been transported, or made present, in other words. Given what I know about Baobab’s team, as well as what I was told about the story’s progression, however, I would scarcely be surprised if future chapters ably addressed the first’s issues.
‘Rainbow Crow’ concept art | Photo courtesy Baobab Studios
It’s worth noting that this is the first filmic adaptation, VR or otherwise, of the Lenape Rainbow Crow story with a serious budget. A couple YouTubeadaptations exist, the first of which is worth checking out if you’re curious about prior audiovisual versions of the tale.
For more on how Darnell’s approach to storytelling in VR has developed, listen to episodes #290 and #501 of Kent Bye’s Voices of VR podcast. As for Fan, she spoke with Bye in episode #258 during Baobab’s early days.
Thursday means it’s time once again for your scheduled update of the headlines from the last week courtesy of VRTV, and this on this episode there’s quite the mix of stories for Nina to go through. With everything from new Betas and multiplayer updates for established game titles. To a new party game, a new virtual reality (VR) rendition of a traditional story and one of computing’s biggest names is getting into the Gear VR in a big way.
Click the video below for Nina’s round-up. You can find out more information about the stories mentioned via the links below.
VRTV will back on VRFocus at the same time next week, and also on Tuesday where you can catch Nina’s VR review. Check out this week’s review of Lone Echo here.
Virtual reality (VR) content creator Baobab Studios have previously been responsible for VR experiences Asteroids! And Invasion! And are now working with musician and producer John Legend to create a complete VR animated series called Rainbow Crow.
The story of Rainbow Crow comes from a legend of the Native American Lenape Tribe, where a bird with brightly coloured plumage and a beautiful voice must travel far from home to restore light to a world gone dark and cold. The series is set to be narrated by Kiowa-Caddo tribal elder Randy Edmonds, who has been a crusader for Native American rights his entire life and who founded the National Urban Indian Council.
“All Native American tales have a tradition of deep meaning and that’s why we tell the stories, sharing down the generations,” explains Tribal Elder, Randy Edmonds, who left Oklahoma in 1954 for Southern California as part of the Indian Relocation Act. “When I look at the impact these legends have, the insights they represent, taking that storytelling to a modern medium is extremely exciting. The beautiful VR work being created -inspired by our folklore- is like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my many years.”
“Rainbow Crow brings storytelling and music together in a way no one else has yet in virtual reality. It’s an incredible medium for inspiring a journey of self-discovery and finding your way in times to darkness,” explains John Legend. “In light of what’s going on in today’s world, it’s a message of deep meaning that people from all walks of life can embrace.”
The first episode of the series will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on the 19th-29th April. A launch date for the series has not yet been confirmed, not is it yet known what VR platforms will be supported.
A trailer for the first episode is available below.
VRFocus will bring you further information on Rainbow Crow and other VR projects when it comes in.
Whether you’re an experienced designer, programmer, engineer, or maybe you’ve just been inspired after reading VRFocus articles, the jobs listed here are located worldwide, from major game players to humble indie developers – the one thing they all have in common is that they are all jobs in VR.
Look back at last week’s post for ongoing listings. If you’re an employer and are looking for someone to fill a VR or AR related gap on your workforce and would like your role to feature on next week’s VR Job Hub please send details of the role to either pgraham@vrfocus.com or keva@vrfocus.com
Check back with VRFocus at the new time of 3pm GMT every Sunday for the latest positions in this ever growing industry.
Last year, Baobab Studios’ Eric Darnell was skeptical about adding interactivity to virtual reality stories because he felt like there was a tradeoff between empathy and interactivity. But after watching people experience their first VR short Invasion!, he saw that people were much more engaged with the story and wanted to get more involved. He came to that realization that it is possible to combine empathy and interactivity in the form of compassion acts, and so he started to construct Baobab’s next VR experience Asteroids! around the idea of allowing the user to participate in an act of compassion. I had a chance to catch up with Darnell at Sundance where we talked about his latest thoughts about storytelling in VR, and explored his insights from their first explorations of what he calls “emotional branching.”
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Darnell says that one of the key ingredients of a story is “character being revealed by the choices that they make under pressure.” Rather than make you the central protagonist as a video game might, in Asteroids! you’re more of a sidekick who can choose whether or not to help out the main characters. This allows an authored story to be told though the main characters that are ultimately independent of your actions, but your “local agency” choices still flavor your experience in the sense that there are different “emotional branches” of the story for how the main protagonists react to you based upon your decisions.
Unpacking the nuances of these emotional branches showed me that Asteroids! was doing some of the most interesting explorations of interactive narrative at Sundance this year, and I would’ve completely missed them had I not had this conversation with him. We explore some of the more subtle nuances of the story, and so I’d recommend holding off on this interview if you don’t want to get too many spoilers (it should be released sometime in the first half of 2017). But Darnell is a master storyteller, and he’s got a lot of really fascinating thoughts about how stories might work in VR that are worth sharing out to the storytellers in the wider VR community.
They’re also doing some interesting experiments of adding in body language mirroring behaviors into the other sidekick characters that are based upon social science research in order to create subtle cues of connecting to the characters and story. There is another dog-like robot the experience that is in the same sidekick class as you where you can play fetch with it and interact with in subtle ways.
Storytelling is a time-based art form that has a physical impact of releasing chemicals in our bodies including cortisol at moments of dramatic tension, oxytocin with character interactions, and dopamine at the resolution of that dramatic tension. Given these chemical reactions, Darnell believes that the classic three-act structure of a story is something that is encoded within our DNA. Storytelling is something that has helped humans evolve, and it’s part of what makes us human. He cites Kenneth Burke saying that “stories are equipment for living.” Stories help us learn about the world by watching other people making choices under pressure.
There’s still a long ways to go before we achieve the Holy Grail of completely plausible interactive stories that provide full global agency while preserving the integrity of a good dramatic arc. It’s likely that artificial intelligence will eventually have a much larger role in accomplishing this, but Asteroids! is making some small and important steps with Darnell’s sidekick insights and “emotional branching” concept. It was one of the more significant interactive narrative experiments at Sundance this year, and showed that it’s possible to combine empathy and interactivity to make a compassionate story.
Last year, Baobab Studios’