Oculus Story Studio, the division behind immersive virtual reality (VR) behind Lost, Henry, and Dear Angelica will now shut down Oculus has confirmed.
In a blog posting Jason Rubin, VP of Content wrote: “We’re now entering the next chapter of VR development, where new creators enter the market in anticipation of adoption and growth, and we’ve been looking at the best way to allocate our resources to create an impact on the ecosystem. After careful consideration, we’ve decided to shift our focus away from internal content creation to support more external production.
“As part of that shift, we’ll be winding down Story Studio.”
Rubin adds that because so many developers and filmmakers are producing immersive content Oculus will help and support them rather than create its own, enabling the company to concentrate on internal research and development towards the advancement of VR hardware and software.
In 2016 Facebook committed $250 million USD to fund VR developers and that’s set to continue. But $50 million from that pot will be used for non-gaming content, as well as continuing programmes that provide creators with an opportunity to step into the field with video tutorials, production and distribution tips and best practices for VR development.
The announcement adds to Facebook’s gradual assimilation of the Oculus brand ever since it bought the company in 2014. In recent months that has become more pronounced with CEO Brendan Iribe stepping down in December to lead an internal group focused on PC VR. Instead of appointing another CEO Facebook hired the vice president of Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, Hugo Barra, to head the Oculus division.
The company that started this VR revival is slowly becoming no more, and whether Facebook keeps the brand remains to be seen. As ever, keep reading VRFocus for the latest updates.
VRFocus returns to Bristol for our final day of coverage from this year’s VR World Congress (VRWC), from which we’ll have a number of items that we will share with you in the days and weeks to come. For now though we once again bring you details from the event in the form of a liveblog brought to you by VRFocus writer Peter Graham.
Next up today is Edward Saatchi is a Co-founder and Producer at Oculus Story Studio – makers of Henry and Dear Angelica.
“Join Edward Saatchi, cofounder and Executive Producer of Oculus Story Studio for a series of guesses and predictions about where virtual reality (VR) storytelling might be by 2020.”
Join us throughout the day on VRFocus for more for more liveblogs and stories from VRWC and, of course, the world at large.
Roving VRFocus reporter Nina speaks to Jonathan Bloch from 4a Games, Executive Producer of Arktika.1, about the upcoming virtual reality (VR) post-apocalyptic shooter.
Arktika.1 is set in a Russian post-apocalyptic future where climate change has caused a new global ice age where the only habitable zones are close to the equator. Arktika.1 is the name of a colony that is exists on the site of a where a large Russian city used to be. The player’s job is to protect the colony from bandits, raiders and violent creatures.
Weapons that can be used for the job range from standard ballistic weapons such as exist today, to electromagnetic weaponry through to plasma and laser weaponry, all of which have their own effects and function in their own way.
Movement in the game is handled with a type of fixed point teleportation controlled by a ‘look and travel’ system which the developers believe to be the most intuitive and comfortable for the majority of players. There will be twelve areas to travel to an explore with a large amount of content.
Arktika.1 was built with the help of Oculus Story Studio and designed from the ground up to be used with Oculus Rift with Touch.
The title is planned for release in Q3 of 2017, though no price point has yet been set. Further information can be found on the 4A Games official website.
You can watch the full interview below. VRFocus will continue to bring you the latest on upcoming VR titles.
The revolutionary mixed reality (MR)/virtual reality (VR) headset has already seen use in a number of applications, and attendees at VR World Congress 2017 (VRWC) will have the opportunity to test one out.
Microsoft will be bringing the HoloLens for hands-on demonstrations at VRWC on 11th-13th April 2017 at Millennium Square in Bristol, UK. The HoloLens has already seen some innovative uses, such as for designing new hospital Operating Rooms and presentation on the cars of the future.
The Microsoft HoloLens team join a huge range of speakers and guests who will be presenting on various aspects of the VR industry. Industry figures such as Edward Saatchi, co-founder of Oculus Story Studio will be speaking on his experience with creating such projects as Henry, Dear Angelica and Talking With Ghosts.
Also featured will be representatives from Google, who will be speaking on Google’s new Daydream VR platform and the progress that have made since Google Cardboard was announced. There are many other speakers schedules from the likes of the BBC, Royal Opera house, IBM, MIT, Samsung and Aardman Animation, to name just a few.
If you are concerned about missing this important VR event, VRFocus is here to help, we have an offer for our readers to get 20% off any tickets to VRWC.
VRFocus will continue to bring you further information on VRWC as we get it.
From price cuts to new games, Oculus had so much to announce at GDC last week that a few of its reveals slipped under the radar. One such announcement was for Talking With Ghosts, the latest project from Oculus Story Studio.
Unlike its previous releases, Talking With Ghosts is not a single VR film but instead four short stories. Each boasts their own distinctive art styles from four different artists, but all were made within Quill, Story Studio’s own creation software first used to create Dear Angelica [Review: 9/10], and released to Rift and Touch owners later last year.
Included in the package is Fairground from Sophia Foster-Dimino, telling the story of two childhood friends that return to an old fairground and look at both the past and future of their relationship. The Neighborhood, meanwhile, is by Roman Muradov, and stars a ghost recounting his relationships with the tenants of a house he has haunted from the beginning of time.
Ric Carrasquillo is behind The Reservoir, a piece focusing on a couple playing a game of mini-golf and their relationship unfolding as they progress. Finally, Tattoo Warrior by Maria Yi is an epic story of war and love that’s shown through a 3D tattoo ribbon. As you can see, there appears to be an overarching theme of people’s connections to each other.
These shorts are said to be a little like comics, though there’s no trailer to speak of right now. The piece will be premiering at the 2017 Tribecca Film Festival in April, where we’ll no doubt see plenty of other new projects too. The app will launch for all later this year.
It’s reveal comes not long after the release of Dear Angelica itself, which we found to be a truly emotional VR experience. Based on that and past films like Henry and Lost, Talking With Ghosts is definitely something to look forward to.
The latest project from VR film specialists Oculus Story Studio. Talking with Ghosts, is a collection of four animated stories, each illustrated and brought to live in virtual reality, designed to bring you into an immersive comic book world.
Oculus Story Studio’s continue their exploration of illustrative VR film when their latest collaborative project debuts at this years Tribeca Film Festival on April 21st.
Talking with Ghosts is a collection of four illustrative VR films, each created by a different artist, each created within VR and each inspired by OSS’ collective love of comic books. Although each film adopt a different stylistic approach, each of them aim to take the viewer “inside the pages of a comic”. The breakdown of the four films is as follows:
Fairground by Sophia Foster-Dimino—Two childhood friends revisit an old fairground where their divergent interpretations of their past and future collide.
The Neighborhood by Roman Muradov—A ghost’s tale of his relationships with the house’s tenants from the beginning of time until the end of the universe.
The Reservoir by Ric Carrasquillo—A couple’s relationship drama unfolds as they play the most surreal game of mini golf you’ve ever seen.
Tattoo Warrior by Maria Yi—An epic story of war and love told entirely through a 3D tattoo ribbon.
Talking with Ghosts is the next step in Story Studio’s exploration of a medium they arguably created. OSS first created VR art package Quill, then they commissioned Dear Angelica, an illustrative made-in-VR film directed by former Pixar artist Saschka Unseld and painted artist Wesley Allsbrook – entirely using Quill, entirely within VR.
Dear Angelica and Quill not only led to an intriguing new form of filmmaking, it enabled Story Studio to realise a way to make creating immersive VR films much more intuitive and accessible. As the OSS team put it in a new blog post:
We believe the best way to make a VR experience is inside VR, unencumbered by the tools of the past, and we’re excited to share the latest results at Tribeca to help inspire other artists.
We’re still in the early stages of made-in-VR illustrative storytelling. We can’t wait to see what the VR filmmaking community does with Quill in the coming years.
After the new film’s debut at Tribeca, as with every other Oculus Story Studio production, it’ll make its way onto the Oculus Store later in the year.
Today the team at Oculus announced that their virtual reality (VR) story project Talking With Ghosts will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Talking With Ghosts is an interactive story experience which consists of four ghost stories which were illustrated using Quill, a VR painting program, by four artists who were not previously familiar with VR painting. The result is something like a VR comic book.
The Oculus Story Studio team said on their blog; “With Dear Angelica, we pioneered a new form of storytelling, shared everything we learned with the VR filmmaking community, and sparked excitement for a growing industry. Now, we want to make it easier for artists to tell their stories in VR without massive teams. To do that, we need to revolutionize not only what we create, but how we create it.”
Talking With Ghosts will premier at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 21st 2017 in New York.
VRFocus will keep you informed on further updates from Oculus and on future VR story projects.
It’s been almost a year since the latest round of VR headsets were released, and while hardware and technology is all fine and dandy, it doesn’t mean squat without solid experiences. That’s what 2017 is all about: content, content, content. While 2016 saw creators doing some amazing stuff in VR, 2017 is already shaping up to be the year that defines and advances the medium, and that’s exactly what Oculus Story Studio has done with Dear Angelica.
With a run time of about 12 minutes, Dear Angelica is a brief yet powerful emotional journey like no other I’ve experienced in VR. The story of the relationship between a child and mother isn’t overly unique or full of surprises, but it is a universal narrative of connection, comfort, joy, sadness and eventually loss that everyone can relate to, and that makes for an engaging and far-reaching experience.
Dear Angelica begins in a sparse, dark room, with Jessica (Mae Whitman) burrowed in her bed writing a letter to her late mother — actress Angelica (Geena Davis) – as Jessica watches her old movies on a seemingly weightless television, a set piece that pops up again and again and acts as Jessica’s lifeline to her mother. You stand over Jessica as ribbony script appears before you, syncing with Whitman’s voiceover. It’s simultaneously intimate and detached, serene and unsettling, and I felt as if I was both an unwelcomed intruder yet trusted confidant in both Jessica’s room and mind as I heard her deepest thoughts.
While the scenes in Jessica’s room are placid and subdued, as Jessica reminisces about her mother’s movies and the time they spent together, you are hastily enveloped by a torrent of vibrant, colorful brushstrokes. Frantic images appear all around, and it’s as if you’re in the middle of a painting during creation. Tying in with the calligraphic style of the script, illustrator Wesley Allsbrook uses a ribbon-like style in her artwork which draws the eye across vast spaces, compels you to look to and fro and conveys a sense of frantic motion. It’s beautiful and overwhelming all at the same time, and I felt as if I was in the middle of a paint tornado.
After its announcement nearly a year ago, the much anticipated illustrative VR narrative from Oculus Story Studio, Dear Angelica, finally makes its way onto the Oculus Store. It stars Geena Davis and Mae Witman and it’s out now for free on the Rift.
Oculus Story Studio was set up with the remit to explore what was possible in the newly emerging medium of virtual reality storytelling. As such, the studio has up to now produced two VR films, each markedly different in look and feel from the last. Whilst Henry was a bright, colourful tale of a Hedgehog searching for friendship, Lost was a more muted affair, reminiscent of early 80s Spielberg.
So it continues with Dear Angelica, a new story which takes a drastically different visual approach from either of its forebears. The film is directed by Saschka Unseld who also fills the role of Creative Director at OSS. It tells the story of Jessica, played by Mae Whitman through animated illustrations representing memories of her late mother – the titular Angelica, played by Geena Davis.
The unique look comes from the way it was constructed, painted entirely inside virtual reality. Artist Wesley Allsbrook created the look and feel of Dear Angelica‘s world inside Oculus’ VR paint application Quill, creating painterly visuals which, upon glancing at screenshots look entirely two dimensional, but come to life inside VR.
A year ago Emmy award-winning Oculus Story Studio used the Sundance Film Festival to announce its third virtual reality (VR) feature Dear Angelica. Part of a joint reveal alongside the software that created it Quill, over the last 12 months the studio has released snippets of a title that touches on aspects of life most will be familiar with, love, loss and family.
Dear Angelica takes a completely different path to Oculus Story Studio’s previous animated films Henry and Lost, in terms of design and story implementation. Rather than a full blown 3D animation, Dear Angelica goes for a set sceneapproach, fading into each one as Mae Whitman narrates viewers through a very personal and touching journey.
To set the scene Dear Angelica is a mother and daughter story, with the daughter (Whitman) reliving memories about her mum Angelica (voiced by Geena Davis). Trying not to spoil too much, Angelica was an actress and these memories revolve around some of the movies she starred in.
Putting the story to one side for a moment, the film certainly is a showcase for Quill. Asked whether you want a standing or seated experience – choose standing its feels far more immersive and you can appreciate the design more – the first scene appears out of the darkness, a vibrant assortment of colours and shapes. Each scene grows in and out of each other, creating an organic process that feels natural and smooth. The brush strokes flow in and around each other, building a visceral treat for the eyes. As you explore each memory, moving around to see each sweeping line, don’t forget to actually move into each illustration which will pull back the outer layers of design, showcasing how these hand painted scenes were meticulously created.
Moving around these memories that morph and change around you looks fantastic, Oculus Story Studio has done a stellar job of creating an engaging experience just on visuals alone, let alone adding in the voice over work and other audio effects. There’s just one problem, generally in films there are standout moments, a point of discussion where viewers ‘go did you see that bit!’ or ‘keep an eye out for that’, Dear Angelica doesn’t have that moment.
And while the story line is beautifully touching at points, Dear Angelica does continue an on going theme in VR animated shorts, everything always seems to be so somber. Henry, Penrose Studios’ Allumette and others are incredibly dramatic – as if trying to prove the medium is a serious art form (which it is). The former does have some lighthearted moments, which Dear Angelica at certain moments could do with, as some of the bolder imagery really looks more joyous than it actually feels.
Hopefully Dear Angelica is just the first of many Quill created films from Oculus Story Studio, as the software has a dynamic all its own. It’s another experience to showcase the power of VR, and should be in every Oculus Rift owners library when demoing the technology to those new to VR.
