Wevr Transport – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

November 13, 2017

Life In 360°: Mad God

Welcome back to VRFocus where November is well on the way and we’re on the pathway to the holiday season. If you were with us over the weekend you’ll know just how true that is, because Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) revealed details of the Black Friday week deals for the PlayStation VR as well as the PlayStation 4 console and information about the PlayStation Store.

Not only that we have one of our final significant events of the year tomorrow where we’ll be covering all that is revealed at the Vive Developer Conference. So be sure to look out for that.

Until then it’s 360 degree video time once again, and just as with last week at this time we’re starting the week with something that is somewhat creepy and unnerving. There’s no demonic clowns this week though. Instead we’ve something that’s still twisted – but in a very different way.

This time we’ve a short video courtesy of Wevr Transport,, and it features something we’ve not had to date on Life In 360°, stop motion animation. In this video entitled Mad God, which is actually produced by Phil Tippett, the special effects master and Academy Award winner who is known for his work with the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park as well as being responsible for that chess scene in Star Wars: A New Hope. Something Tippett revisited not that long ago with a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign to bring the scene to life once again in the form of an augmented reality (AR) videogame called HoloGrid: Monster Battle.

Mad God was first revealed back at the end of October and we reported on it at the time, however we now have something in 360 degrees to show you.

“I really liked the concept of bringing an art form that has been around for a hundred years and matching it up with this new accelerated world that we’re in.” Explained Kaleidoscope VR’s Mike Breymann at the time. “It allows for discussions around ways of experiencing art and virtual reality. There’s this notion that game engines, rapid advancements in hardware, accelerated graphics and all this technology is somehow carrying us forward artistically, and this experience is in some ways calling all that into question.”

You can check out the unusual world of Mad God below, VRFocus will be back on Wednesday with something very different indeed.

October 12, 2017

VR Satire EXTRAVAGANZA To Feature on Wevr

Many filmmakers and other creative people will have experienced the frustrations of presenting something to an unreceptive, critical or outright hostile audience. Many writers, artists and filmmakers will also know the feeling of seeing your work changed out of all recognition due to those pressures. EXTRAVAGANZA examines exactly this situation and will soon be available on Wevr Transport.

EXTRAVAGANZA combines 3D animation with traditional live-action footage to create a satirical virtual reality (VR) short in which the user finds themselves trapped in a puppet show that slowly goes off the rails, becoming an offensive parody of itself in response to the prejudices of a clueless executive, played by actor Paul Scheer.

The VR satire was first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the March du Film NEXT VR program, where it challenged viewers to ask questions about the role of technology and whether technology could change society for the better, or if it just magnified existing problems.

Director Ethen Shaftel explains: “In EXTRAVAGANZA the viewer finds themselves in the novel position of being ‘consumed’ by an audience, subjected to their insults and confronted with many of mainstream entertainment’s blind spots and prejudices.”

Wevr Transport for the Samsung Gear VR will be making EXTRAVAGANZA available to its users later on this week. The Wevr Transport platform was launched last year to provide an independent network of high-quality VR content to Samsung Gear VR users.

A trailer is available to view below.

VRFocus will bring you further information on EXTRAVAGANZA and Wevr Transport as it becomes available.

May 19, 2017

Two New VR Experiences Added to Wevr

Two new virtual reality (VR) film experiences that have featured at the Tribeca and Sundance Film Festivals will be appearing on the Wevr Transport platform for room-scale and mobile VR experiences.

IF NOT LOVE and Auto are both critically acclaimed VR experiences that will be featured on the Wevr Transport platform later in the year. IF NOT LOVE is written and directed by Rose Troche and is an account of the consequences of hatred and intolerance, while Auto is a speculative fiction story about the role of a ‘self driver’ in a future world of self-driving autonomous cars which examines the role of technology and automation.

The two experiences premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival respectively and are the first VR experiences to appear on the Wevr platform that were not produced by Wevr.

“We chose Rose Troche’s ‘IF NOT LOVE’ and Steven Schardt’s ‘Auto’ because both simulations, grounded in compelling characters, tell complex stories about our current sociopolitical environment while simultaneously pushing the visual and structural language of live-action VR,” says Wevr director of development and acquisitions James Kaelan. “We couldn’t be prouder that these are the first two independent productions we’ve acquired for Transport.”

“Our goal with Transport is to give talented creatives from all different backgrounds and media a place to share their work with the world,” says Anthony Batt, co-founder and EVP of Wevr. “We want the VR community to know that Transport is where they can distribute their simulations to the widest possible audience, with the support of the Wevr team.”

VRFocus will bring you further news on additions to the Wevr platform and other new VR experiences as it becomes available.

April 8, 2017

Wevr Captures Performance by David Choe Band Mangchi in VR

Capturing live music in 360-degrees is not always easy. For many, the equipment needed can get in the way, or the speakers, amplifiers needed by the band obscure the image. Artist and performer David Choe defied those constraints to help Wevr capture a live performance of his band Mangchi.

Though Choe is mostly known as an artist and painter, he is also a musician and has assembled a talented group, including renowned Beastie Boys keyboardist Money Mark to join his punk band Mangchi. The 360-degree video of the performance not only captured the musical performance, but also Choe’s pre-performance ritual where he paints on the bodies of the other band members.

“I’ve been doing music my whole life,” Choe says. “I was in bands in high school, but was always there waiting for four other guys to get their shit together. I think because of my narcissism and ego, I went into art, and music became a hobby. So we just put this motley crew of weirdos together. And we’re making music just to make music.”

The team from Wevr said they knew immediately upon meeting Choe that they wanted to work with him. Wevr say on their blog: “Historically we have been reluctant to capture live music performances due to visual constraints. Choe assured us we would have total freedom and we went for it. The resulting 360° experience depicts Mangchi’s pre-performance ritual where Choe paints the other musicians conveying the feel of ancient warriors preparing for battle.”

“It’s very ritualistic before each show, where we just hang out and put on makeup and joke around,” commented Choe. “I really think Wevr capturing that in VR caught this weird intersection in our lives. I want people not to be scared and to be free. If you’re an artist, you just go for it.”

“We are convinced David Choe can bring something totally unique and vital to immersive experiences,” says Wevr co-founder Anthony Batt. “He is an artist in the most literal sense, where his vision is not confined to any one medium. He has a curiosity about the world that we find exhilarating. And whatever trip he wants to take, we want to be there to document it.”

The Mangchi Live at Viva Pomona 360-degree video is available for download via the Transport VR platform.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news on VR in music and art.

December 14, 2016

Wevr Launches Premium Subscription Tier with Psychedelic Experience Old Friend

Back in April, virtual reality (VR) content creator and distributor Wevr launched Transport, a free early access app for Samsung Gear VR that acts as an immersive network collating weird and wonderful experiences. Today Wevr Transport takes the next step on its journey to becoming a premium VR content platform by introducing a yearly subscription. There’s also the debut release of Old Friend to mark the occasion.

Old Friend originally premiered at Tribeca Film Festival this year winning several “best-of” awards in the process, before being showcased at the Kaleidoscope Film Festival. In the VR experience viewers will lose themselves in a vibrant psychedelic dance party brimming with joyful insanity and elegant dance routines. The animated VR music video experience was created by filmmaker Tyler Hurd for the song “Old Friend” by Future Islands.

OldFriend_ScreenShots5

Hurd’s previous VR offerings include BUTTS: The VR Experience, again a visually surreal yet thought provoking title. This tells the story of a blue man, who is happy in his strange way of bouncing around. While doing this he comes across a sad orange man. He is lonely and depressed, however the blue man takes it upon himself to make him feel better.

For the launch of Wevr Transport’s premium tier there will be four experiences available, Old Friend, Finding Your True Self (by Deepak Chopra), theBlu: Season 1 (Whale Encounter, Reef Migration, Luminous Abyss) and Waves (premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2016). The premium tier will have an annual subscription rate of $20 USD for HTC Vive users, while Gear VR owners have to pay $8. With it Wevr wants to embrace and nurture VR creatives, helping establish a sustainable business model for that community to continue to evolve and flourish for years to come.

Old Friend will also be available through Steam / Viveport / and Oculus Store for $2.99 on from 22nd December 2016. For all the latest Wevr updates, keep reading VRFocus.

October 29, 2016

Stop-Motion Guru Phil Tippett Brings Nightmarish ‘MAD GOD’ Universe to VR

Phil Tippett, the visual effects genius behind classic stop-motion animation sequences from films such as the holochess scene from the Star Wars franchise, Jurassic Park (1993), and RoboCop 2 (1990), brings his latest stop-mo project MAD GOD to virtual reality.

Based on Tippett’s eponymous short film MAD GOD (2013), a long-time passion project and result of a successful Kickstarter campaign, the newly released 3D 360 video is filled with the universe’s faceless ghouls, war pigs, and other nightmarish sights. While it’s only a little less than two minutes it length, it’s effect is nothing short of terrifying.

Like in the good old days of movie magic though, all of the creatures in MAD GOD are hand-crafted—something that really makes your skin crawl to see up close and personal via the immersive first-person view of a VR headset.

Phil Tippett is a VFX pro with more than 40 years of experience under his belt with an Oscar, a BAFTA, and 2 Emmys to show for it, so when he says something about the nature of film and its role in the burgeoning medium of virtual reality, we’re inclined to listen. Explaining his thoughts on VR in a behind-the-scenes look at MAD GOD, Tippett says that VR isn’t so much a continuation of film-making as an art, but rather an entirely new medium, one that pioneering creatives still need to figure out.

“I do not think VR is the future of film making,” explains Tippett. “It’s the wild west. It’s like, nobody knows nothin’. The opportunity to experiment and try things that you haven’t seen and you haven’t imagined, it’s all out there.”

Even though stop-motion animation has now become a niche field in visual effects, replaced largely by computer-generated imagery (CGI), Tippett still wants to be on the forefront of story-telling.

“It really is that first-person dreamworld. It’s all experimental, it’s all really wild. It was kind of like that working for George [Lucas] or Steven [Spielberg] early on. Why do you want to do what you’ve already done a hundred times before?” he wonders. “Oh. I understand. To make money. My mind doesn’t go there—it’s like … you now what would be really great? […] Like a LSD VR-thing. That would be really fuckin’ cool.”

MAD GOD was made by VR production studio Kaleidoscope and Tippett’s own production house, Tippett Studio. You can download it on Wevr’s Transport app for Gear VR and HTC Vive on Steam.

Check out the behind-the-scenes video below for a deeper look into MAD GOD for VR.

The post Stop-Motion Guru Phil Tippett Brings Nightmarish ‘MAD GOD’ Universe to VR appeared first on Road to VR.

October 28, 2016

Wevr and Tippett Studio Bring VR Animation Mad God to Gear VR

Award-winning virtual reality (VR) studio and distributor Wevr has collaborated with Tippett Studio on the release of Mad God, a VR stop motion animation that originally premiered at the Kaleidoscope World Tour earlier this year.

This is a VR version of Tippett’s 2013 short film Mad God, a dystopian subterranean netherworld featuring delightfully grotesque characters.

Mad God Still 4

In a Wevr blog post Mike Breymann of Kaleidoscope VR explained about the projects creation: “I really liked the concept of bringing an art form that has been around for a hundred years and matching it up with this new accelerated world that we’re in. It allows for discussions around ways of experiencing art and virtual reality. There’s this notion that game engines, rapid advancements in hardware, accelerated graphics and all this technology is somehow carrying us forward artistically, and this experience is in some ways calling all that into question.”

Tippett then goes on to reveal how they went about creating the VR version: We replaced the sky and the ground digitally,” Tippett says. “And then we had twenty something of these characters we call the shit men. They’re small six inch stop motion characters that are made out of foam rubber with articulated skeletons and they are covered, I took cat hair from my vacuum cleaner at home and put that on their surface so every time an animator touched them it would disturb the cat hair. So the contour of the characters crawling all the time creates the kind of otherworldly distance.”

Tippett Studio may sound familiar to VRFocus readers as its helmed by Phil Tippett, 2-time Academy Award winning Visual Effects Supervisor and Director who’s worked on the original Star Wars trilogy, Jurassic Park, Robocop and The Force Awakens. Earlier this year Tippett Studio launched a successful Kickstarter campaign of augmented reality (AR) game HoloGrid: Monster Battle, inspired by the Holo Chess scene in Star Wars.

Wevr co-founder and EVP Anthony Batt added “We have long admired Phil Tippett’s brilliance and were honoured to help introduce his unique vision into VR. Mad God is an experience unlike anything else out there. It redefines what is possible.”

Mad God is available through the Wevr Transport app which supports the Samsung Gear VR and HTC Vive headsets. For all the latest VR news, keep reading VRFocus.