Wolves in the Walls from Fable and Age of Sail from Google won Emmy awards this year, according to the Television Academy.
Wolves in the Walls tells the story of Lucy, a character its creators see as a fully realized virtual being who addresses you directly and interacts with you as a visitor in her world. The VR project based on the work of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean won in the category of Outstanding Innovation In Interactive Media.
“Sometimes when you are exploring in the dark it’s comforting to know that others are not too far away, hands outstretched, searching alongside you,” said Wolves co-creator Pete Billington, in a prepared statement. “We are humbled and grateful for the encouragement and recognition.”
The award names Billington, Jessica Yaffa Shamash (Creative Producer and Creator) and Edward Saatchi (Executive Producer) alongside Fable Studio and Facebook. It is available for free on Rift through Facebook’s Oculus store.
Age of Sail is a gorgeous VR short from YouTube, Google Spotlight Stories, and Boathouse Studios. It won Outstanding Individual Achievement In Animation with Céline Desrumaux (Production Designer), Bruno Mangyoku (Character Designer) and Jasmin Lai (Color) named in the award.
Fable Studio is co-founded by members of the groundbreaking Oculus Story Studio team and they are developing a Part 2 for Wolves In The Walls we should be able to preview later this year. Fable seems to be a studio at the forefront of interaction development in VR and we are looking forward to seeing what they do to further develop ways of interacting with simulated characters like Lucy.
The Emmy Awards has long recognized VR projects and 2019 will be no different. Both Star Wars: Vader Immortal Episode 1 and Wolves in the Walls are nominated for this year’s show.
The Twitter accounts for both respective apps confirm as much. Both experiences are up for the Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media award.
Developed by ILMxLAB, Vader Immortal is a long-anticipated story-driven VR experience. In it you play the role of a captive in Darth Vader’s secret base, coming face-to-face with the Sith Lord himself. We’re really fond of the app’s interactive elements, which toes the line between accessible experience and full videogame. Vader Immortal first released on Oculus Quest back in May and we’re still waiting on news of its other two episodes.
Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over, meanwhile, is a new experience from Fable Studio. It features two episodes in a series created by former members of the now-defunct Oculus Story Studio. Again, we’ve been really impressed with how the experience grows a connection between player and virtual character. It’s currently not available to download but we’re hoping for a full release soon.
In our eyes, they’re both deserving of wins, then. Unlike a lot of other VR awards, the Emmy’s categories are more focused on VR storytelling than gaming experiences. Past winners include Oculus’ own Henry and compelling VR documentary, Zero Days.
We’re not sure what other VR apps have been nominated this year (if any). We’ll let you know if we hear of any more, though.
It’s extremely easy to become jaded. I’ve played countless video games over the years and reviewed hundreds of games and VR experiences at this point, murdering a truly innumerable number of virtual characters. I’ve slain dragons, saved the universe, and rescued dozens of princesses. While plenty of video games have made me cry, smile, and laugh, it’s highly rare to play experience something that makes me really feel like I am connecting with a digital, virtual being.
But that’s exactly what Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over accomplished.
I originally tried the first chapter for Wolves in the Walls over a year ago, it was the debut for Fable Studio, a brand new VR content studio founded by ex-Oculus Story Studio creators. This means many of the minds that worked on things like Lost and Dear Angelica, such as Fable founder Edward Saatchi, are teaming up again to continue making powerful VR experiences.
Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over is the first two chapters, combined together as one experience, and lasts about 20 minutes. It’s premiering at Tribeca this week, but Saatchi sent me a build a few days ago to try at home.
Earlier this year I talked to Saatchi about their pivot to becoming a “virtual beings” company rather than just another “VR experience” creation studio and that switch was landmarked by the announcement of Whispers in the Night. It features the same exact 8-year old girl from Wolves in the Wall, Lucy, but is all about talking to her and sharing secrets.
“Memory is the core concept for us in Wolves [in the Walls] so that everything you do is remembered,” Saatchi says. “We don’t want Lucy to become a horrifying person from what you do, she has her own journey and her own life and her own story, but she will remember. We’re focused on what we call an ’emotional POV’ almost like you’re wearing Lucy glasses.”
It’s a good analogy because it all begins with Lucy literally drawing you into existence out of chalk. She erases the first version of your eyes because she accidentally makes you too tall, then redraws you at her height. Throughout the experience she is looking at and talking directly to you, as a person. She makes you feel grounded and real even though you’re actually her imaginary friend and experience the world how she does.
One of my favorite ways this manifested itself is in how the environment is designed. Many of the physical aspects of scenes such as the scale of a room or the furniture inside is distorted or twisted to seem bigger than it really is because she’s such a small child. In one scene Lucy’s mother actually subtly changes in size as her attitude shifts. In the GIF above you can see the world around you shift and change in real-time as Lucy guides your attention and interacts with things. It looks snazzy in a GIF, but seeing it for yourself in VR, standing there with Lucy, is magical.
“Wolves [in the Walls] and Dear Angelica started development at the same time, along with Quill” Saatchi says. “Quill was being developed as we were making Wolves so we used it to start doing visual development…We wanted to have a scene that looked like a therapy drawing, like Lucy digesting the trauma of what’s happening and you’re in her imagination and seeing how she is experiencing it. So not CG like the rest, but instead a more Quill painted look…We wanted to take what we did in Dear Angelica to the next level in terms of being in a character’s mind.”
From what I’ve seen Wolves in the Walls tells a powerful story full of layers and nuance for those that care to look, but also has plenty of pure entertainment to keep people entertained on a surface level. Everything from the way Lucy looks at you to the things you do to interact with her sells the illusion that she actually sees you and cares what you think.
She might look like a cartoon, but she feels real.
Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over (aka Chapter 2) is debuting this week at Tribeca. It’s co-created by Pete Billington and Jessica Shamash and is directed by Pete Billington and is based on the illustrated book Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman and Dave Mckean.
There is no firm release date for the entire Wolves in the Walls story (which will eventually include a third chapter and total around 40 minutes altogether) or Whispers in the Night. Hopefully not too much longer so everyone has the opportunity to experience what Fable is building.
Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over is the latest in The Lucy Stories, a series based on the Wolves in the Walls book by Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and Dave Mckean. The original Wolves in the Walls made its debut in 2018 at the Sundance Film Festival, with Whispers in the Night – confusingly the first in the series – set to premiere later this year at the Virtual Beings Conference.
“What makes the noises we can’t explain? 8 year old Lucy is convinced it’s the wolves,” explains the story summary for chapter 2. “Her family is not so sure. But something’s been stealing Mom’s jam, glitching Brother’s games and howling over Dad’s music. Lucy desperately wants to warn them all, and she needs your help to do it. Will you believe her? Because when the wolves do, in fact, come out of the walls, it’s all over.”
Guests at Tribeca will be able to help Lucy discover what is precisely hiding inside the walls of her home as well as enjoying live actors choreographed by New York’s critically acclaimed immersive theatre company, Third Rail Projects.
The star of the show is Fable’s AI-powered virtual being Lucy with which viewers can build a two-way friendship. Fable sees virtual beings as the next step in storytelling, able to interact with viewers in more natural ways. There are several unique aspects being introduced in Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over. Apart from Third Rail, chapter two shows that Lucy has memory and that the audience’s actions do have consequences. They’re also able to see her evolve as the story progresses. Finally, Fable has revealed that Oculus’ Quill was used in the previsualization, asset creation and final animation of Wolves in the Walls.
Co-Created by Pete Billington and Jessica Shamash, there’s no official release date just yet for Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over. When that happens VRFocus will let you know.
While you may not have heard of Edward Saatchi before, if you own an Oculus headset then it’s more than likely you’ve come across his previous projects which include Henry and Dear Angelica, as a founder of Oculus Story Studio. When the studio closed Saatchi went on to open Fable Studio as a new avenue for his storytelling. Today, the company has announced a rebranding of sorts, simply called Fable, it is now a virtual beings company ready to reveal its first experience, Whispers in the Night.
Whispers in the Night is merely a platform for Fable’s AI-powered character Lucy, with whom you can build a two-way relationship. Lucy first appeared in Wolves in the Walls, but this time you’ll actually get to have a conversation with her.
Fable sees the creation of virtual beings like Lucy as the next step on from normal virtual reality (VR) content, being able to converse with the audience through natural language processing. This isn’t just about a one to one conversation, Lucy will be able to track your movement, offer and receive objects, and probably most important of all remember who you are and what actions you’ve taken, changing her response accordingly.
As the synopsis explains: “Whispers in the Night transports you into a memory where you and 8-year old Lucy share an emotionally connected moment through a conversation. It is part of a collection of interwoven chapters. Audiences will discover and grow alongside Lucy as she shares her deepest thoughts and imaginations, completely unique to their personal exchange.”
“A fable entertains while teaching about morals and life lessons. They can be deeply philosophical and deliver lessons about love, friendships and being a good person. We are taking the same approach with our characters that a fable takes with it’s stories. We’re excited to set this precedent with Lucy in Whispers in the Night,” comments Jessica Shamash, Whispers in the Night, Creative Director.
“We are living the “Experience” generation, which supplanted the “Things” generation. Whispers in the Night is our first experiment that will drive towards the “Unique” generation. We see a future where media is aware of who we are, and adapts to create something that is uniquely ours,” says Pete Billington, co-founder, Fable.
Today’s announcement isn’t solely about Whispers in the Night and Lucy. Fable has also revealed a new event taking place this summer, the Virtual Beings Conference, bringing together 200 entrepreneurs, investors, immersive storytellers and machine learning engineers. This will be where Whispers in the Night will make its first official debut.
For those at Sundance Film Festival this week, Fable will be hosting a VIP premiere of a new never seen before Lucy scene on Oculus Rift. As further information regarding Whispers in the Night is released, VRFocus will keep you updated.
The Sundance Film Festival just kicked off in Park City, Utah, and Oculus announced in a blogpost they’re debuting five experiences at the New Frontier section of Sundance—all of which they helped bring to life.
Sundance’s New Frontier hosts a curated selection of works realized in the mediums of VR, AR, MR and AI. You can check out a full list of every entry into their year’s Sundance New Frontier showcase here.
Written and directed by Edward Robles of Here Be Dragons, Dispatch follows a small-town police dispatcher (Martin Starr, Silicon Valley) as he faces an all-night crime spree. The experience takes you inside the dispatcher’s perspective in this episodic, audio-based miniseries. The first three episodes launched on Rift and Gear VR in November, and the finale will launch on the Oculus Store January 25 following its world premiere at Sundance.
Masters of the Sun
Launching for Gear VR, Masters of the Sun is presented by will.i.am and The Black Eyed Peas. It takes place during the ’80s when ancient and modern forces of evil started destroying black communities. Vocal talent including Rakim, Queen Latifah, KRS-One, Jason Isaacs, Slick Rick, and comics industry legend Stan Lee tell the story of mobilization and reclaiming their city, fighting back against the evils of drugs, crime, and discrimination.
The latest project from Felix & Paul Studios, Space Explorers lets you reach new heights through the power of VR. Created in partnership with NASA, the experience follows their astronauts as they prepare to launch into space. Space Explorers is coming to Oculus in 2018.
SPHERES
The first chapter of SPHERES, called “Songs Of Spacetime,” is debuting at Sundance. SPHERES is a three-part series that transports viewers into the deepest pockets of the Universe, bringing to life future worlds and exploring oneness with the cosmos. SPHERES is created by Eliza McNitt and will launch on Rift in 2018.
Wolves in the Walls
From the team behind the Emmy Award-winning project Henry comes Wolves in the Walls, a gorgeous, interactive adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s haunting work brought to life in VR. Wolves in the Walls is coming to Oculus in 2018.
The Sundance Film Festival has now begun – and as we’ve seen throughout the week on VRFocus a numberof differentexperiences have announced their appearance at the event; often backed in some manner by a number of studios and creators. And when it comes to the hardware stakeholders it’s not just StarVR’s Starbreeze Studios, Oculus are also involved.
In fact, off the back of their recent announcement of Oculus Start, the Facebook owned company have revealed they are bringing five virtual reality (VR) experiences to the showcase which is taking place in Utah. “We’re excited to highlight five Oculus-supported experiences pushing the medium forward and celebrate their debuts at Sundance 2018.” Said the company in an entry on its blog where it also listed the five experiences, several of which we have featured here before on VRFocus. You can find these below:
Dispatch
Written and directed by Edward Robles of Here Be Dragons, Dispatch follows a small-town police dispatcher (Martin Starr, Silicon Valley) as he faces an all-night crime spree. The experience takes you inside the dispatcher’s perspective in this episodic, audio-based miniseries. The first three episodes launched on Rift and Gear VR in November, and the finale will launch on the Oculus Store January 25 following its world premiere at Sundance.
Masters of the Sun
Launching today for Gear VR, Masters of the Sun is presented by will.i.am and The Black Eyed Peas. It takes place during the ’80s when ancient and modern forces of evil started destroying black communities. Vocal talent including Rakim, Queen Latifah, KRS-One, Jason Isaacs, Slick Rick, and comics industry legend Stan Lee tell the story of mobilization and reclaiming their city, fighting back against the evils of drugs, crime, and discrimination.
Space Explorers
The latest project from Felix & Paul Studios, Space Explorers lets you reach new heights through the power of VR. Created in partnership with NASA, the experience follows their astronauts as they prepare to launch into space. Space Explorers is coming to Oculus in 2018.
SPHERES
The first chapter of SPHERES, called Songs Of Spacetime, is debuting at Sundance. SPHERES is a three-part series that transports viewers into the deepest pockets of the Universe, bringing to life future worlds and exploring oneness with the cosmos. SPHERES is created by Eliza McNitt and will launch on Rift in 2018.
Wolves in the Walls
From the team behind the Emmy Award-winning project Henry comes Wolves in the Walls, a gorgeous, interactive adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s haunting work brought to life in VR. Wolves in the Walls is coming to Oculus in 2018.
VRFocus will have more news for you regarding The Sundance Film Festival next week.
I’m a sucker for convincing characters in VR experiences. Some of my favorite moments in different VR apps came from the characters I interacted with and the sense of presence they afforded me. Things like eye contact, subtle movements and mannerisms, or even just quality voice acting all go a long way towards making a VR environment feel more real. These are all things that Wolves in the Walls by Fable Studio excels at.
Based on the Neil Gaiman story by the same name, Wolves in the Walls tells the tale of a cute, scared, and lonely little girl named Lucy that lives in an attic. She is certain that wolves live inside the walls but no one will believe her. That is, until you see them too and begin to understand this bizarre, strange world she lives in.
Check out the debut trailer for Wolves in the Walls below:
At a pre-Sundance screening this week we got to see a small slice of the first chapter of the experience and I came away completely in awe. The very start is nothing but a black void as swirling lights appear in front of me and I hear a faint murmur of a little girl’s voice and then poof — I’m standing in an attic in front of a little girl holding a pencil. She looks up at me and remarks that she “drew me too tall” and erases me. Back to black.
Soon, I’m back again at a shorter height — closer to her own — and she starts talking to me like I’d been there all along.
The stylized, slightly cartoonish visual style fits the tone perfectly and immediately grants the small girl a sense of believability. She wanders around the room, fiddling with things in corners and peering down at a notebook, or pictures, or even just whatever she’s holding. When she looks up to speak she makes piercing eye contact and commands my attention, just as a real person would. At one point she goes to hand me a camera, but looks away to keep doing what she was doing as I walk over to grab it with my Oculus Touch controllers.
It feels like she’d continue rambling and rummaging even if I weren’t there and that this is a world I’m becoming a part of, rather than a passive story that’s being told to me through VR.
Holding up the camera I snap a picture of her drawing and writing in her notebook and she startles, telling me to focus on getting proof of the wolves, not her.
After shaking the polaroid out and letting it develop it becomes clear — there is clearly a wolf on (or rather “in” as it were) the wall right behind her. Creepy.
You can see how I discovered it using a magnifying glass like in the GIF below:
Just before this Lucy had been running around the room pointing out all of the different sounds she’d heard from the scratching and clawing to the howling in the distance. The lighthearted tone and visual style can’t hide the sinister, somewhat nightmarish underpinnings of this story that evokes a slow-building sense of dread.
I only got to see about 10 minutes of this VR app, but I can’t wait to see more. This is easily now one of my most anticipated non-game applications of VR to date. It’s on display at Sundance this weekend.
Let us know what you think of it if you try it or what you think of it from reading here down in the comments below!
Oculus Story Studio, the company’s internal production studio tasked with creating ridiculously polished cinematic experiences, first announced they’d be winding down production last summer. Now officially defunct, studio alumni are heading off on their own to form a new firm dubbed Fable Studio, which is furthering development on Story Studio’s last remaining project, Wolves in the Walls. Fable is also introducing a new pricing model for its upcoming character-driven VR experiences.
Oculus Story Studio co-founder Edward Saatchi and Pete Billington, director of Wolves in the Walls, join as co-founders of Fable Studio. Fable is launching with the premiere of Chapter 1 of Wolves in the Walls at Sundance New Frontiers on January, 19th. The project, a VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book The Wolves in the Walls, will span three chapters.
image courtesy Oculus
Shortly after Oculus Story Studio ended production on the Emmy Award-winning Henry in early 2015, the team wanted to dig further into one of the most important problems in VR—creating an experience with an interactive character that’s both natural and meaningful. The goal is essentially feeling like you’re really inhabiting a space with a thinking, feeling person. Fable says Wolves in the Walls protagonist Lucy displays natural behaviors, as she can “remember and callback to actions you’ve taken in a story, be handed and hand you objects, be interrupted credibly and have a hierarchy of emotions toward different objects.”
“Where we’re going is not VR movies anymore. It’s characters who live with us and who we believe in,” said studio co-founder Edward Saatchi, pointing towards the future of character-building.
Fable says all of its future projects will be paid experiences, something they hope will “kickstart a new phase in VR movies of charging for content and seeking to break even.” The studio will charge $1 for every 10 minutes of content, meaning a 20 minute experience would cost $2. Considering how arbitrary pricing seems to most people right now, setting a standard pricing model could give smaller studios incentive to start creating VR narratives.
After Wolves in the Walls, Fable has announced four upcoming projects that will all explore “different elements of VR,” all of which are hand-made in VR using Oculus Quilland other Made in VR tools.
Fable Studio’s Upcoming Projects
Origin
A group of artists work together to solve a virtual reality scavenger hunt to recover stolen art.
concept art, Image courtesy Fable Studio
10
10 is an illustrative realtime documentary using Quill to explore a real life story.
Image courtesy Fable Studio
Derailed
A social virtual amusement park ride with the theme of sleep anxiety.
Image courtesy Fable Studio
Magic River Yacht Club
The viewer follows a giant salmon and its crew up river as they compete in a 500 mile regatta.
Earlier this year Facebook shut down Oculus Story Studio, its internal division meant to lead by example and explore storytelling concepts within VR. The group was composed of top notch creators from studios such as Pixar and they built three VR stories, each of which were engrossing and impactful. In retrospect, Lost, Henry and Dear Angelica look like building blocks for VR storytelling. For many early VR adopters, disbanding the group meant losing an early VR innovator and the insights which could be gleaned from their work.
It turns out, though, the group had one more project in the works and with continued funding from Oculus, Wolves in the Walls VR will be premiering at Sundance in January.
“We hope Wolves in the Walls will inspire people to make VR movies way more interactive with characters who actually care that you’re really there with them,” said executive producer Edward Saatchi, in a prepared statement.
For those unfamiliar, the first project from Oculus Story Studio — Lost — placed you in a dark forest as a giant robot arm searches for its owner. It made excellent use of the sense of presence you can feel in VR, immersing you in the sights and sounds of a forest while using scale to intimidate the visitor. The group also produced Henry and Dear Angelica, each of which were recognized by the Emmy awards. Henry placed you in the house of this adorable hedgehog who wanted a hug for his birthday. At one point Henry acknowledges your presence in the slightest way by making eye contact with you, hinting at the interactivity that’s possible with intelligent characters in VR. Meanwhile, Dear Angelica demonstrated VR as creation platform, produced largely in VR creation app Quill as its story paid homage to the movies and TV of yesteryear.
Wolves in the Walls is a story from Neil Gaiman releasing exclusively on the Oculus platform with former members of the Oculus Story Studio team shepherding its production. Unlike earlier projects, however, this one means to have a main character — a little girl named Lucy — with whom you interact in different ways. With your help, she aims to discover what’s hiding inside the walls of her house.
The project is directed by Billington and choreographed by immersive theater company Third Rail Projects, with Jessica Shamash producing. Lucy is said to be driven by artificial intelligence and able to change her performance based on the actions of the player, reacting with different dialog and emotions depending on what you do. The plan is to offer looks into the production’s progress through a Facebook page.
It is only the project’s first chapter appearing at Sundance, suggesting there is more story the creators hope to unlock with Lucy through additional installments.
Wolves in the Walls: It’s All Over is the latest in The Lucy Stories, a series based on the Wolves in the Walls book by Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and Dave Mckean. The original Wolves in the Walls made its debut in 2018 at the Sundance Film Festival, with 
Dispatch
Masters of the Sun
Space Explorers
SPHERES
Wolves in the Walls
