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beepbeepinthecorner · 1 year

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do you mind telling how your ocs stories go? cause their designs are amazing but i want their lore lol

(and i love your artstyle smm <33 )

You're too kind, thank you! It means a lot that you care about my oc's!! I'd be thrilled to talk about my oc lore! I'll do it below the cut, because this is going to run a little long, lol. Not as long as it was going to be (I spent 3 hours writing out an unbelievably in depth response but something wonked out and it all got deleted) but it will still be long.

Since I've posted a few different sets of oc's on this blog I'm not 100% sure which one's you're asking after, but I'll assume these guys based on context clues!

(If you meant someone else feel free to ask again, I'd love to blab about the other ones too haha)

All these characters come from a webcomic that I've been slowly (very slowly) been chipping away at for the past three years. I am waiting to publish any pages until I have a significant chunk more of it done, so unfortunately it can't be read anywhere yet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The setting is your typical kinda-but-not-really-medieval fantasy world. Magic is not yet well understood by the general population, but some adventurous few have managed to master it.

First I'll go through the characters one by one!

The angular woman in blue is Valen Turnbull, our first of two main characters. She was born and raised in the cliffside town Blackport. Ever since childhood she has been strong, brave, and dutiful. She even had a little bit of a rebellious streak, though she (mostly) grew out of it. She left home after a vicious attack from Sea Spirits sunk most of the town. She felt tremendous guilt that she couldn't do more to protect the town, despite the fact that she single-handedly kept the equivalent of a sentient hurricane at bay. The only one she told about leaving was her best friend, Darius. He wished she would stay, but in the end he understood. Everyone copes differently. There is a lot more to say about her, but frankly I cant find the heart after losing a whole paragraph to a computer glitch. X﹏X

The smiley woman in red is named Laine Feywell, and she is the second of the two main characters. As a young adult her best friend (who is unnamed but will be referred to as 'Green') left home so start his own adventuring guild, so naturally she joined him. As the Guild grew, eventually Valen joined and became fast friends with Laine. Unfortunately, the Guild was not fated to last. Out of greed Green began taking morally questionable jobs for the Guild to do, which Valen opposed. This ended in a battle, in which Laine took Valen's side and defeated the rest of the Guild. After that the Guild disbanded, and Laine and Valen continued to travel together.

I actually have an animatic about it! I'm no animator, and it's the only animatic I've ever managed to finish, but here's the link if you want to see it!

The last character I'll go over today is this scraggly and emotional man in green- Darius. Though he is only a side character in the comic, he champions my heart. I unfortunately have no good art pieces of him, only the panels from the comic he's featured in. I'll have to remedy that someday! Darius's backstory mimics Valens a good deal, since they grew up and went to school together in Blackport. Initially Darius was very shy and unsure of himself, but Valen's boldness proved infectious, and he eventually grew up to be a brave, yet scrawny man. On the day the Sea Spirits attacked Blackport, Darius tried to talk Valen into evacuating with the rest of the citizens for her own sake. Valen wouldn't have it, despite how scared she was. Darius relented, and after evacuating everyone else actually came back to help her. He chucked everything he could reach from a traveling merchants stand- which luckily happened to be selling magical curios. Eventually something he threw seemed to work, and the Spirits abated their attack.

Finally, here's various fun facts about the characters/story!

Laine and Valen eventually get married!!! They fall in love after the guild incident, and confess their feelings after another near death experience. As young adults, they're really unusually intense and kind of scary together. Thankfully they mellow out with age (somewhat lol)

The town of Blackport is actually named after the ex-general-turned-minor-god who founded it! The God is referred to as 'Lady Blackport' or 'The Lady.' She is said to still watch over and protect the town, though her temple was dragged to the bottom of the ocean by the Sea Spirits. People who believe in or follow this god are known to use exclamations such as "Oh Lady above!" or "Lady forgive me." or even "Lady Blessed."

Laine has been working to teach Valen magic over the years. While Laine mastered it a long ago, Valen has been slow to pick it up. However she is both stubborn and eager to learn, so she'll surely master it someday!

The final thing I'll mention is a little au I have of this gang. They're just a bunch of teenagers running an urban exploring youtube channel. Laine is the leader of the bunch, but prone to injury because of her over-eagerness. She also puts together the cutest outfits before delving into abandoned buildings! Valen is their cameraman and Laine's girlfriend, and though she isn't as injury prone as Laine, she's just as foolhardy and actively encourages Laine into dangerous situations. She's also on her school swim team! Darius is the relative straight-man of the group, but not by much. Rather than talking them out of exploring potentially dangerous abandoned buildings, he'll just research if they need to be concerned about asbestos or similar concerns. He is the heart-throb of the DnD club <3

Anyway, that's all I'll say I think! The post is already massive, but hey it's not everyday someone prompts me to talk about my oc's!! So thank you for that again I love you for that!!! I think I covered most of the basics of things, but if there's anything anyone wants to know do not hesitate to ask! Clearly I love to blab ahahah I'm sure this is more than you were bargaining for when you actually asked, but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Once again it was going to be longer before my computer vetoed it and deleted the whole damn post lmaooo.

#I blabbed an unbelievable amount here. and frankly idk how to tag it #answered #my oc drawing #my ocs #original character #character design #oc lore #oc drawing #my oc art #lgbtq oc #lgbt characters #lgbtq characters #if anyone actually reads all of this I'll be shocked ga;hdgaha that's on me for making a massive wall of text lol #beepbeepart

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fennecthunderfox · 1 year

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First Update of the Year I Guess

I tend to appear and disappear without warning, so I figured perhaps I should update people on my progress on things and my plans for them.

First off- I know I complain about this a lot in comic descriptions- but part of the reason why it's been taking me so long to make any kind of art in general is because of mandatory overtime at work. We have been on mandatory overtime for over 2 years at this point. I have been real low-energy because of that. With that fact out of the way, I'm going to try not to talk about it anymore cause I complain too much about it.

An upcoming blockade to art progress is a wedding (for a family member) and then I'm going to try to get my wisdom teeth out sometime in February. I'll be taking a leave of absence from work during this time, but considering I'll be recovering from a surgery, I don't know if I can be super productive in Feb. Speaking of comics, let's move on to the plans for the comics.

DEFINITELY NOT DELTARUNE:

Defnodel is back to being my top priority... when I actually have time and energy to work on it. I have some amount of determination to finally finish chapter 3 before the end of this year. Which is also along the lines of what I said last year, but never mind all that. I'm somewhat torn on how to do the updates for it. I liked it better when I could draw and post a page Saturday morning after work. I'll see if I can ease myself back into a weekly update schedule once I feel normal after my surgery again.

VESSELTALE

The problem with Vesseltale right now is that where it's currently paused is the best place to keep it on pause until I can get back into some form of routine with art again. It sucks cause it's been stuck for so long already, but if I did my sporadic updates with VT as I've been doing with Defnodel it may be more annoying to have large gaps in updates. That said I'm open to feedback. If you think any progress is good progress I can try to work on VT in tandem with Defnodel. Defnodel would still take priority, however.

ANIMATICS

I don't think many people follow me for animatics, but I have a lot of ideas in my head. "The Ram Guy" was a fun one to make and I have ideas for other ways to intertwine Distractible audio with Undertale and Deltarune characters. Why? I listen to Distractible at work and imagining someone from the cast raging about a fridge or telling chaotic childhood stories makes work more fun. (I also listen to GO! and am itching to make something from the cricket primer but I'm stuck on who to cast for the roles.)

It's been so long since I've done a music video animatic, but I have plans to do some excerpts of songs at some point and possibly even a full music video. But that's uh... optimistic for me all things considered. I can't even update a comic consistently, so no one expect big animatics. Except for one that I've been trying to make for the UT anniversary for literally 2 years now. Maybe if I had a proper animation program it wouldn't be so difficult (I use fire alpaca and the default windows movie maker for animatics currently).

IN CONCLUSION

I have too many things I WANT to do and not enough dopamine to motivate me to do it. But I haven't given up on anything yet. As of now, I fully intend to continue the comics, animatics, and art in general.

As always I am eternally grateful for everyone's patience with me. Thank you for listening.

#Fenn Speaks #I don't really talk about My UTDR comics on main much so this may be confusing to some.#Also the overtime situation has improved as we went from 47 or 50 hour work weeks to only 45 hours a week #Unless there's a holiday then it's a 32 hour week since we can't get OT pay those weeks #I like how I say I won't complain about it anymore and then continue complaining in my tags

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infjarts · 5 years

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The Ninjagotale comic has been discontinued

This is not early April Fools. It is unfortunately the reality of the situation right now. Let me explain (synopsis of the story also under the cut).

There are several reasons that I am discontinuing the comic.

1. I can't get myself to do the next page. I just... can’t. Its not that I don’t want to get it out. I just lack the motivation once I open the file on my computer.

2. I feel like it’s not original enough. I can't call it my own. I got the idea from someone else (with their permission), and I know there are at least 3 more interpretations out there.

3. I want to dedicate the spare time I have to Insanity Brothers. Its a story that didn’t exist before, there's only one. And I’m far more excited about it.

4. Ninjagotale doesn't need to have anything to do with Ninjago anymore. That’s not what its about anymore. Its about the struggle between Yellow and the Chara of the world. The fact that the characters are all from Ninjago doesn't impact the story at all. Their personalities are the same as in Undertale, the rules are pretty much the same, it’s not that different. It can just be an Undertale AT with the regular characters and an entity that is chasing Yellow around, trying to get rid of them.

5. I am going through an extremely hard time right now. My brother has become emotionally and verbally abusive to the entire family and I need to get something off of my plate to deal with all of the stress of that.

I think I need to rethink the world and turn it into its own Undertale AU where it’s the same characters of Undertale except for Yellow. Yellow is very much their own thing. I also think what I’ll do is make it a concept/story that I continue to make content for, just not an actual comic. So I’ll release the story synopsis, everything, and I might make new designs and an illustration or joke comic or two, but not an official comic or fic.

Alright. Here’s the story that was going to happen.

Yellow has an actual name: Rhynn. Rhynn is the “Reindeer” child mentioned in the discord.

They were a kid from another AU whose creator was going to destroy it. Their parents were scientists post-pacifist route who worked with Sans on the surface studying the anomaly, and they discovered their world was about to be destroyed. So they sent Rhynn into the multiverse to settle in an empty world so that their world would build back up around them. But something went wrong, and their code broke apart and rearranged itself into a virus that can use anyone as a vessel as long as they have their soul. This virus then traveled between Universes, feeding off of the destruction they left in their place. Here is a little thing I made practicing gender neutral hairstyles that actually is concept art of Rhynn’s past vessels. It gives you an idea of what their stage one form is:

Rhynn’s stage 2 form is when they have a vessel but aren’t concealing themselves. It varies according to just how much they want to reveal. It can be anything between this:

and this:

The creature behind Frisk!Rhynn here is their true form:

The Overlord is not a virus, but a super powerful antivirus software trying to destroy the Rhynn virus.

Fast forward a thousand years of destroying things to Ninjagotale. The Frisk of the AU is about to fall into the Underground for the first time, but Rhynn intervenes and kills them, taking over their soul and body before they gain the ability to save and load. They then play Undertale normally, intending to reach the surface and spread destruction there.

However, the Overlord antivirus finds the Rhynn virus when Rhynn tells Lloyd/Asriel their true name. To throw the Overlord off, Rhynn swaps the AU and resets to “refresh” and activate the new code.

Hence we now have Ninjagoswap. Rhynn and Morro travel through the Underground, only to discover there is already a Morro/swap!Chara going through the Underground, doing a genocide route because he and much of the underground have been affected by the Overlord’s presence.

Morro, now the “fallen child” with a ghost Rhynn following them, hurries to Kai/swap!Papyrus to warn him about the murderous human. Kai joins them in hurrying to prevent Cole/swap!Sans from being killed, and they arrive, only to find swap!Morro already there. Instead of killing Cole, however, he uses his knife to corrupt him as well. Hence this illustration:

Kai knows he can’t win, so the good guys retreat. Swap!Morro and Cole then move through the Underground, corrupting everything. When they reach Jay/swap!Alphys, Cole easily overpowers him and corrupts him as well.

Meanwhile, Kai and Morro head to Nya/swap!Undyne’s lab to find her crying over Jay, having seen everything on the cameras. Nya agrees to help them, and builds the technoblades. They will have to enter the digiverse/void and use them to destroy the Overlord. Remember, they still don’t know that Rhynn is the true villain, so they’re all just going by what Morro relays to them from Rhynn.

Suddenly Jay, Cole, and swap!Morro all barge in and attack. Nya and the amalgamates hold them back while Rhynn creates a new save file, and this time they turn it into a fell world. They escape just before the corruption is too much and the world collapses. But unbeknownst to everyone else, the Overlord saves Cole just in time and brings him to the digiverse.

The Overlord tells Cole the truth and makes him his right hand. Cole asks if they have to kill his brother, because he still cares about Kai. The Overlord says if he manages to bring Kai to their side, he can be spared. Cole makes a vow to save his brother.

Meanwhile in Ninjagofell, Morro and Rhynn have switched places again since they’re not in a swap world anymore. Kai goes off to mourn for his brother by himself, so while he’s gone, Rhynn takes the opportunity to think about what to do next. They figure once they’re in the digiverse, they will be able to break rules enough to make Morro physical. So they have three people, but four technoblades. So they decide that they need Lloyd/Asriel because a god-like being would be a nice thing to have. But in order to do that you’d need seven human souls, and there are only six here, Morro points out. But Rhynn disagrees. Because Frisk has fallen down at this point.

Morro realizes what they are about to do, and they try to argue against it, but as a ghost, they can’t do much else. He watches helplessly as Rhynn steals the six captured souls and goes to find Frisk. They encounter them and Lolley as they are leaving the ruins and entering snowdin forest.

They access the code and rob Frisk of their control of the save file. Without having to worry about Frisk respawning, they kill them and take their soul. They then tell Lolley that they have seven souls now, and they need him to turn into Asriel to help them save the world. Lolley is too scared, so Rhynn changes the code again so that everyone forgets Frisk existed, and Lolley then complies.

Lloyd, Kai, Morro and Rhynn then head to fell!Cole to get him to help them enter the digiverse. They do, and upon entering, they turn Morro corporeal. Kai decides he’s had enough of following this suspicious child around and demands answers. Instead of telling him everything, Rhynn corrupts Kai and makes him a pawn of their own. Unlike the overlord’s corruption, the influence is less suggestion and more force by inflicting pain on the victim to get them to comply.

With the other three in tow, Rhynn makes their way through the digiverse, which is basically the Underground but looks like the digiverse from Rebooted. They arrive at Judgement hall, the Overlord’s lair, and try to use the technoblades to wipe him out, but it only forces him out of the code and he becomes a giant dragon. Cole suddenly appears and corrupts Lloyd. Three fights break out at once, Kai vs. Cole, Morro vs. Lloyd, and Rhynn vs. the Overlord.

Kai is eventually knocked to the ground by Cole, and Cole starts to reason with him. We have this scene:

Cole corrupts Kai. Realizing they are losing, Rhynn turns into their stage two form. This allows them enough power to defeat the Overlord, releasing all those under his influence. They then say that they no longer need the others and can now dispose of them. Morro then engages Rhynn in a fight. Hence we have the private version of this illustration, where you can see Rhynn in Morro’s blade:

The fight then goes into a stage 3 in a separate dimension when Rhynn turns into their true form. Eventually Morro beats them, and suddenly... pre-virus!Rhynn appears, cleansed of the virus. They then thank Morro and tell him that they will fix the code and send them all back to the original Ninjagotale timeline. This scene then happens:

...They give Morro their stolen soul from Frisk. Now Morro can stay corporeal without the need for a host. With a final goodbye, Rhynn fixes the code and sends Morro and the others back. Without a soul or a vessel, they then disappear and finally gain the peace they were robbed of so long ago.

The story ends with Lloyd using his seven human souls to break the barrier in Ninjagotale. The monsters are then freed without the presence of a Frisk. swap!Kai and Cole go to live with classic!Kai and Cole (swap!Kai may or may not be introduced to Skylor/Grillby by classic!Cole) and Morro and Lloyd go to live with Misako.

And that’s the end of it. I may release more about the reconstruction of it later, like redesigns and little content snippets like blurb comics and illustrations, and explanations of other ending ideas, but that’s about it. I’m sorry for disappointing you all. I hope you all can understand about the circumstances, and I hope you stick around for more Insanity Brothers. It’ll be an animatic series, so I’m real excited for it!

Love, Piper

#announcement #ninjagotale #long post #ninjagotale explanation

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legendary · 7 years

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Making a Comic Into (Virtual) Reality

A conversation with the creative team of Schell Games, who brought Grant Morrison’s Eisner-nominated series Annihilator to life as an immersive virtual reality experience.

Legendary VR was established to extend the worlds of our films in exciting new ways - as seen with Kong: Skull Island, Warcraft, and Pacific Rim. At the same time, the VR team has been at work on dozens of experimental projects pushing the boundaries of storytelling within virtual reality. When Legendary Comics published the psychedelic Annihilator series by Grant Morrison, we saw a fun opportunity to expand and experiment with a new medium: comic books. Annihilator had its initial run as a 6-issue series in 2014, following the character of washed-up screenwriter, Ray Spass, as he begins to lose his grip on reality, leading him on a mind-bending sci-fi adventure alongside of his own fictional characters. Hailed for its zany creativity and Frazier Irving's stunning artwork, Annihilator earned a Best Writer nomination at the prestigious Eisner Awards for Grant Morrison.

When deciding how best to tackle this ambitious experiment, Legendary VR partnered with Pittsburgh-based Schell Games to help them bring the comic to life. "I wanted to see how we could translate the uniqtue panel-by-panel experience of reading a comic into Virtual Reality without just creating an animated short. It was important to maintain the pacing of a comic book," said Ethan Stearns, Vice President of Legendary VR. "After we saw how Schell Games approached their title, I Expect You to Die, we became excited to work with them to merge these mediums. Grant Morrison's source material is so cerebral and has such wonderful character dualities. This allows you, as the viewer, to project your character into the scene and maintain the continuity of the narrative." Legendary Backstory had the chance to talk to Art Director Ben Greene and Project Director Tim Sweeney from Schell Games about the process of adapting Morrison’s surreal subject matter, what it was like to literally lift a comic straight from the pages, and the future of VR as a medium. See what they had to say and take a look at exclusive concept art and stills from the experience below.

Q: For starters, talk about what the concept of the Annihilator VR experience is for those who haven’t tried it and discuss how it relates to the source material.

TS: We took the first issue of the series and we isolated a few key moments inside that, putting you into the perspective of Ray Spass, the narrator inside the comic book. You get to experience his apartment, his meetings with his agents, his mental conceptions of the work he is working on from inside his point of view. Those are things he is working on inside the comic book but the environment and interactions are unique to the VR experience. It’s those things unwitnessed, implied, or obvious in hindsight that foreshadow things deeper into the series. BG: What was initially engaging and worked really well was the fact that it was comic material and especially since we were targeting the Gear VR, we knew what our limitations were. Because of that, we could say “Hey, it would be neat if we just kind of placed you in the center of all of this crazy activity.” What’s cool about the Annihilator universe is that it’s this kind of this constant head-trip and you’re never quite sure what’s going on. So, that was immediately inspiring to be in the middle of being able to play with transitions and elements within the environment that would morph and change and surprise you in a first-person way. You are there, you are present, these elements are there with you and this isn’t something you would get from an amusement park attraction or even a funhouse. We’re able to manipulate the space around you so organically, the material in Annihilator gave us a lot of room to play with for the experience.

Schell Games’ 360° concept art mock-up of the cafe scene, mapping out the full visual experience for the user.

Q: Can you take us through the process of how this came to be from inception to the final experience?

BG: It’s been almost a year and half now since we first had that meeting and there was a lot of great material being thrown around during that brainstorming session at Schell. Somebody pulled the Annihilator book out of the box and said “Hey, this is something new that Legendary has on its shelves that they’re really excited about.” So, right from the beginning it was sort of highlighted amongst the materials we had to look at. I think that Jonas Quantum was sitting there and maybe some Pacific Rim, all of which are neat, but Annihilator pushed the possibilities of the experience a bit farther and more immediately. There was just more to play with, more to daydream about and brainstorm over. There were many connections and we decided to attempt to pursue it in a roundabout way and let the guests organically experience it from the main character’s space and point of view. His sort of descent into madness and what that is like. TS: Ben put together an animatic of the experience that gave everyone a clear impression of how we were going to approach doing this. It was shot-by-shot thinking about how the visuals stack up and with the medium being so new and the headsets being limited in technical capabilities, You always are thinking about if this is going to be something that can actually be accomplished. There were several things that drew us to this property, one of which being that, at its core, it’s playing with perception and crossover between realities, like what VR does as a medium. The medium is all about virtual reality and playing with stories about virtual reality. The other thing is that most of the environments and scenes we are seeing are very familiar to people coming in off the streets. So even if the virtual reality is new and terrifying, you get a gentler introduction than if you were to just dropped right into a roller-coaster. BG: I think that for me, VR represents a doorway into providing experiences that you might read about in a comic or might watch somebody experience in a film. Yet, it’s in a way that puts you in a scenario that you would never have any other way of experiencing.

Q: If this is any indication, VR seems to be an interesting medium for comics to continue experimenting in that’s not at all like “adapting” the comic to film or TV. The Annihilator experience shows you can create a fully immersive comic book to step inside of. What do you think about the unique blending of these two mediums and are you working on anything else in this realm?

BG: We’ve kicked around several ideas and ways of approaching a combination of literature and the environment you experience that literature in. Different ways of breaking out of the sequential way of telling a story in this new space. Currently, we aren’t working on anything but it’s always in our back pocket. We like to show off Annihilator when we have guests that’ll come through and be curious about what is possible with VR. TS: I think there is something unique about VR being a newish medium and there are fewer expectations placed on it. There are certain things we can get away with because we can create things like an immersive 2-D environment and what it looks like. We don’t have to modify the original artistic vision of the comics to make it work with animation or live-action or to make it work with 3-D. There is a purer interpretation of the art at a basic level and that isn’t something that can be done immersively, sequentially, interactively outside of VR. I think people are more accepting of the novelty of it all because the medium itself is so new. BG: We try to be aware of what else is going on in entertainment production, especially in games. When we started to wrap our heads around this, we researched if others were doing something like this. We jumped on the internet, asked our friends and we found a couple things encroaching in the same direction, but nobody had really jumped into it and we felt that we had something special by how we approached it. The VR experience is another way of more deeply understanding the universe of Annihilator. Ultimately, I hope that other developers interested in VR and comics can look at Annihilator VR and be inspired by it to create the next step in that direction.

Q: One of my favorite parts of the experience is how interactive it is, utilizing the gaze function to not only advance the narrative but also to add some unexpected and strange details that really flesh out the world it takes place in. How difficult is it creating such an interactive story world as opposed to a more straightforward “on tracks” approach and how did you go about deciding what details to include in the environments?

TS: When we do an experience like this, we need to make sure the critical path is obvious. People shouldn’t feel like they are going to get stuck at any point. Once that happens, we say “what else makes sense to add interest to this?” A lot of what happens then is figuring out other things to put in. Some of those decisions are very late in the game, but every piece of the environment is sort of a blank page for us to brainstorm what in the property could fit there. BS: There’s no mobility, just 360 degrees of world. We didn’t want to beat you over the head with all the details. We took basically the first issue and brought in elements to each of the scenes that expanded the story in a more organic and discovery-oriented way. If you just went through the main path, you’d get the gist of the experience, but if you go through a few more times there are new things you have the opportunity to find. Typically, people find three interactions per scene, but in reality, each scene has five plus things to discover. Each one tells a bit more about the story, or at least builds on the character. Even details like when you are sitting in the office, like on the table is his license and business card that tells you a bit about who he is and what he does. We have this piece of paper from the hospital that says “brain tumor”, which sort of highlights the information available throughout the experience. The more you go through it, the more you begin to explore. We were finding people would discover more about what was going on, but it still maintains the mystery a bit. TS: It doesn’t need to stand on its own. This really is an introduction companion piece to the comic. All the questions that people raise, we expect them to be answered by picking up the book.From the standpoint of what is going on in the experience, you want to immerse yourself in the graphic novel and we tried to get that out through the VR experience.

Q: It seems like every time someone tries the experience, there are new details and easter eggs to find. What are your favorite easter eggs that might go unnoticed the first time through it?

BG: I have a favorite that is hidden in the environment. It’s more for your subconscious to pick up on. Annihilator has an unsettling theme throughout the book, and we wanted to make sure that there was a not-everything-is-right feel. If you are in Ray’s study and you look around, there is a bookshelf off to the left of the desk. You’ll see it a few times throughout, but something throughout the experience that I added is that behind the books are all the dead haunted faces from the space station. There are all of these cursed victims on that station with him and I put their faces in the shelf peering out between the books. If you ever catch it, it is unsettling. TS: (Production Manager) Jeff Outlaw’s favorite is in the Annihilator scene, if you poke around the left desk drawers, one of the little cute andcreepy creatures will emerge and warn you about the danger. That’s something few people get. Only a handful of people will see it. My subtle touch to realism is that the chair will rotate to catch up with you and squeak even though you can’t see your body in VR. BG: When we were building the scenes, audio was super important. It builds presence in VR which is cool because it takes you into these spaces. It can totally help anchor you in the scene.

360° concept art from Schell Games, laying out the experience’s space sequence.

Q: Where do you think VR is headed as a medium and where would you like to see it go?

TS: We are very future-facing as a studio, and there is a lot of on-the-horizon talk. I hope that the technology catches up with the intentions of the creatives behind it. I would hope that even if something were small, that we wouldn’t have to agonize over it. There is a lot of constraint working in VR right now, especially in mobile content. Between that and the adoption of it, I think that I just want to see all of that stuff thrive and grow and expand. I want it to drive the numbers and I don’t want people to worry about the constraints. BG: Even just general budget constraints and all of those concerns should ease up as players/guests start to increase and more people are using VR. There are a couple cool things recently where 7 hour long immersive games are used in VR and consoles. I’m interested to see the numbers from that and how that inspires next year’s VR development in similar platforms. There are lots of cool things happening, but I’m holding my breath trying to see what people jump on. TS: One of the things we try to do here is figure out the best strengths of the medium and leverage those to help. That’s an area where there is still uncertainty. What are people going to get into? What will they take from it? It’s the best period for experimentation because it is an open field right now. I think that it should continue that way for as long as possible to avoid things getting trapped. If you take a look at some areas of technology, we enter a cul-de-sac where the evolution has metastasized. I just would like to see mediums reach their full potential before they become very solid.

After all the hard work, the experiment between Schell Games and Legendary VR has paid off as the Annihilator VR experience is now available for download for Oculus and on Google Play. Grant Morrison’s Annihilator is available as a complete collection on Amazon.

#Worlds

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