"More Than Meets The Eye" Animated VR Experience

 I've used reflected buildings to imply both rain on the road, plus reference to the city underground. The road is invisible and I've used animated rain splashes, using an animbrush to indicate where the ground plane would be. Adjustment of the size of the splashes as they didn't read clearly, when viewed on the Quest. Used the thicken tool, whilst the animation loop was active and created some heavier strokes.  Creation also of the beginnings of the willow tree.

 Creating the remaining buildings in Piccadilly Circus and some London taxi cabs. To create reflections, as these are moving vehicles, I used technical drawings as a template and then the anim brush to create multiple strokes over time, in different colours.

 Looked at the reflections idea afresh this morning. I decided to strip out all of the colourful floor graphics and photoshop reflection png files. It was too busy and, even though there was a lot going on visually, there was something missing. I was inspired by some construction  lines that I'd put in place previously. They extended below the floor level and gave the impression of reflections. I simplified the look, mirrored the buildings and gave them a dark blue wash. Pleased with the result as it also draws reference to Sally's comment in the previous section about the underground being like a mirror of the map above. The dark blue of the reflections is reminiscent of Sally's world too.  Image below showing the grey construction lines that provided the inspiration and the new reflected buildings in dark blue.

 Test photoshop files, taking snap shots of the Quill environment, importing into Photoshop and applying a Bokeh light effect and blur. Not sure this works, as the environment has moving colours but the reflective wet road doesn't. May simplify it with duplicated geometry here and there. More buildings modelled today. If I don't use the images on the floor, then they can be placed in the environment to save on memory and polygon counts.

 

 Animated neon signs and the Criterion Theatre! Using a gradient airbrush tool, animated over time and keyframes. Plus import of png files for neon graphics.

Working on the styling for Aaron's world today. A few screen shots to show the progression of the art direction. I was using photo reference to paint the buildings, but it became far too heavy and there was a disconnect between the overworked painted effect on the buildings, compared to the simplicity of the bus and the tube stops. There would also be a big disconnect between Sally's world and Aarons. The movie clip shows the final style - almost neon in appearance.