The Wolves in the Walls
This is a fantastic project I had the chance to co-art direct at Oculus Story Studio.
We were very much inspired by immersive theater to create a narrative in virtual reality with a lot of interactive components. It was quite a rush because we were figuring out so many things that hadn’t ever been done before!
In the story, Lucy hears wolf sounds coming from within the walls of her house…
Lucy’s room
We wanted to explore intentionally deforming the perspective and construction of spaces in VR this was a first attempt as a flat image
Inside out
One of the coolest things about this project is we actually get to go inside the walls of the house. Thinking of how the house could look “inside out” gave us a lot of opportunities to make totally abstract spaces!
Banished
This is an image I used to nail down the “watercolor look” of the textures and visual elements for the film. Not only was it hard to make something look good in 3D, it had to run in a real time engine for virtual reality! I am so glad we had such an amazing team to solve all of this!
Wolf
While at Story Studio, I helped develop Quill, a tool that allows you to paint directly in VR.
Early on in production, we were exploring the idea of the wolves being made out of parts and pieces of the house. Designing complicated structures like these was so much easier using Quill…
Prototype studies
These are some lighting studies for an early prototype of the project.
Mom
Our strategy for designing the color and lighting for the project was to attach specific colors to specific characters. This worked particularly well since the structure of the short is so episodic, as Lucy visits different family members one after the other. Here she visits her mom, and everything is primarily yellow.
Dad
We used blue as the primary color for the basement where Lucy visits her dad as he is rehearsing his music
Brother
Lucy’s brother is playing video games in the living room. We were inspired by retro computer games on a green screen to define the color in this area
Here each character runs our of their environment as the wolves start to come out of the walls…
Inside the walls
This was my favorite part of the show, the abstraction of the space as we go into the walls and see the house inside out!
Portals
These were some ideas for the portals through which we could look into the house from within the walls
Wolf party
For the climax of the piece, we wanted to mix as many saturated colors as possible. It’s like the coming together of all the colors we had been using individually up until then.
Special effects
We integrated the watercolor look into the effects as well. Here, I was using scanned watercolor marks to stylize sparks, smoke, flames…
The Wolves come out sequence
I had the chance to design and choreograph this sequence of the film in which the wolves come out of the walls and chase the family members out of the house. It was a wonderful experience! I sketched everything out in VR storyboards using Quill. Here are some of the initial concepts and ideas for staging the action that I came up with.
Characters
These are the character assets painted in VR using Quill
The living room
These are some of the sets that I designed and painted in VR using Quill. My goal was to distort the space as much as possible for emotional impact. Each space has a different kind of geometric distorsion, this one grows in scale as things are further away. The scale feels gigantic in VR as the point of view is very close to the floor. Below are some videos of the piece:
The telephone table
This set curves upwards from the center of the space where you stand. All the prespective construction follows an oriental perspective, where things radiate outward from your point of view. Below are more views and videos of the space:
The kitchen door
This space mimics a fish-eye lens, but instead of using an optical distorsion, it’s a geometric spherical distorsion of the set! The views in the videos below will explain this better than I can:
The way out
As the family try to escape from the house, I imagined a set that would stretch away from you, making the escape feel impossible. The long corridor would stretch and contort upwards away from you, giving you the impression of sinking. Very nerve-wrecking! Below are more views and videos of the space:
