Dover Springs (VR):

Thanks to the practise back in second year college, I reused those skills and more to create the next VR animation. The brief was to pick a documentary and make a VR animation based on the chosen text. In this case I went for 'Dover Springs', a documentary which covers how Dover can move on from the destruction of World War Two, by recognising what was damaged and what is being done about it. While my previous VR animation was just a collection of 3D models, 3D lighting and a full 360 degree camera, this VR based film actually possess 3D models which move, possesses video footage that can be applied to the 360 degree rendered frames alongside a collection of techniques like masking to make buildings glow, as well as colour correction and transitions to make this VR animation possess more substance compared to my previous VR animation.

There are references to the documentary too, not only was the footage from the documentary as I and others had permission to use the footage in any way we wished alongside making each setting based on the documentary. I did go for a certain part of the documentary where it goes more in depth reguarding what damage was done and what can be done about it, and even the film has its own structure thanks to my knowledge of narratives, including an introduction from the first setting, seeing the damaged followed by Dover itself being resolved.

Overall, this was made mainly using Autodesk Maya to create the models, animation and lighting, then After Effects was used to composite any footage and other elements followed by putting together all the rendered footage and even add music and sound too and even Photoshop was used to animated silhouette based figures which can be seen within the buildings and other parts throughout the film. This took six months to make, making it one of the biggest briefs, alongside other aspects that was required of the brief which included a portfolio of its development. Personally, while VR content isn't part of my career path, it was certainly one of those briefs that allowed me to further experiment with different resources and techniques, the forma which will be useful for future projects e.g. the utilisation of 2D and 3D.

Other than wanting to improve on some compositing elements and wishing the visual quality could be better, it is still a project which has a lot of favourable moments such as the buildings rising from the ground during the third setting. Fun fact, this film was also shown to an employer at Rare while I was part of a scheme, and this did help with additional feedback for this film.