Started working on a vr view for cenotaphs. 3D space seems pretty attractive for dealing with images, sound, architecture and embodied actions (like kneeling). However adding ANOTHER visual language on top of the scratchbeam one (fat atari pixels sketched as pencil scanlines) is complicated. It doesn’t really seem desirable to me to try to make a shader to render 3d to look like pencil pixels (plus I can’t write shaders). But, I could layer it- there’s a 2d visual language and a 3d one, layered, like an image diagetically on a screen in a 3d world. I started thinking about Czech animation and hybrid films I like, like On The Comet and Baron Munchausen, and how they were totally carefree about using forced perspective with drawings for skies and castles, getting a stylized diorama look. You can’t exactly force perspective in VR, but you can say, have surface art or frescoes as one style, and then the world they live in in another style. I’m moodboarding a lot of those Czech movies and a few crypts/cenotaphs to help arrive at that 3d aesthetic. I like the idea that monuments could carry animations in the scratchbeam style on them.
This first experiment will be in Unity because it’s for a class, but the end product for show will probably be in A-Frame so it will run in browser and degrade gracefully.
VR project page is here.
First step was to model a crypt column and a placeholder monument and get a general perspective. I threw in a couple of lights for a graybox mockup. I also modeled a mechanical bell That I’d like to use as an interactive element.
