FAIRY TALES REIMAGINED IN VR

______

A Thesis

Presented to

The Honors Tutorial College

Ohio University

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In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of

Bachelor of Science in Media Arts & Studies

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by

Andrea Swart

August 2018

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INTRODUCTION

If you could revisit your childhood today, would you? For me, the answer is an easy, simple “no.” Coming of age is a difficult time. It is confusing. It is chaotic. It is scary and uncertain. At times, it is dangerous. At least, it is now, looking back on it through the lens of my current knowledge and experience.

Fairy tales warned us of these threats through horrific beasts and perilous journeys of vulnerable children. However, as a child, the cautionary tales went in one ear and out the other as the true meaning was lost behind the impactful images of big bad wolves and colorful disappearing cats.

Fairy Tales Reimagined in VR is an artistic representation of two iconic fairy tales which intends to expose to viewers the metaphorical menaces within the stories. In this pair of scenes, titled Grandma’s Den and Down the Rabbit Hole, I immerse viewers in the dangers of the physical and emotional turmoil of growing up by placing them in the shoes of the main characters of the tales.

In explaining these scenes, I first must dive into the history of virtual reality, the artistic medium through which I will transport viewers. Next, I will discuss the interpretations of the two fairy tales that led to the design choices for each experience. Finally, I will detail the extensive processes that allowed the creation of these cohesive virtual experiences.

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RESEARCH

Virtual reality as it is known today has been made possible by a common goal shared by fine art, academic research, military training, and consumer industries: to transport viewers to immersive alternate environments. Through this shared goal, artists can place viewers within multidimensional art pieces.

Researchers can revel at the technological advancements. The military can use the immersion to train pilots before they even touch a real plane. The consumer benefits from all of these advancements, with the newfound ability to be entertained in immersive virtual scenes and to be exposed to new environments which they may otherwise be unable to experience.

Artists were some of the first to attempt anything resembling virtual reality, creating panoramic paintings to whisk the viewer away to another place as early as the 10th century.1 Before the official term “panoramic painting” was coined in the 18th century, these paintings were frequently birds-eye views of cities, possibly inspired by experiences aboard the newly invented hot-air balloon.2 The artists intended to show as much of the areas as possible, capturing the feeling of the locations with little concern for actual perspective or realism. These panoramas allowed much to be desired in terms of making the viewer feel as though they had truly been transported into the environments.

1 HongZhong, Gu. 961. Night Revels of Han Xizai. 2 Hollar, Wenceslaus. 1648. Long View of London.

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It was for this reason that Scottish artist Robert Barker decided to try a new approach to 360-degree murals.3 He arranged for an entire viewing gallery, in which a circular viewing pedestal stood in the center of a large circular canvas.

The walls, ceiling, and lighting were hidden by carefully placed black drapes.

Instead of a birds-eye view of the landscape, Barker painted a realistic view of

Edinburgh, as it appeared from a nearby hilltop. His setup allowed the viewer, who simply stood on this center platform, to be transported into his environment in such a convincing way that it was compared to stage illusions of the time.

When Barker’s patent on his 360-degree setup ended in 1802, others began to use the medium as a way to transport viewers to locations or events of their choosing, from travel destinations to actual battle scenes and coronations.

In 1838, a groundbreaking discovery by Charles Wheatstone showed promise for a smaller-scale illusion, the world’s first stereoscope.4 He found that when two drawings of the same subject, each with a slightly different perspective, were placed side by side and viewed with one eye on each drawing, the mind created the illusion of three-dimensions. Wheatstone created a large tabletop device to demonstrate this effect by projecting a slightly different drawing to each eye to create the illusion of depth.

Building on this invention, with the help of the recently invented camera,

David Brewster created a handheld version of the stereoscope in the late 1840s.5

3 Ford, Lily. 2017. Virtual Reality, 19th Century Style: The History of the Panorama and Balloon View. 13 April. http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/visual-art/virtual-reality-19th- century-style-the-history-the-panorama-and-balloon-view#. 4 Thompson, Clive. 2017. "Stereographs Were the Original Virtual Reality." Smithsonian Magazine. October. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/sterographs-original-virtual- reality-180964771/. 5 Ibid.

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His device used real images, rather than drawings. By 1856, his invention was available to the public at an affordable price. Viewers at home rushed to purchase new stereoscopic images of travel destinations and staged scenes, transporting themselves to vivid three-dimensional locations by simply holding a small device to their eyes.

The stereoscope saw another upgrade in 1939, when William Gruber created the ViewMaster, which would eventually become the well-known Fisher

Price toy.6 This handheld device used circular cards which contained seven sets of images, compared to the single set on Brewster’s model. The images on these reels were also produced on colored film for the first time, bringing to the images even more realism and immersion than before. For the first time, viewers could see and flip between multiple three-dimensional, colored scenes, practically traveling to these destinations without having to leave the comfort of their homes.

While art led to the eventual creation of the stereoscope and its ability to simulate travel, military research led to the first ever flight simulation in 1929.

Edward Link recreated a cockpit with external mechanizations that simulated turbulence and movements of an airplane for pilot training. This invention was so true to life that more than five hundred thousand pilots were trained preliminarily by Link Trainers during World War II.7 This real-life simulation and stereoscopy came together in science fiction in 1930, when author Stanley Weinbaum wrote

Pygmalion’s Spectacles. In this novel, a pair of goggles allow viewers to be

6 2017. "History of Virtual Reality." Virtual Reality Society. https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual- reality/history.html. 7 McElhiney, Allan. n.d. "Link Trainer Flight Simulator." Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum. https://www.nasflmuseum.com/link-trainer.html.

Swart 5 immersed in a fictional world, complete with holographics, touch, smell, and taste. Though this was not a true invention, the concept may have fueled future inventors to bring the device to reality.

Fueled by an artistic vision in the 1950s, Morton Heilig created the

Sensorama, a machine which looked similar to an .8 The device, which played films for the viewer stereoscopically, was decked out with stereo speakers, a smell generator, fans, and even a vibrating chair. It intended to fully immerse the viewer by stimulating as many senses as possible in tandem with the three-dimensional film. Morton Heilig did not stop here, however. By 1960, he created the very first head-mounted display for 360-degree film, called the

Telesphere Mask.9 Though the mask did not track head movement and featured no interactivity, it was the first to bring stereoscopic sound and film to a fully hands-free headset.

Quickly following Heilig’s invention, and again due to military research, the first motion-tracking head-mounted display was created by two engineers in

1961.10 This device, called Headsight, used two screens, one for each eye, to allow for immersive viewing of dangerous situations for training. The viewer would turn their head, which would update the rotation of the cameras in real- time. While this still did not allow for digitally created scenes, it was an important step toward the motion-tracking systems we have now.

8 n.d. "Inventor in the Field of Virtual Reality." Morton Heilig. http://www.mortonheilig.com/InventorVR.html. 9 Ibid. 10 Carlson, Wayne E. 2017. "Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview." Pressbooks. 20 June. https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/graphicshistory/chapter/17-1- virtual-reality/.

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Only four years later, academic research would spark the innovation of computerized virtual reality. Ivan Sutherland, who would become known as the

“father of computer graphics”, described his concept for the ultimate display: “The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked.”11 In his concept, the head-mounted display is connected to a computer rather than a camera for the first time. The world the viewer sees would be computer- generated rather than reality. In essence, what he was describing was virtual reality as we know it today.

Sutherland ran with this idea, constructing with one of his students The

Sword of Damocles in 1968.12 This device, much too heavy to sit comfortably on a head, was suspended from the ceiling. The viewer was strapped into the headset from beneath the hanging machine. The viewer could then look around a virtually constructed environment, which at this time was simply three- dimensional polygonal outlines, called wireframes. Another computer scientist named Myron Krueger developed more responsive environments only a year later, calling the experience “”.13 Through his setups, which were displayed in galleries around the world, viewers could interact with the

11 Carlson, Wayne E. 2017. "Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview." 12 Ibid. 13 "History of Virtual Reality." Virtual Reality Society.

Swart 7 environment as well as with other users from other galleries. He focused more on interactivity than anyone before him, setting the stage for the next critical step in the development of virtual reality.

In 1987, Jaron Lanier, founder of the Visual Programming Lab, popularized the term “virtual reality” while creating the first official virtual reality goggles and haptic feedback glove.14 His lab’s inventions, called the Eyephone and Dataglove, were the breakthrough that led to mass expansion in the virtual reality field. In the years to come, consumer-oriented companies began to hop on-board with virtual reality innovation. In 1991, Group arcade machines were released, allowing arcade-goers to experience real-time three- dimensional stereoscopic visuals, even including multiplayer options in some locations.15 These system prices ran in the tens of thousands of dollars, making them inaccessible to the public aside from visiting arcades. The Virtuality Group made unforgettable experiences, however, as players were chased by pterodactyls in a virtual reality multiplayer shooter. Following this, a company called Virtual I/O created a headset called iGlasses, which was under a thousand dollars, but still too expensive for consumers to bite.16 In 1993, prototyped a for the console.17 However, their prototype met technical difficulties and was never released to the public. The

Nintendo was introduced in 1995, but displayed only in reds and

14 Cassenti, Daniel N. 2018. Advances in Human Factors in Simulation and Modeling, p.35. Springer International Publishing. 15 Fowle, Kyle. 2015. "The Vanguard of Virtual Reality: An Embarrassing Arcade Game." The Atlantic. 4 February. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/when-vr-was-an- arcade-game/385139/. 16 "History of Virtual Reality." Virtual Reality Society. 17 Lavroff, Nic, ed. 1993. "Sega VR." Sega Visions.

Swart 8 blacks.18 When this headset flopped on the market, Nintendo ended production within a year of its release. Time and again, headsets were being released but were unable to gain enough momentum to stay on the market.

In the early 2000s, a boy of sixteen named Palmer Luckey decided to figure out what was wrong with consumer-grade virtual reality so that he could correct it. He saved up money and quickly obtained one of the largest collections of head-mounted displays of his time to study them. He came to create the first iteration of Rift, one of the first real contenders of modern day virtual reality headsets, which released in late 2012.19 Following its success, the virtual reality market exploded. Facebook acquired the company Oculus VR in 2014 to take over the production of the second development kit. Google released Google

Cardboard viewers for the public to view stereoscopic videos on their phones at home.20 Sony announced its new virtual reality headset production for the

PlayStation console.21 HTC launched the HTC Vive headset in 2016.22 Samsung released Samsung Gear headsets, similar to , but with more features and a more durable build. In late 2017, Samsung released its virtual reality headset, Odyssey.23 These headsets featured better resolution displays

18 2017. "The Red and Black Legacy of the Virtual Boy." Virtual Reality Society. 6 July. https://www.vrs.org.uk/red-black-legacy-virtual-boy/. 19 2016. " History - How It All Started." Rift Info. https://riftinfo.com/oculus-rift-history- how-it-all-started. 20 2014. "Google Cardboard." Google VR. https://vr.google.com/cardboard/. 21 2016. "PlayStation VR Launches October 2016." PlayStation. 15 March. https://web.archive.org/web/20160522011956/http://www.sony.com:80/en_us/SCA/company- news/press-releases/sony-computer-entertainment-america-inc/2016/playstationvr-launches- october-2016-available-glob.html. 22 Maiberg, Emanuel. 2015. "Valve and HTC Reveal Vive VR Headset." GameSpot. 2 March. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-and-htc-reveal-vive-vr-headset/1100-6425606/. 23 2017. "Samsung HMD Odyssey Introduces the Ultimate Windows Experience." Samsung Global Newsroom. 4 October. https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-hmd- odyssey-introduces-the-ultimate-windows-mixed-reality-experience.

Swart 9 than the Vive, as well as built-in headphones and self-motion-tracking that requires minimal setup.

The 2010s have seen the quick rise of virtual reality as a medium. Its uses extend far and wide, from military and medical training simulations, to educational travel experiences, to pure entertainment. Whatever its use, virtual reality has become an extremely useful and powerful tool in transporting viewers to new worlds with limitless possibilities. The lengthy history of virtual reality proves the desire of artists and technologists alike to be able to shape human experience into something more than is naturally possible. It seems that for much of its past, with each new invention, the artistic content was simply a means of showcasing the capabilities of the technology. It was less about the quality and meaning of the art, and more about the excitement of the innovation. As virtual reality technology reaches peaks of unprecedented functionality, allowing the content creators to be in complete control of the entire audiovisual experience of the viewers, it is time to begin focusing on making meaningful artistic alternate realities.

INTERPRETATION

The two virtual reality scenes depicted in Fairy Tales Reimagined in VR are designed to resemble iconic moments from the tales Little Red Riding Hood and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. To understand why these tales were chosen as the subject material and why the gothic style choices were made, one must first dive into the depths of these stories and their dark backgrounds.

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Fairy tales are more than just fiction. Many times, they are cautionary tales of the dangers a child may face while growing up. They are metaphors for the real dangers faced in everyday life. They are at their core dark, disturbing moments disguised as fable, hidden behind the innocent imagination of children’s book characters—a wolf beckoning a child to bed, a queen calling for the removal of heads. In his thesis, Monster Culture, Jeffrey Cohen states that “the monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy…, giving them life and an uncanny independence.”24 These creatures, these monsters, are not scary due to their size, their sharp teeth or their frightening appearances. These monsters are terrifying because of what they represent.

Many fairy tales use grim subtext to teach morals to children. Childhood is a dark time in which young people are learning their own emotions, empathies, and their roles in the world. These fairy tales sometimes echo and reinforce negative ideals through their underlying meanings. Author Susan Brownmiller, in her novel Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, notes, “Even before we learn to read we have become indoctrinated into a victim mentality. Fairy tales are full of a vague dread, a catastrophe that seems to befall only little girls.”25 At surface level, the story of Little Red Riding Hood does not seem more than a cautionary tale for children to listen to their mothers (“Stay on the trail!”) and to be wary of strangers, or even wild animals. There are much darker readings available for this adventure, touching on difficult topics of abuse. “Red Riding

24 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Culture (Seven Theses). Master's thesis, University of Minnesota Press. 25 Brownmiller, Susan. 1976. Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Bantam Books.

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Hood is a parable of rape. There are frightening male figures abroad in the woods—we call them wolves, among other names—and females are helpless before them. Better stick to the path, better not be adventurous. If you are lucky, a good friendly male may be able to save you from certain disaster.”26 A young girl walks through the woods alone wrapped in a red cape, which is representative of her coming of sexual maturity. She meets a wolf, a representation of her male suitors. He plants provocative thoughts in her mind, where she then goes off her path to pluck flower after flower, another representation of her own flowering. She then enters a cottage in which the wolf awaits her, asking her to remove her red cape and come to bed. As a gullible child, she obeys, setting aside her red cape, the act itself representative of her loss of innocence.

It is this moment in time that is captured in the first virtual reality scene of

Fairy Tales Reimagined in VR titled Grandma’s Den. Having grown up familiar with the tale, maybe never having considered the darker roots within it, the

Figure 1: Grandma's Den

26 Brownmiller, Susan. 1976. Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Bantam Books.

Swart 12 viewer can now don a virtual reality headset and be inside Grandma’s cottage, as pictured below.

The wolf fills the room, body and shadows stretching across three of the four small walls. While he is relatively cartoony and moves very little, his eyes are beady, his teeth are huge and jagged, and his claws are long and sharp. The room is darkly lit, except moonlight and a dim, flickering candle. The furniture pieces have heart cut-outs and the room has a pink and purple color scheme, as if you can feel that it has all been chosen and placed by the kind grandmother who lives here. However, there are signs of struggle. A cup of coffee has fallen and spilled on the carpet. A slipper sits askew along the edge of the room.

Picture frames hang at slants on the walls, and blood drips from the wall and pools under the bed. Next to the door, hangs the red cape.

Many who grew up with Little Red Riding Hood most likely did so through children’s books, as the tale has not frequently been iterated in many media forms in its entirety. For this reason, even though this scene from the story is a very familiar moment, this experience will be many viewers’ first time being immersed so completely, stepping into an illustration from a fairy tale.

Expectations for a scene from a child’s tale may include bright, cheery, or calming visuals, or in other words, something child-friendly. However, the purpose of Grandma’s Den is to flip those expectations—to expose the dark, dangerous tendrils of the story’s themes through the creepy stylistic choices, to simultaneously spark excitement and unease from the viewer, and to create a space that captures the mood of the story as it would be for the real Red Riding

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Hood. Innocently, she would still see the cuteness of her grandmother’s home, even while experiencing unease at the obvious signs of struggle and the physical danger represented by the looming giant.

A less grotesque, though more chaotic tale, Alice’s Adventures in

Wonderland portrays the mental and emotional fragility of an imaginative child’s coming of age, including the seemingly ridiculous rules of the adult world and coping with odd societal expectations. Her adventures allude to the childhood identity crisis that many face. Lenny de Rooy, who dedicates herself to running an educational site about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, describes one of

Alice’s inner turmoils: “She is constantly ordered to identify herself by the creatures she meets, but she herself has doubts about her identity as well.”27

From the caterpillar to the Mad Hatter, everyone demands to know who she is, and she seems to question her own responses. As is common in children, she is constantly changing herself to fit in, drinking potions and eating foods to grow and shrink. Similar to , the changes are ultimately never enough, or too much, and she morphs herself time and time again to try to better her situation, typically resulting in distress.

The characters along the way represent the adult world from a child’s imaginative perspective, fully developed with bad habits and alien rules. The Mad

Hatter has bizarre traditions for tea time; the Queen of Hearts has strict laws and cruel punishments, calling for the heads of her civilians.

27 de Rooy, Lenny. 2015. "Themes and Motifs." Alice-in-Wonderland.net. http://www.alice-in- wonderland.net/resources/analysis/themes-and-motifs/.

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In her first meeting with the Cheshire cat, Alice asks for advice on which direction to go next. The cat tells her, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” When she responds that she does not care much where she is going, as long as she gets somewhere, the cat says, “Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.” The encounter seems a bit odd and the cat offers little help. However, this decision is not his to make, as it is representative of the life paths Alice will need to choose between as she matures. This theme of growing up is echoed throughout the story, metaphorically and literally. As she continues on her journey, Alice slowly stops questioning herself, becoming more confident and outspoken.

Her maturing is represented also in the Queen’s garden. “A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners at it, busily painting them red.”28 White roses are commonly symbolic of purity and innocence, much like a child. However, the queen of Wonderland is having them painted red, the color associated with sin and sexuality, representing Alice’s own growth from youth to maturity, as well as representing the tainting of innocence and imagination with society’s strict and limiting rules and expectations.

The chaos felt by Alice in the tale’s confusing moments, the uprooting of her imagination, questioning of her identity, and the confusing adaptation to societal norms are all motifs I attempt to capture in the second scene of Fairy

Tales Reimagined in VR, titled Down the Rabbit Hole (Fig. 2).

28 Carroll, Lewis. 1865. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Macmillan.

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Figure 2: Down the Rabbit Hole In this virtual reality experience, the viewer falls infinitely down the rabbit hole from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The white hare is falling with the viewer at arm’s length away, never any closer. The tunnel’s dirt walls fly past the viewer with glowing mushrooms and flowers. The beginning and end of the tunnel are in complete darkness, making the passing of time impossible to measure. The viewer, much like Alice, feels the isolation of growing up, in a dark tunnel with no beginning or end, the hare always just out of reach, and objects flying by with no real way to interact with them. One of the first story elements to pass is the white hare’s pocket-watch, hands spinning clockwise, “Late” painted across the watch face. This watch symbolizes the unavoidable passage of time, which slips through Alice’s hands as she ages and matures, just as a child may feel they are missing time as it speeds by them. A montage of representative story elements follows: white and red roses, a teacup, a glass bottle reading

“Drink Me”, and a Queen of Hearts playing card. “In the end Alice has adapted and lost most of her vivid imagination that comes with childhood. She realizes that the creatures in Wonderland really are ‘nothing but a pack of cards’. As De

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Rooy speculates, “At this point, she has matured too much to stay in

Wonderland, the world of the children, and wakes up into the ‘real’ world, the world of adults.”29 While this playing card rises past the viewer, the entire experience seamlessly repeats. It is now up to the viewer, truly taking on the role of Alice, to decide when they wish to return to reality from this piece of

Wonderland.

PROCESS

Acquisition of Skills

With virtual reality as my artistic medium, many of my classes and tutorials taught me the necessary talents to bring my ideas to fruition. Numerous three- dimensional animation courses and tutorials with Tyler Ayres took me through the many processes involved with applications such as Maya, Photoshop,

Illustrator, and Zbrush. These software packages allow me to create three- dimensional objects and characters, digitally paint them, and animate them.

Multiple courses with John Bowditch taught me the basics of game design, including level design and coding within Unity3D. This software allowed me to set up the virtual environments, lights and cameras, and display them using the virtual reality headsets.

Maintaining a position at the Game Research and Immersive Design

(GRID) Lab allowed me to work in virtual reality multiple times a week, creating assets for large projects. From creating medical tools for a virtual blood draw to

29 de Rooy, Lenny. "Themes and Motifs."

Swart 17 modeling, texturing, and animating prehistoric mammals for a paleontological experience, I was able to build upon and utilize the skills I was simultaneously learning through coursework. This productive environment centered on virtual reality gave me a workflow for creating optimized artwork for high-detail virtual scenes.

Design

To create the art style for Fairy Tales Reimagined in VR, I needed to look at my previous works and the original tales, while also finding new inspirations.

By recounting my past projects, a common aesthetic throughout my college career could best be described as creepy-cute, a combination of dimly lit environments with harsh shadows and contrastingly adorable creatures and objects. One of the projects I completed for my first three-dimensional animation course was of this style: a steampunk robotic cat (Fig. 3). A later project titled

The Tea Party (Fig. 4) also fell within this style.

Figure 3: Robotic Cat Model Figure 4: The Tea Party Animation Looking at these works, the designs are unmistakably influenced by artist and director Tim Burton’s style, which is instantly recognizable in almost any of

Swart 18 his animated films or his drawings. Typically, his art contains eerie visuals, even when intended for younger audiences, such as his stop-motion features, The

Nightmare Before Christmas and Frankenweenie.

When coming up with the design for the first scene of Fairy Tales

Reimagined in VR, I examined what aspects of Tim Burton’s works made his style so appealing to me. His style speaks to the darker side of childhood, bringing out the creepy aspects of characters and environments while still maintaining almost an heir of innocence. Particularly, the portrayal of the shadow-beast (Fig. 5) from his animated poem, Vincent, influenced my design of the wolf (Fig. 6) for Grandma’s Den.

Figure 6: Design for Grandma’s Den Figure 5: Tim Burton’s Vincent In Grandma’s Den, I wanted to capture the features of the wolf that most stand out as dangerous, using exaggerated features such as Burton did with this shadow figure (Fig. 5). The elongated snout and numerous sharp teeth are almost the entire composition of the creature. Similarly, because the wolf in my design is beneath a blanket, the only exposed body parts are the most dangerous ones. Something I was unable to capture in this design, though it has been intended since conception, is the shadow of the wolf, which was planned to

Swart 19 cast over the walls behind it, filling the room with his presence, much like the shadow creature from Burton’s film does. However, in my design, the beast is also surrounded by cutesy items: a carved headboard and footboard for the bed, a floral painting on the wall, and even the grandmother’s bonnet and glasses.

These surrounding items not only bring reality to the grandmother’s presence in the cottage, but also create an aura of innocence that allows young Red Riding

Hood to be fooled by the wolf in the first place. The innocence of the surroundings contrast with the wolf to make his figure even more out of place and terrifying.

In addition to Tim Burton’s style, a large source of inspiration for the design of my virtual reality scenes was the artwork from within a video game titled Layers of Fear. In this psychological horror game, a struggling artist becomes mentally unstable after a fire leaves his wife wheelchair-bound. He

begins using taboo painting mediums, such as

human blood and crushed bone powder. The

drawing depicted to the left is a submission this

character makes as an illustration to a children’s

book publisher for a retelling of the classing Little

Red Riding Hood. The looming danger felt in this

drawing reflects perfectly the emotion I intended to

produce in Grandma’s Den. One can imagine the

horror that Red Riding Hood should be feeling in this moment, as she stands so dangerously close to the wolf. This inspired the

Swart 20 placement of the viewer in Grandma’s Den, as they are positioned at a similarly low height and location in relation to the bed. Here the viewer feels as small and vulnerable as the little girl in the illustration above. The intention of this scene’s style was to create an eerie stillness within the environment, allowing the viewer to take in the unsettling aspects and perhaps reflect on the original tale’s representations of real life dangers as well.

In Down the Rabbit Hole, I experimented more with creating an unstable environment which mirrors the chaos that is growing up, similar to the themes found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Growing up is a never-ending process, a confusing one which is nearly impossible to control. To represent these ideas artistically, this scene’s design was centered around the idea of an endless falling experience coupled with disorientingly vibrant colors and passing objects. Contrasting with the other scene’s subtle movements, stationary viewing angles, muted color scheme, and eerie calm, Down the Rabbit Hole was intended to be as visually and audibly chaotic as possible to simulate the emotional turmoil of adolescence.

Figure 8: Still from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland Figure 9: Still from Down the Rabbit Hole

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The tunnel design for Down the Rabbit Hole (Fig. 9) was inspired by

Disney’s animated Alice in Wonderland (Fig. 8), with dirt walls and no discernable beginning or end. However, to add vibrancy and depth to the tunnel,

I knew from the concept phase that I would want colorful plants of some sort sprouting from the walls.

Asset Creation

Figure 10: Polygon Primitive Figure 11: Model in Progress Figure 12: Completed Model

Once my ideas transformed into tangible plans, it was time to begin creating the three-dimensional art for these scenes. I began with the wolf in

Grandma’s Den. The software I used to model and animate assets for this scene is called Autodesk Maya. The process begins by choosing a polygon primitive

(Fig. 10), which is comparable to the shape of clay with which a sculptor would start. Personally, I start most of my models with a cube with nine faces on each side, similar to a Rubik’s cube. From there, I move the faces around, extruding and sculpting until I have a low-poly blocked-out version of the shape I aim to achieve (Fig. 11). I then continue tweaking the shape, adding faces and finer details. Along the way, I can create additional primitives and

Swart 22 repeat this process with new shapes until I have all of the parts to satisfy a particular asset’s design.

Figure 13: Default UV Map Figure 14: Automatic UV Map Figure 15: Custom UV Map Once a model is complete, the next process is called “UV mapping”. The goal is to create a two-dimensional map of the three-dimensional object’s polygons, much like one would cut, unwrap and stretch the paper from a globe to create a flat, rectangular map. This is a tedious but extremely important process in order to be able to add custom colors to the asset. Because I typically begin with a cube primitive, UV maps for my assets look at first as if they were taken from a cube. Maya has an automated tool which will automatically break the asset’s polygons into smaller pieces, called shells, which have less distortion than the default rectangular map. Though this is a very helpful tool, these numerous small shells would be nearly impossible to texture, comparable to painting individual puzzle pieces and expecting them to fit together into a cohesive, non-distorted image. To fix this issue, I sew the shells of similar pieces back together so there are fewer seams to align when painting.

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Figure 16: UV Texture Map Figure 17: UV Texture Maps Applied to Model When a creature’s UV maps begin to resemble a skinned pelt, the next process is to create a texture for the asset. A texture is an asset’s custom color map, similar to wrapping paper. In this process, one must paint the wrapping paper before wrapping the present. This is why it is necessary to take great care when creating the UV map, to ensure that the painting will not be stretched or squashed when it is applied to the model. The final UV map is imported into Photoshop, where it is digitally painted using a computer drawing tablet. Each model has a custom UV map and its own digitally painted texture. When finished, the texture is imported to Maya and applied to the model. Additional color maps may be painted and applied to models to achieve lighting tricks, such as fake shadows or highlights, to add intricate detail to lower-poly models. In this way, hair can look like it has individual locks or strands, and wood can have depth to the grain, all without requiring extra fine-detail modeling.

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Once a model is constructed, UV mapped, and textured, the next task is to create a rig if it will move in the scene.

During this process, a skeleton is placed within the object. The skeleton is then given more complex controls to make the movements easier to visualize and perform.

For a simpler example, Figure 18 showcases the candle wick from Grandma’s

Den.

In this rig, the simple teardrop-shaped model has eight joints, represented by the colorful chain of circles and triangles. These joints are responsible for actually deforming the model into the curved shape in which it stands. Through the skeletal chain, a faint line is visible, called a “spline”. This can be imagined as a rope that controls the rotation of the joints through which it passes. A spline allows for a more organic and controllable wave-pattern deformation, making it the ideal rig for creating character spines, tails, and in this case, a wavering flame. Once the spline is in place, I add controllers called “locators”, which are represented by the four large, three-dimensional crosses in the image. These are set up to control four different vertices along the spline. Imagine wiggling a rope from only the ends; there is not much control of what happens in the middle. For this reason, splines have four “control vertices” or points which can be manipulated. However, these are extremely difficult to view along the spline, so it is in good practice to create and manipulate locators instead.

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Using the rig, animation is now possible. Because both virtual reality scenes are intended to continue endlessly, the animations must be created in a way that there is no discernable beginning or end. In short, the animation must loop. To create a looping animation, one must start by posing the asset as if the movement has already begun. The candle flame in the image above is posed as if the flame has already started dancing. This the first and the last frame of its looping animation. I lock these poses down, a process known as keying the frames. Between these two identical keyframes, the controllers are moved into multiple new poses, creating new keyframes. When played back, these frames flow through the poses, and when the last frame appears, it matches the first, allowing for a seamless repetition of the animation. For the flame, this was a simple process, but for the wolf and the rabbit, the controllers were more numerous and complex. Multiple moving parts required more attention to detail, maintaining perfect loops for every finger of the wolf and every limb of the rabbit.

For each animated asset, this entire process has to be repeated: design, model, UV map, texture, rig, animate. Once an object is complete, it is exported through an automated process from Maya to Unity3D, a game building software.

It is here that the assets come together to form an immersive environment.

Scene Assembly

With the assets imported into Unity3D, the scene creation begins.

Grandma’s Den was similar to constructing a digital house. I had to model walls, a floor and ceiling, a window, doors, and furniture. From the paintings on the wall to the heart cutouts in the rocking chair and dresser, each small item in this

Swart 26 house was personally created for this project, along with the digitally painted textures they are wrapped in.

The cottage layout is intentionally a small room, giving the viewer a sense of enclosure with the dangers of the “Big

Bad Wolf”. On either side of the bed is a nightstand, as a grandmother might have for reading materials, hot cups of tea, and a candle, all of which appear in this scene. Outside of the window are trees and flowers, allowing for more depth within the shadows cast by moonlight through the room.

Setting up the virtual space for Down the Rabbit Hole

took even more creative planning, as the environment

must be moving constantly. To achieve the falling-

through-a-tunnel effect, I created a large cylinder in

Unity3D and applied a texture of dirt. Going into the

program’s animator, I created a looping animation which

slides the UV map of the cylinder upward, bringing with it

the textures. The viewer, being inside the cylinder, sees

the walls sliding upward past them, which gives the illusion of falling.

Another challenge was to create looping animations of the mushrooms and plants that are growing from the walls. To do this, I first placed the assets

Swart 27 around the base of the cylinder (Fig. 20), where they would be hidden from the viewer by the darkness. I then created a scripted spawner, which would generate an instance of this group of assets every few seconds. Additionally, I applied code to the group which would animate it upward until it traveled the length of the cylinder. Once any group reaches the top of the cylinder, the code destroys it to maintain a high frame rate within the headset. Many groups of assets were made with different placements and different spawn times to create an experience which did not noticeably loop, as no two groups passed the viewer by consecutively.

In a similar way, the objects from the story

were placed by hand and then spawned and

animated using code. This process allowed the

items to generate infinitely, so that the

experience could continue for any amount of

time without coming to an end.

In Down the Rabbit Hole, the chaos of the

falling through virtual reality caused concern that

viewers may develop motion sickness. To counter this, I placed the animated white hare below the viewer and did not add vertical or horizontal motion paths to it. This constant allows the viewer to remain grounded, even while feeling as though they are plummeting downward.

Once the scenes were built, objects and characters placed, it was time to light the environments. Default lighting in Unity3D is very bland and flat.

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Meaningful and visually appealing lighting requires an entirely custom setup. For

Grandma’s Den, this includes a pale blue spotlight for the moon, and a flickering yellow omni-directional light for the candle.

Figure 22: Grandma’s Den Default Lighting Figure 23: Grandma’s Den Custom Lighting

Figure 24: Down the Rabbit Hole Default Lighting Figure 25: Down the Rabbit Hole Custom Lighting Figures 22-25 show the default lighting (left) versus the custom lighting

(right) for each scene. The default lighting removes the depth from the scene, allowing the bottom of the tunnel to be seen in Down the Rabbit Hole. By turning off the default lights and adding a point light (which glows in all directions), I was able to make the ends of the tunnel invisible. Additionally, I added code which makes the lighting flicker and change color over time. By adding these effects, the scene becomes more like a fever dream, adding to the chaos the scene is intended to produce.

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Figure 26: Grandma’s Den Camera 1 Figure 27: Grandma’s Den Camera 2

Figure 28: Grandma’s Den Camera 3 Figure 29: Grandma’s Den Camera 4 After setting up lights in the scenes, it was time to place cameras. It is from this placement that the viewer is positioned in the scenes when donning a virtual reality headset. In Grandma’s Den, there are four different cameras so that the viewer may see the room from different angles, all set to be approximately the height of a young girl. The first camera is placed as if the viewer has just stepped in the door, between the bed and the window. In Down the Rabbit Hole, there is only one central camera placement, as the entire environment and experience can be perceived from one location by looking down (Fig. 30) or up

(Fig. 31).

Figure 30: Down the Rabbit Hole, Looking Figure 31: Down the Rabbit Hole, Looking Upward Downward

Swart 30

Once the cameras were in place in both scenes, there were a few more settings to be adjusted to bring more depth to the visuals. One of these settings is called “particle effects”, which adds customizable specks into the environment.

I adjust this setting so that particles float around similar to dust in the air, which brings an element of realism, even to a stylized scene. “Post-processing effects” were also added to the cameras in the scene. These effects are similar to what one would find on a real camera, such as film grain, focal length, aperture, and vignettes. By adjusting these settings, the camera renderings are able to mimic human eyesight with more precision, allowing for a more immersive experience for the viewer.

Finally, after the visuals were completed, I turned my attention to sound. A visually immersive scene is rather dull without audio to sell its depth, environment, and tone. For both scenes, I reached out to an Ohio University alumnus, Blake Wilimitis, who specializes in audio engineering. I explained the mood for each scene, while also providing examples from found tracks online, and he went to work creating looping atmospheric music. For Grandma’s Den, the sound is airy, haunting, with distant wind chimes and an eerie baseline. This track was implemented to play at a low volume with other localized environmental sounds. Attached to the wolf is a looping recording of heavy breathing to give him even more of a presence in the room. The rocking chair in the corner of the room also creaks as it continues to rock back and forth. As the visual cues align with their audio, the collaboration adds depth and direction within the scene. In Down the Rabbit Hole, the track was created with the

Swart 31 intention of feeling dreamily circus-like while also contributing to the feeling of falling. The only additional sound in this scene is of a ticking clock, localized to the pocket watch that passes the viewer early in the experience, giving depth to the tunnel, as the viewer hears it fading into and out of the scene from far away.

CONCLUSION

Final Products

Once the entire process for both scenes was complete, from modeling each individual asset to placing them in the virtual environment, setting up cameras, effects, and audio, each scene was built as an application, which can be run on Windows or Linux. These files can be downloaded from my portfolio website30, launched and viewed by anyone with a virtual reality headset. If the viewer does not have a headset, the scene can also be viewed on-screen using the mouse to rotate the camera. However, this way of viewing is immersion- breaking and is therefore only present for accessibility.

Presentations

These final scenes were presented during the Student Research and

Creativity Expo in April 2018, where they received Second Prize in the “Media

Arts Undergrad II” category, and during the Game Research and Immersive

Design Lab’s XR Showcase a week later. The setup included a desktop computer and monitor as well as a Samsung Odyssey virtual reality headset with

30 See https://www.andreaswart.com/vr.

Swart 32 built-in headphones. As visitors would approach my station, where the first frame of Grandma’s Den was visible on the computer monitor, I would give them a quick rundown of what they were about to experience. I would have the viewer sit on a rotating stool and assist them in donning the headset, where Grandma’s

Den was already loaded. Reactions ranged from joy and excitement at recognizing the fairy tale elements, to fear and timidness upon being near the wolf. Some even jumped. It was described by some as scary, while others found it interesting simply to be immersed in virtual reality. Many were surprised at how different it was to see the scene on the monitor versus how realistic it felt from within. All in all, the experience seemed to simulate the presence of physical danger which I had intended.

After viewers were finished with Grandma’s Den, I would suggest to the viewer that they rest their hands on the table for support while entering the Down the Rabbit Hole, as a stable surface can help prevent disorientation and motion sickness. I would then instruct the viewer to open their eyes when the music begins. The most common initial reaction was a variation of surprise. Viewers frequently tried to dodge the items flying past them, or to reach out to touch the hare. The responses for both scenes were similar to what I had intended to inspire.

Takeaways

This project was as much a learning process as it was a showcase of my learned skills. Though my classes and work experience had taught me all of the

Swart 33 processes, this was one of the largest projects of my college career, and one in which I was in control of all aspects of production. With Grandma’s Den, as it was the first scene completed, I developed my artistic style for the three-dimensional.

It was my first time focusing in-depth on lighting and staging a digital environment in which viewing can and will be done from any angle. I believe it was a successful capturing of this moment from Little Red Riding Hood, bringing the themes from the story into three dimensions. With Down the Rabbit Hole, the learning process began with the first concept: an endless falling experience. I pushed myself to bring this idea to life, learning Unity3D’s animator to create looping UV map movements, as well as learning to code to populate this tunnel with flowers, mushrooms, and a never-ending supply of story elements. In both of these scenes, I focused on new processes such as particle effects and post- processing camera effects. I have, for the first time, built executable applications from my virtual reality scenes, making my project available to the entire world.

This project has challenged me both creatively and logically and has come together into two cohesive scenes which I am proud to have completed. I can only hope that new viewers will appreciate and reflect on the darkness within the original tales while they are immersed in my virtual artwork.

Swart 34

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