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Week 2 / Story Refinement
- hankim28
- Jan 14
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 19
Organized by newest to oldest
Team Members:
Hannah Kim - FX
Yiyi Long - FX
Deja Smith - Compositing
Emma Wei - LookDev & Texturing
Fanchen Xing - Lighting
1/18
To-Do for Week 3:
Vine Growth
Exploration in STT and KineFX/ Vellum
Optimizing alembic/fbx exports to team
Adjusting any FX based on camera repositioning (cameras will be hard-locked end of Week 3)
Sound Guy! (Meeting with my Sound Design friend to go over the project's SFX goals)
I will be using Simple Tree Tools to build the basic shapes of my ferns and background vines. It's a very efficient otls package that can generate realistic wind movement and growth patterns. I linked its' Houdini Forum below.
I'm pleased with my first tests! I'm going to continue to adapt the tool setup and create procedural changes (different scales, branch count, leaf shapes, etc) so it's ready to be plugged into our environment.
Starting Week 3 I plan on developing more of the vine growth simulation, but these are here for an early idea of the layout.
1/15
During class, we received new critique from the professors after showing our previous storyboard. We learned a lot, and with that we needed to change a lot:
The story felt the same
All of the previous storyboards had the same introduction. This was something critiqued on during Pitch Day. Something more creative should introduce our product.
Switching shots around
If we're selling how immersive our product is, we should introduce that theme first rather than last.
Story Inconsistencies
The storyboard doesn't tell the viewer that we're selling an immersive experience through the VR headset. It looks more like simple beauty shots. We need to figure out a stronger story that drives our visual narrative.
We really wanted to figure out how to incorporate our professors' opinions, the mentors' critique, and our own 'wants' into this new story. It took a while to figure something new out. We showed our newest idea
to our professors after class and it seems like we're now working a better direction towards our final product idea.
What we changed:
Swapping the shots
The commercial starts with the viewer already immersed in the VR reality. We then see close up shots of the nature in the room receding backwards. We purposefully don't provide context in these shots so they come off as curious and confusing to the viewer. They want to stick around longer to figure out the story.
Story Consistency
No more 'pop ups'! We want our story to be told through the overly vivid, or lack of, environment details. The ending shots when the headset is being placed back down, the nature recedes back into its' VR world. This leaves the room dull and puts the viewer back into the normal world.
1/14
This week my group pitched our VR Headset idea to the mentors! Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the meeting, but I read through the class notes and recorded Zoom meeting. There was a lot of great critique given and the general consensuses from the mentors was to show off the product in a more creative way, focusing on the visual aesthetic of the VR world rather than the technology inside the headset. From their advice, I looked through a handful of different VR headset commercials and recorded the similarities and visual styles we could take inspiration from.
Common Themes:
Application popups. There is a large variety of application accessibility.
"In the eyes of the viewer". These experiences are shown through the perspective of the viewer.
LED lighting. Neon accent lighting to accentuate the product.
VR hands! Most of the VR headsets on the market have 'touch' accessibility. This allows for users to interact with the digital world. This could be from opening an application to hold a spear in a video game. Very versatile.
I conjoined the critique from the mentors with my commercial notes and came up with a new storyboard. This will be reviewed tonight with my team so we can finalize a better idea of our story. This is not a final product, but I think it blends nicely with what we all had in mind.
After the meeting with my team and explaining my storyboard, we collaborated and started combining everyone's ideas. With my story, we thought that we should stick with visually pleasing and immersive experiences, rather than adding software pop ups. I fully agree with my team's judgement. I think sticking to one idea and exploring it more in-depth is better. This is the storyboard I sketched out based on our new commercial idea. We still want to ask our professors for critique before going any further story-wise.
Regardless of the new decision made, I will continue to formulate my fx plans! It seemed like the futuristic flora was encouraged based on the critique so I will be leaning even further into the idea.
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