During the first week of lectures, we covered a lot of theory about the history of animation and film, as well as information on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). It was definitely interesting to learn how ideas from society back in the early 1900s, for example, have come to fruition now.
We discussed our upcoming assessments and what they would entail, including the software needed – such as Maya and Unity. I’m a little nervous about using these softwares as from what I’ve heard they can be quite complicated and frustrating, but I’m also excited to be able to freely create in 3D, and eventually be able to experience in VR a project I constructed entirely myself. I imagine it’s quite thrilling and surreal.
Our nearest upcoming assessment is to create a 360 film. I’ve used GoPros before to create my own little holiday vlogs, but I’ve never tried making a 360 video so I’m quite intrigued to see how they’re made, how to edit and whatnot.
Our second assessment is making a fantasy world in Maya to then view in VR. I’m extremely excited about the creative freedom we have for this project, and we started working on our moodboards. My initial idea is to create a post-apocalyptic dystopian fantasy world, where the viewer can ponder for themselves what happened to the world to send it to this post-apocalyptic state, and what kind of society lives there now. I detailed some basic ideas in a moodboard slideshow. The link to the slideshow is below, which contains more detailed descriptions of each concept art – why I chose them, and how they inspire me.
My moodboard slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nogYN4W9rP4hoJcKVxW4ZeYexwz1h-w0kb5qtL7uBhE/edit?pli=1#slide=id.g15bbe60f7b5_0_107