This week, the upcoming Future of Storytelling summit, set to be held in New York City in October, posted a preview hype video starring one of the event's speakers, longtime Disney animator Glen Keane. Admittedly, we were pretty smitten with the video, and not just because we got to watch a cartooning veteran nimbly draw Disney characters like Beast or The Little Mermaid's Ariel, but because we got to see him doing so in virtual reality.
Thankfully for the VR hopefuls at Ars, the clip looks like the opposite of that tragic cover photo of Palmer Luckey from Time's August issue. At times, the art presentation even looks graceful, or as graceful as anyone can muster while wearing a virtual reality headset. Keane is seen using the HTC Vive, and its intriguing launch-window app Tilt Brush, to draw the iconic Disney mermaid. From hair to eyes, from fins to bubbles, the character appears to come to life in the video.
On one hand, we encourage any VR fan to show this video to friends and loved ones who don't understand what the headset fuss is all about... but on the other, our own experience with Tilt Brush has us jumping up and down. You got it all wrong, Glen! You tricked everyone—which would be fine if you didn't also ignore Tilt Brush's coolest stuff!
That amazing moment where your creation looks like crap
Between myself and Kyle Orland, we at Ars Technica have probably dabbled with Tilt Brush for a combined thirty minutes at various expos and demo events over the past year. We've repeatedly been, er, drawn to the app, because it's a stunning way to experience the HTC Vive difference. Instead of sitting in a chair with a controller, HTC Vive users are encouraged to stand and use fully tracked wands to manipulate anything they see in their virtual space, which, in the real world, can be as small as a desk area or as large as a room with a 15-foot diagonal. Aim a pistol. Pick up and assemble a robot out of parts. Throw a bottle of soda. Or, in Tilt Brush's case, paint in mid-air.
But the Glen Keane video enjoyed a very intentional amount of framing. Notice that the video perspective only looks head-on at Ariel, who has been drawn with expressive eyes and other very flat-looking details. A few 3D-looking details are added, but for the most part, he's drawing something very, very flat. This is what the first 20 seconds of any Tilt Brush demo will look like, because you'll likely experiment with the HTC Vive wands by drawing right in front of your face. Maybe a smiley face or a stick person. It'll look pretty cool floating in front of you.
As soon as you step to the left or the right of the thing you drew, the most amazing will happen: your creation will look like garbage.
Not only is your stick person floating in three dimensions, with your every splot of paint enjoying its own X-, Y-, and Z-axis properties, but its parts are probably all floating at different points in the air. You've just drawn on something that has no solid stopping point, probably for your first time (unless you're a sky artist, in which case, we'd love to chat). And we guarantee that if Keane was seen really walking around his creation, it'd have some very weirdly hanging eyes and other details.
In the case of our first Tilt Brush demo, however, this moment is when the neuroreceptors in our brains really began to shoot off like fireworks. We started walking around our creation, adding depth, connecting details, and aspiring to bring something three-dimensional to life. And it was so easy, so intuitive, to alternate between dabbing 3D paint strokes and use the wands' shortcut buttons to change colors, trigger undos, and pick other options.
We put our heads inside of our Tilt Brush creatures' heads to carefully draw crooked teeth and wicked tongues. We kneeled to make sure we'd framed our characters' bodies appropriately. We returned to later expos with plans to draw objects like vehicles and fully-sized humans. (If you check out our most recent VR demo feature, you'll see your humble author in the header video draw a Tilt Brush bicycle, complete with a little cart on the back.)
Coming soon: VR art instructors?
This was so exciting because it transformed our preconceptions of the limits of digital art. As a former cartoonist myself, I've never really taken to stylus-fueled tablet art, even though I certainly see the benefits of easier undo/redo actions and faster publishing. I could always say, "well, a pen is pretty much the same thing, and I like the feel of that better." But what's the equivalent of a fully-3D, use-your-hands art app? Who do you know who owns a magical gun that freezes, manipulates, and adds crazy-looking effects to instant-apply Play-Doh? (That's a serious question. We'd certainly write an Ars Technica feature about that person.)
That's only the beginning of what we can expect with virtual- and augmented-reality art applications, as well. Imagine a visual architecture or game-design engine where objects can be dropped and perspective can be shifted with head and hands, as opposed to a complicated combination of mouse movement and keyboard shortcuts. Imagine virtual art installations that instantly respond to your distance, hand motions, and other natural gestures.Heck, imagine a virtual reality art instructor—maybe Glen Keane—where you stand next to an artisan and mirror his/her gestures to draw something cool. That'll sure beat the pants off those stupid "how to draw" books where the first image is a circle and the second one is the Mona freakin' Lisa.
That's all coming—and, we admit, the simple, "that's Ariel in 3D" appeal of Keane's video will speed up adoption and excitement over the platform. But we know that even cooler art is on its way, and even before the HTC Vive has launched, we already know that the platform is capable of stuff that would blow Keane's creations out of the water.
Listing image by Future of Storytelling
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