Oculus Story Studio Art Director Goro Fujita has teased an unreleased build of the Quill VR paint app with experimental animation features. Released earlier this year, Quill allows users to create still 3D drawings in VR. Using the new animation tools Fujita shows what the app’s animation tools can do.
Update (4/22/17, 12:37PM PT): Oculus has reached out to clarify that artist Goro Fujita is actually Art Director at Oculus Story Studio. The original version of this article (now updated) stated that Fujita was still with his former employer, Dreamworks Animation.
Original Article (4/21/17): Oculus Story Studio, the company’s VR film division, built Quill initially as an internal tool for creating the VR film Dear Angelica. The film surrounds viewers in a hand-painted world which indeed includes animated elements. Quill launched to the public in beta when the company’s Touch VR controllers released earlier this year, and while we found the VR paint tool very impressive, it didn’t include animation capabilities.
Oculus Story Studios Art Director Goro Fujita has created a number of impressive still works in the company’s VR art tools (both Quill and Medium), and now he’s showing the life that animation can bring to the VR artwork.
In new videos published recently, Fujita shows a new piece of artwork he’s calling ‘A Moment in Time’ which features an animated Quill scene which was painted and animated with an unreleased version of the app. You can see a tour of the work in the video heading this article; in a followup video, the artist walks through the scene pointing out various elements and commentating on its creation:
At present it isn’t clear if Oculus intends to roll out the animation tools into the public release of Quill in a coming update, or if it will keep that version internal, though Fujita’s release of these videos does make us think it could be foreshadowing an eventual public release. We’ve reached out to Oculus for comment.
Fujita also posted this video of a comparison between the section of A Moment in Time that was drawn after his own workspace, and his actual real life work space. The detail is impressive.
Hat tip to Reddit user N1Cola who spotted Fujita’s videos.