Quill 2023

Tutors

Brigit Lichtenegger
Cesare Davolio

Description

The recent developments in the field of Virtual Reality have not only brought us fantastic Virtual Experiences, but also new tools for creating art. One of these tools is Quill, a tool developed by Oculus Story Studio for illustrators to create immersive 3D animations directly within VR. Quill was developed while creating the VR piece “Dear Angelica”, which considered a key question: What do illustrations look like in VR? To answer that, the studio moved beyond traditional flat CG tools (Maya, Photoshop, etc.) and developed Quill, which allows hand movements to become strokes of color in true 3D. For the first time, creators of an animated film were inside their own creation, no longer detached from it and looking at it from the outside.

In this elective students will explore Quill as a tool for Storytelling, both for Virtual Reality, as well as 2D illustration and animation. There will be technical instructions to guide students in getting to know Quill, as well as feedback on the artistic creations students will make. This elective will be especially valuable for students illustration and animation interested in the potential of Virtual Reality.

Assignment

Create an animated Scene with Quill.
This scene can be anything you feel like. An impression of your street, a scene from a movie, or a dream you once had.
You will then film this scene in VR to make a short 2D movie.

inspiration / examples:
A moment in time - Goro Fujita
The Big Lebowsky Tribute - Stefano Bagnoli
Scenes by Lea Peirano

Planning

Week 1 : Sketch

Tuesday

Drawing - Basics

exercise: draw the controllers with Quill

Tech Focus: freehand drawing.

inspirational movie of the day: Dear Angelica

Wednesday

Drawing - Lab

exercise: continue your drawing, and change as you like

Tech Focus: practice and played with what you learned so far

inspirational movie of the day: Battle Scar

Thursday

Animation - Basics + Sound

exercise: disrupt your scene with something (bird, bouncing ball, weather..)

Tech Focus: bring life to your drawings using motion mocap and frame by frame animation

inspirational movie of the day: Namoo

Friday

Animation - More Basics and some advances stuff

exercise:  have something in your scene react to  

Tech Focus: rigging, grouping, puppeteering, keyframing 

inspirational movie of the day: Gloomy Eyes

Week 2 : Revisit

Monday

Camera and Sound - Basics 

Tuesday

Repaint

Use what you have learned so far to improve on what you did last week

Wednesday

Assignment time

Thursday

Assignment time

Friday

Presentations with Brigit & Ces

References

Quill by Smoothstep

Watch content on Oculus TV and VR Animation Player!

There are a lot of tutorials on Youtube

A very good one to get the basics
Tutorial on cameras

Goro Fujita
Nick Ladd
A lot of classes on the Virtual Animation channel
Quill Discord Channel