This week I thought about two things relating to my first VR narrative. The first was working up a second draft of the storyboard by the end of the week, and the second was the whole concept of embodiment in VR experiences.

Embodiment is something that VR developers see as necessary whenever it can be achieved. It means the user feels like they are “inside” a body, which is in then in turn “inside” a virtual environment. Degrees of embodiment range depending, research suggests, on how much said embodiment can interact with the environment or how purposeful said embodiment seems to the user.

I think this is fascinating, seeing VR users seem to complain that a virtual body does not positively add to an experience unless it has a meaningful purpose. In a more interactive narrative, if I am given a hand I need to be able to do something with a hand. In a less interactive narrative, if I am given a body I need to know why I am seemingly embodied in that space where I can’t move, or talk, or neither. This is just proof of the old adage: equip someone with a hammer and all they will see are nails.

We have to be very careful with what we equip users with on these experiences. The ornamental will easily be read as such and could potentially jeopardize the utility of the experience. Every hammer given must have a nail around to hit, or a very good reason for being useless in the given space.

Another interesting effect this concept has is placing standards on virtual embodiments we don’t place on our own “real” bodies. Each day more and more people identify less with their embodiment, and we exist on a sort of spectrum between feeling we have a body versus we are a body. The very wording of feeling we are “inside” a body implies entrapment, whereas being a body entails movement and identification with that movement. I imagine this spectrum is going to eventually map out onto the virtual worlds, where we will be able to consciously reimagine and reenact these muddled relationships we have with our own bodies.

Ok, enough musings about embodiment. This relates to my narrative project since I want to recreate the opposite of a sense of embodiment, I want to create an out-of-body experience (think lucid dreaming when one floats away from one’s own body). This will very much, if successful, create the sense of being outside one’s body.

I plan to achieve this in two ways (1) literally being able to switch between a personal POV and a more omniscient POV where characters walk below your nose in a doll-house way and (2) mimicking the visual changes one can have in a consciousness alternating experience. These changes include magnification, where objects seem to protrude towards you, and some of their details appear to be magnified in a dynamic way. (If you’re interested in how this can be done: this particular effect I intend to create using a shader with a light source that constantly moves. Dramatic forms and their changing shadows could recreate this visual change of a magnifying form.)

The storyboard is still unfinished– but given my time constraints I will jump back in and out into it during the next six weeks. Right now it is complete with place-holders, but I will retouch it continuously with details until it looks fleshed-out.

https://vimeo.com/369118149

My next steps are creating all of the models in the next two weeks so that I can create the scene in Unity. I am not required to fully animate this for January, but of course, I will try my best. I intend to trace over models from Mixamo in TiltBrush that I can later auto-rig. Hopefully by the seventh week I can start animating and have the remaining three weeks to complete the interface.

This is all for this week, and I hope you’re enjoying this journey with me. Thank you to all who see these updates on social media and send me encouraging comments!