#VRArtLive Gallery July 2021
Title: The Power of Imagination
Artist: WillowMoonArt
VR App/s: Gravity Sketch, Adobe Medium, Tiltbrush, Neos VR
Curator: wildc4rd
Editor: grrlrighter
The Power of Imagination
Commentary by WillowMoonArt
In "The Power of Imagination", I attempted to express the magical feeling of what it is like to create art in Virtual Reality. I used about 9 different apps to create this piece - Tiltbrush, Gravity Sketch, Adobe Medium, Mixamo, Masterpiece Motion, Deep Motion Animate 3D, Neos VR, and video editing in Adobe Premiere! My happiest moment was when I discovered that I could attach the glittering particle trails to the girl's hands so that they would move when she moved her arms!
I created this piece to try to capture how amazing it feels to create in VR…it is so powerful to be able to take anything in your imagination and bring it to life in Virtual Reality! As a person who has always had a wild imagination, when I discovered VR it was like a dream come true. It’s hard to describe to someone who has not experienced VR exactly what it feels like, so that was my goal with this piece.
I spent about 18 hours on this art piece and used a lot of different apps! I have come up with some very unusual workarounds to make up for the fact that I don’t know Blender and Unity yet. Part of the reason it took so long was because I was figuring out this new workflow for incorporating animation into the piece, and had to spend a lot of time trying different things before I got it to work.
I made the girl in Gravity Sketch & Medium, rigged her with a combination of Mixamo and Masterpiece Motion. I used Deep Motion Animate 3D for the main animation and Mixamo for the part where she collapses at the end. The backgrounds were videos of some of my earlier pieces of Tiltbrush art. I put it all together in Neos, where I set it up like a movie set with the animated character on the different backdrops with props, and filmed it there, then edited the video in Adobe Premiere and added some music from my Artlist subscription.
The main challenge I faced was getting the materials to work correctly on the models – it took a lot of experimentation as they kept coming into Neos either with no materials at all or all turning one color when I applied materials to them (I actually ended up liking that look and used it in a couple of the parts of the video but wanted the regular looking girl too). I definitely pushed myself beyond my comfort zone with this one but now that I’ve figured some of this out it will be easier next time.
My recommendation for beginning VR artist is don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by how much there is to learn. Just dive in and start making something and you will figure it out one step at a time. Three years ago I didn’t know anything about any of this stuff! And don’t be afraid to ask for help – the community of VR artists is SO wonderful and there is always someone willing to help if you get stuck. Just enjoy creating and the rest will come!
See more by WillowMoonArt:
Are you a VR artist? If you would like to have your art featured by VR Art Live! you can apply here.