We have always been interested in advancements in animation technology, and Augmented/Virtual Reality has been on our radar for some time now. The question has always been, how to integrate our existing animation techniques into the world of immersive filmmaking?
Trying out different VR content on the Storyfutures programme at NFTS. Credit: Storyfutures
IMMERSIVE WORK WE ADMIRE
Before we tell you our own exciting news, we thought we’d share some of the great interactive work out there that’s inspired us:
MBD - Leicester’s own immersive specialists
Goro Fujita - inspiring Quill artist and animator
Wolves in the Walls - interactive storytelling based on the work by Neil Gaiman
Song of The Sea - beautiful immersive experience based on the Oscar-nominated hand-drawn animated feature film
Rosie Summers - virtual reality artist & Tilt brush live performer
What are your favourite interactive works? We’d love to hear about them.
EXPERIMENTING WITH AR
Our first foray into immersive was back in 2019 when we used augmented reality to bring our work from the Bring the Paint street art festival to life as well as experimenting with our own artwork in our garden.
STORY FUTURES
The next stop on our immersive adventure was two trips down to The National Film and Television School to take part in the StoryFutures Academy and learn more about immersive and game technology in their Unity Lab.
The initial workshop focussed on the use of XR in storytelling and helped to define how best to use the technology to enhance our work. We followed this up with a practical dive into game engines, which gave us a better understanding of the technical requirements of working in this field.
VR environment created in Unity as part of the Storyfutures workshop
CREATIVE ENGLAND
Since this initial experimentation, we’ve wanted to delve deeper into the immersive world and now, finally, we are excited to announce we’ve been given that opportunity by the lovely people at Creative England.
Creative England put out a call-out for small companies like ours to apply for the New Ideas Fund, which supports growth of the screen sector in England. We applied last year and have recently been awarded funding to help us experiment and develop our first VR prototype! If you haven’t heard of Creative England - check out their site - they have lots of opportunities and free resources on there.
CALL OUT FOR IMMERSIVE EXPERTS
We have a lot of talented friends in the local creative community whose brains we plan to pick, but we’re also on the lookout for collaborators with relevant immersive experience who can help us bring this project to life. Are you a VR expert? Quill master? Game developer? Or do you know the best new tool to use? We’d love to hear from you, so please get in touch here.
Our Creative England funding will allow us a year to find out all there is to know about immersive animation. Next year who knows 'Kino Bino Immersive' might emerge - watch this space...
