philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

23Jan/17Off

Dear Angelica might be the most beautiful virtual reality I’ve ever seen

DA2_2040.0Despite a running time under 15 minutes, Dear Angelica is a fully formed piece created for VR, in VR. It’s directed by former Pixar artist Saschka Unseld, with art from illustrator Wesley Allsbrook, using a drawing tool called Quill that was developed for the project.

Dear Angelica is minimally interactive; the world never waits for your response or forces you to make decisions. But it’s not a static VR film or animation, either. It’s more like being dropped inside a moving painting, where everything feels simultaneously unreal and tangible.

WHAT’S THE GENRE?

Bittersweet animated narrative short.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A young woman named Jessica (voiced by Mae Whitman) writes letters of reminiscence to her late mother Angelica (Geena Davis), a film star whose many roles — as an astronaut, hardboiled character, fantasy hero, and more — helped define the pair's relationship.

OKAY, WHAT’S IT REALLY ABOUT?

The power of art and fiction — both to shape how we see each other, and to help us process grief.

BUT IS IT GOOD?

In parts, Dear Angelica feels like it’s grasping at something VR film in general hasn’t quite reached. For lack of a better term, it mounts a brute force attack on your emotions.

 

Visually, this experimentation pays off incredibly well. When I say Dear Angelica may be the most beautiful VR I’ve ever seen, that’s hardly hyperbole — partly because we’ve only got a few years of work with which to compare it, and partly because Allsbrook’s three-dimensional illustration is so vibrant.

HOW CAN I ACTUALLY WATCH IT?

Dear Angelica is currently available for free through the Oculus Rift’s store.

See the full story here: http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/23/14345316/dear-angelica-oculus-vr-story-studio-sundance-2017-review

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