“Coco VR” Is The Best Way To Experience Pixar’s Artistry
Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR owners can explore the beautiful, stylized world of Pixar’s latest film with up to three friends.
The result of a partnership between Pixar, Oculus, Disney, and the VR production studio Magnopus, Coco VR is a social experience for up to four people. In it, each person takes on the role of a well-dressed skeleton and embarks on a journey through a series of experiences–an art studio packed with concept art from the many years of the film’s production; a cinema showing test footage that wasn’t used in the final move; a photography booth where you can shoot silly selfies of your stylized skeleton; and others. The most fantastical, and most beautiful is a ride on a gondola high above a stunning floating cityscape of rich colors and endless lights.
Simply put, there has never been a better way to immerse yourself in the art of a Pixar film.
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE ASSETS
One reason you see a lot of virtual reality projects tied to Hollywood films is that the VR producers have access to all the 3D models and art assets created by their motion picture counterparts.
For those at Pixar, setting VR users free inside this space meant surrendering the kind of control they’ve had over many years of making hit computer-animated movies.
EATING THEIR OWN DOG FOOD
At the same time, the project’s creators were able to take advantage of the social aspects of the experience they were crafting. It’s built to allow multiple users to explore the project together, and during production, that’s exactly what the producers did.
When in the creation stages of a film, Pixar’s producers will go into a screening room where they watch shots together and collectively comment on what they’re seeing. With Coco VR, they utilized the project’s social features to wander around on joint scouting trips where they could look for things that were broken or not working the way they were intended.
“Literally, that’s how we made it,” Sondheimer says. “Without the social aspect, it would have been hard to understand what the other person was seeing.”
Sometimes it’s hard to understand why movie studios make VR projects tied to the films other than because someone in marketing told them that’s the thing to do these days. But with Coco VR, you quickly understand that the point is to feel like you’re getting a taste of the universe around which Coco was made, and that the producers were entirely focused on making that taste as enjoyable as possible in its own right.
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/40495777/coco-vr-is-the-best-way-to-experience-pixars-artistry