“Pearl” will hit you right in the feels

Tired of all the VR hype?

You’ll love “Pearl,” a new animated short directed by the Academy Award-winning Patrick Osborne.  

“Pearl” is powerfully emotional storytelling that just happens to have been produced by the Google ATAP program for its Spotlight Stories VR platform. If you only watch the 360 version on YouTube (above), you’ll be touched by the father-daughter relationship that develops over the film’s 5 minutes of runtime.

Having said that, the full VR version is worth checking out, if only for the way that the spatial audio brings you into the 3D space of the story.

In an interview with The Verge, Patrick predicts the next step for VR animation:

I think it’s getting these headsets on and making your animation entirely inside that world. I think even for regular films that would be useful. To be able to walk around a set or a CG film that you’re working on, or a visual effect film, get notes, tagging things with a virtual camera, framing stuff up.

Of course, “framing” things in VR can be a little tricky, given the fact that the user ultimately has control over the camera. But it’s an exciting idea: not only consuming content in VR but creating it there, too.

Links

• Watch “Pearl” 360 on YouTube
• Spotlight Stories app on Google Play
• Spotlight Stories app on iTunes