Cartoon Network Studios, Journeys vr
Cartoon Network Journeys VR is a collection of three original VR shorts, developed and produced by Cartoon Network Studios. Starting in a cosmic desert oasis, you encounter Gormlorm (Reggie Watts), a traveling wizard of the multiverse who guides you through three journeys into other dimensions:
Beyond Beeville
As an outcast one-winged bee, you must save your colony from impending collapse by teaming up with your pollen companion, Penny. Explore the garden, solve puzzles, and discover secrets beyond the hive.
Jest to Impress
You are trying out as jester of the King’s court. As jester-in-training, you are presented with a series of escalating props and puzzles. The more the King laughs, the more jealous his personal bard becomes. If your comedic acts fall flat, prepare to become dragon food.
Kosma Kwest
You have been summoned to the cosmic plane to become a potential replacement for Kosma, The Supreme Being, who is in desperate need of a vacation. Complete four metaphysical lessons of the cosmos and take your place on the celestial throne.
Cartoon Network Journeys VR has been nominated in 2020 for a Webby (Best in Visual Design) and Auggie (Best in Games & Toys).
Virtual Reality
Interaction Design
Environment Design
Graphic Design
Tilt Brush
Google Blocks
Unity3D
Research & Development
Download this app (Steam)
For Cartoon Network’s VR Lab, I was brought on to experiment with immersive storytelling. Given a month to create a prototype product, I teamed up with four other multi-disciplinary creators ranging from concept artists, storyboard artists, game developers, and sound designers. We created “Beyond Beeville.” I had unique experience creating with and for VR technology, bridging in the gaps between adapting traditional 2D animation pipeline and VR narrative creation.
Our Project Goals
Create an interactive narrative, production-ready prototype
Work quickly
Pave the path and set the standard in an unknown space
Experiment with scale as part of narrative + VR design.
UX / UI Design
We determined in early stages:
Primary and secondary game mechanics:
Movement / Teleportation
Picking up and throwing
Picking up and carrying with body
Teaching player controls through mirrored behaviors
Strategically limiting range of interactivity and design as it relates to story goals.
Deciding on the VR interactivity spectrum: 360 video vs. fully-interactive VR game
At Title Screen: include a flat platform to prevent nausea.
At Start, address comfort with VR for wide range of audiences. Give them agency at the beginning. Let them decide when they are ready to begin.
Creative Pipeline
The following are details of my contributions to “Beyond Beeville”.
Concept
Environment and associated assets were assigned to each artist
In VR, sketch out scale and proportions of environments, affecting asset design
Created asset list for each scene
Asset Creation
We made 3D assets only with VR creativity tools. Majority of assets were made as low-poly with Google Blocks
Optimized VR-painted Tilt Brush skyboxes, captured as 360 images for Unity.
Added and integrate assets to Unity Game Scenes:
Made assets prefab-ready
Added colliders
Added physics / rigidbodies.
Animation
Experimented animating with Tvori
BEE HOME INTERIOR DESIGN
At the beginning of the game, we wanted to create an experience for a wide range of VR audiences. We wanted to give the player agency, letting them decide when they are ready to begin. Our goal was to create a “safe” space where players can get acclimated to VR and basic game mechanics before the major interactive story began.
Mimicking real life, we designed a space where players can “get ready” in the morning before exiting home to interact with the larger world. This home should feel warm, cozy, safe. There would be a variety of items and experiences in here that the player could play with. A knock on the door would signal the next phase of the story, if the player chooses to do so.
Players can decide how much time they want to spend in this bee cozy home.
My Concept Sketches:
UX: Scale and proportion Design in vr:
My goal was to create the environment and assets with VR creation tools: Google Tilt Brush and Google Blocks. We would be designing for Rift and Vive roomscale, which affected the size of the BEE HOME INTERIOR design.
Getting sketches and ideas into VR as soon as possible was imperative to get scale and dimensions accurate immediately.
It’s incredibly helpful to do a quick wireframe in Tilt Brush. Then build the room around that.
Tilt Brush sketch to determine BEE HOME INTERIOR size, relative to average Vive (roomscale) and Rift (standing) playspaces. Also includes my own human height to figure out relative player height for asset design.
Rough sketch of Bee Bed Nook size and positioning
Then sketch out the rest of the world: height and depth of the world.
Sketch of HOME INTERIOR view, with rough sketches of HOME EXTERIOR environment scale. How high do you want players to look when discovering the world? This is an awe moment! Use this to physically walk thru the front door in VR, and feel what that scale is like. Make adjustments as necessary.
Determine pretty quickly how much will or won’t be seen by the viewer so you can understand what assets you need to make, especially for exterior worlds. The foreground elements may be blocking the view for a lot of the eye-level elements. You might not need to design much more than the upward elements.
The flowers tower over us!
From here, I created the BEE HOME INTERIOR and associated assets, as well as some of the flower assets. One of my flowers became the base for the TEMPLE EXTERIOR design. I created the Prototype BEE HOME EXTERIOR skybox, a foresty landscape. Additionally, I integrated assets into Unity, ensuring proportions were in place, and added colliders and physics to the props and interactive environments.
PROTOTYPE designs
Completing our time with Cartoon Network’s VR Lab, we finished our 1-month hackathon, creating a playable VR interactive narrative! We provided a game design document for the production team to bring the rest of our vision to life.
Collaborated with Elle Michalka and Tom Herpich
Collaborated with Elle Michalka and Tom Herpich
Collaborated with Elle Michalka and Tom Herpich
Final Designs
Our story was passed on to the wonderful team at Paper Crane Games. Here is my BEE HOME INTERIOR brought to beautiful life!
Thank you to Ryan Harwell at Cartoon Networks VR Lab for this opportunity!
Cartoon Network Journeys VR has been nominated in 2020 for a Webby (Best in Visual Design) and Auggie (Best in Games & Toys).