When Jak Wilmot began creating worlds on minecraft in his high school bedroom, he couldn’t imagine that he would end up going from teenaged novice to award winning virtual reality artist.
“From Idea to Headset”, Jak Wilmot described his process and the importance of grounding any experience in a story. He took a story that was well known and loved throughout the world, Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, and translated it into the game of Minecraft. There he developed a following and decided to delve deeper, building multiple virtual experiences, including “La Camila” which launched earlier this year.
La Camila is the story of a young girl who must find a sense of order in the chaos following her father’s death. In building this experience, Jak took his own advice about grounding the experience in a story. Feeding off the themes of another well known tale, Paulo Coehlo’s “The Alchemist”, the narrative drives the world in which the story takes place.
So how does he do it?
The first step he described was called “Intentional Dreaming”. This is a flow state where, like free writing, you allow the creativity and idea to run without structure until you can find something profound to work with. Here he finds the seeds of the ideas that will turn into each experience. He starts by creating a relaxing atmosphere, removing distractions and letting his mind wander.This is where ideas are made. There, worlds are built, made real and observed. He takes care to allow his subconscious speak and allow the world to build itself.
Next he grabs the closest notebook and writes it all down. The story starts as any would, with beats and plot and characters. He also cautions not to get married to any ideas at this stage. Throughout development, you will learn things about the world you are building and the characters that populate them, which may change the story itself as it progresses naturally.
Building characters in VR is just as important as in any other medium. The characters develop around archetypes that help ground users in the familiar as they navigate fantastic universes. He uses archetypes as a pattern of behavior he can add to and build around. The world building is only effective if it seems like something we would intuitively want to navigate and character choices make sense to us. The familiar traits of archetypes make characters feel natural and grounds users in the world you built. This makes your character’s choices feel logical allowing your viewers to connect more subtly with the virtual world.
In building his characters, Jak imbues them not only with human qualities but also injects everyday human interactions into their experiences. Whether it is a snippet of conversation heard on the street corner or an observed nervous tick while ordering coffee, the human
aspects deepen the characters archetypal traits. He advises observing people constantly because these little things are what skilled artists build into their experiences to create the type of reality that only seems foreign after you’ve removed your headset. Another tip for deeper immersion of your viewer is to also give them choices with real consequences to increase engagement.
After a story has some shape, you’re ready to go into prototyping. The development process begins with nailing down your aesthetic. Understand how you want your world to feel. A good cheat here is to take a virtual trip using Google. You can use real places as your templates for locations within the world you’re creating and points of reference for things like scale and feel. He then gets concept art created or creates it himself in 3D using tiltbrush.
In building a world it is always important to spend time within that world. This step is often overlooked but imperative in understanding how a viewer experiences your world and what would make the experience more immersive. Add sounds, make trees and grass sway in the wind, add tourists to tourist attractions etc. Build believability into your project.
Next he goes into the actual production, which starts with motion capture and animation.
Animation and motion capture are not nearly as painstaking and expensive as they have been in the past. There are now different devices (that can be procured for under $1000) that allow for motion capture. These motion capture set ups slice the production time down by more than half and make animation much simpler.
Using a simple set up of 5 motion detection points, he sets out every action that a character will take during each scene, simulates them and uses the data as points of reference within the experience, which he then pieces together. This workflow allows Jak to create a repeatable and affordable technique that can be used on each project. For this step he uses sequencer in Unreal Engine.( Which happens to be the engine that Fortnite was built on.)
After that he considers how to distribute the work. Here you have 3 options; digital, physical and festival. Digital avenues include different VR platforms that will host your experience. The audience may be small but it is growing and this avenue is showing some promise. Forbes reported recently that the market has grown 10 times in the last three years and is expected to at least triple in the next four.
Physical distribution requires either selling your experience to VR bars, arcades and cinemas or licensing it to them for free in the name of exposure. Otherwise, you could submit your project to a major film festival. Most of them are now taking VR submissions as this is seen by many as the newest and most exciting development for storytelling since the advent of film.
If you would like to learn more about creating VR experiences, Jak offers an online master class through his website.
He can also be found on social media @Jakwilmot.