In one of their great forays into the world of virtual reality, Walt Disney Animation Studios of Burbank California has built another visually enthralling, emotionally compelling story to be experienced through a set of VR goggles.
Last year the team built a VR narrative in Unity dubbed “Cycles”, which depicted life as told through milestone memories, and was showcased at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
https://www.facebook.com/DisneyAnimation/videos/2311180562436383/?v=2311180562436383
Their entry to the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, “Myth: A Frozen Tale”, is an 8 minute short built in Unreal Engine and intended to be a companion to the Frozen 2 film release, diving deeper to explore spirits that reside within the enchanted forrest through VR.
This project was originally slated to be released alongside the release of “Frozen 2”, and for this reason there was heavy collaboration between the two film crews to yield a product with a level of quality that could compete with a feature length Disney film.
With the full WDAS Burbank production team available for consultation, incredible care was taken into details like lighting, character design, artistic texturing of the environment, and storytelling devices- it was important to producers that “this story could only be told in VR”.
The group constructed a fairytale within a fairytale, where the viewer is whisked from the comfort of listening to a storybook by a roaring fire, far away into the mysterious enchanted forrest.
And it seems that Arendale isn’t the only mythical world being explored in VR this year as hinted by Pixar’s release of this short clip featuring the chariot van from the movie “Onward” yesterday.
This endeavor seems to demonstrate a renewed surge of interest in testing the full storytelling and interactive capacity of virtual reality since the original release of “Disney VR“ in 2017, where viewers are immersed in the scenes from their favorite movies.
It will be interesting to see the continual development and exploration of VR potential from Disney & Pixar, as well as the final product of “Myth” upon release.