Hello. I'd like to welcome Eduardo Russian, who is here to talk about some of the work he did while he was studying with us at Goldsmiths, University of London. Eduardo, could you tell our learners a little bit about yourself and your backgrounds. Yes. I study creative computing at Goldsmiths as undergraduate. Right now, I just finished Masters in Serious Games and Virtual Reality. I like to develop adventures in virtual reality to tell a story that could help people learn about other people, about the realities, and other cultures. We were overly impressed by the project you did with us at Goldsmiths and we're talking to learn is through the process of making a project and the first thing we asked them to do is do a pitch or a brief description of the project. Do you want to briefly pitch what your project is to our learners? Yes. It's a virtual reality art installation where I try to take people with neurotypical into the world of people who live within the artistic spectrum using surreal art, let's say, virtuals and idea that give them clues on how does it feel to be within the spectrum. Okay, great. And maybe could you tell us a little bit about your process for developing and designing it. Yeah. The first thing that I did after I had the idea in mind was to grab a pen and paper. I start writing all the ideas I had. I did little scribbles, little drawings. I start taking little pictures from websites or newspapers that interested me, that could help me fill my mind with all these ideas and then after that, I start organizing all the ideas that I had. I started to think in terms of how can I tell the story, how can I bring this to life. What I thought is I'm going to use a three scene system so that we have a beginning, a middle point and an ending. And then after that I start thinking, the artistic spectrum is so big and they're really started different, how can I put this together so I decided to talk from a different perspective or a different point of view in every scene. After that, I start working on the implementation, put in the computer, unity, the motion work and with the SD case and that's it. Okay great. You obviously had a long phase of gathering your inspiration. What kind of background research did you do? I started reading books about the life of people who live within the artistic spectrum. In that moment, I realized that there is no one person that live and experience the same reality as someone else. People experience problems with such a communication or social interaction, social imagination. And yes, I noted that these three points are focal and, from then, I decided to put it on the application and the installation that I was building. You talked a little bit about working on paper and drawing. Is sketching a very important part of your design? Yes, that is the beginning to everything. In a sketching, the first thing that you do is get all the drawings together, all the sketches, all the ideas that you have written, and then build them by scenes. You get your storyboard together and think in terms of how can I put this scene in into a small comic, small picture in there so I can tell a small story. Basically, what I did was throw my story in top and then get a little text on the bottom to kind of like test if this was okay or not. After that, when I was happy with the whole big picture, I started concentrating with the small bits. I got the drawings that I have done. I scanned them. I took them into Photoshop and started coloring them and after that, I just did a proper storyboard and not like a sketch once. Something like a proper storyboard. Lots of designers talk about sketching. They talk about it not just as a way of communicating the ideas, but the way of developing their ideas. Is that true for you? Yes. It is true. If I didn't have the storyboard in the moment that I had it, that I did it, I wouldn't have known what knowledge I wanted to work with. So this was the basement to my house. This is a point where I started thinking, I want to do this and I want to do that, and I want to do that, how can I do it. So this was the point when I just start thinking, this is my north and this helped me, guide me on what will be my future work. It's clear that the storyboard is really pivotal to everything and to what you did. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what a storyboard is and why you need it? Well, a storyboard is basically a sequence of images of what is happening. You are giving the person who look at it a narrative. Human beings love stories. Nothing like having a couple of images so you can communicate a lot with it and then you can give them some idea of how the allegories for the story and a little description of what is happening in the picture so I just did that for every single scene so people would have an idea. At this point, I should probably just say as well that Eduardo's made this fantastic beautiful storyboard. Thank you. It's a great drawing, but you don't need to be a fantastic artist to make storyboard, do you? A simple sketch, stick figures are enough. Yeah, a little stick man. I think a lot of writing as well, helps. Yeah. How did your storyboard help you get to the next phase of implementation and design? When I was doing the storyboard, it was like thinking of how could I deploy that because the process is quite meticulous. You start thinking, while you're painting, while you're drawing, how is this going to happen. You have it at the back of your mind and then those thoughts start evolving as you go through. By the end of the storyboard, you have a super clear idea of what you want to do with the narrative that you're building. Just like sketching, the storyboard is part of your thinking process as well. Of course, yes. I think it's like a meditative process where you put the old ideas together and you're like, "Oh, yes. This is what I want." You put it in paper, perfect. Did you find it difficult to take this sort of the very immersive VR experience in the plot to the storyboard, make them equivalent? Is there a problem communicating one with the other? Yes, actually when they finished their first storyboard round, I thought, yeah I have never done anything in VR on and I had been thinking on plot, I had been thinking like a comic. I have to start thinking 360 and yes, that was the moment when I was like, "Yeah, people is going to look around and they are not going to always look what you want to see." How did you get around that? Well, actually the two mediums are totally different. The only way you can get around is that you have to be descriptive. You have to have your image, you have to have your idea, be super descriptive and explain exactly what is happening on the story from beginning to end. That way, you are building not only a whole still picture, but people understand what is constructed around it. Okay, great. To finish off, do you have any advice for our learners about producing their first storyboard for VR? Yeah. Get a pen and paper and start drawing, start ramming , start doing your little stick man. Cool. Thanks a lot, Ed. It's been great to talk to you. Thank you very much.
