case study: kindred (vr short animation)
Welcome to our case study on Kindred, an animated Virtual Reality (VR) story of family and belonging we animated for content production company, Electric Skies.
The project, written and directed by Bambou Kenneth, produced by StoryTrails creative, Tessa Ratuszynska, and animated by our very own lizards, has been selected for Venice Immersive, the Virtual Reality line-up for Venezia 79 (2022).
what is Kindred?
Kindred is based on the remarkable true story of an aspirational parent called Syd, and their ground-breaking journey through the adoption process in the UK, experiencing first-hand highs and lows of a dream shared by so many others. After years of setbacks and rejections, Syd gets matched with a child, Ollie, and in the process helps redefine the meaning of family.
what was the brief?
Electric Skies was commissioned by StoryFutures Academy as one of 9 projects forming part of StoryTrails, a unique immersive storytelling experience for audiences in 15 towns and cities across the UK in the summer of 2022.
what did we create?
Our talented team of lizards used a combination of 3D, CGI, and experimental techniques to create the short animation as a totally unique VR experience as opposed to traditional animation on a screen. Shout out to our animation magicians, Nick, Emma, Luis and Marcus for making Kindred come alive!
what was our favourite part?
“Working in VR is a really wonderful expansion on traditional storytelling, as it is so much more immersive - being able to tell stories through the environment around the viewer, rather that just a fixed viewpoint, and making them feel part of the story is a really rewarding approach. The story itself is such a valuable one that I felt strongly about telling and doing justice to, and working to bring that story to life in a visually impactful and different world was really rewarding.”
“Seeing the result is the best part. When you see the final product yourself and then other people experiencing it and enjoying it too makes everything worth it. ”
“My favourite part of working on Kindred was animating and texturing the characters. Injecting a performance into the characters movement was quite fun, but more so acting out the movements in real life. Being our first VR short, we have a lot of creative freedom guided by bamboo when it came to how the story looked on screen. Watching the final version live in VR was something special.”
our team went to see Kindred on tour!
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