Watch veteran animator Glen Keane talk about his relationship with characters and draw them in Virtual Reality in this beautiful clip. “I would draw not to do a drawing, but so that I could step in and live in that world”, he says. “Today all the rules have changed. Making art in 3D space is an entirely new way of thinking, for any artist. What does this mean for storytelling?”
Keane was an animator at Disney for almost four decades, and knows how to embrace new technology to enhance storytelling. He started out as an apprentice to Disney’s “Nine Old Men” and moved on to working on some of the Studio’s most iconic characters during its Renaissance period in the early 1990’s, when films like “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast” were made. To create the life-size versions of Ariel and Beast that appear in the short above Keane uses an HTC Vive headset and Google’s 3D painting app Tilt Brush.
In 2012 Keane left Disney to create the interactive animated short “Duet” for Google’s ATAP group. Below is a fun behind-the-scenes look for this project, which looks at the art and technology involved.
