At the end of Found in the Fjords, the player is given an opportunity to learn about and commit to a specific action which will help the future of our oceans. Something that I think the whole team agrees on is that the lasting experience of Found in the Fjords and the commitment the player makes needs to persist even after they take the headset off. ... (more)
When talking about the style and aesthetic of our game, something we discussed was whether we should prioritize realism at the cost of cohesiveness. ... (more)
The music in Found in the Fjords is all original, and draws inspiration from our experience in the Arctic. ... (more)
The three otters reunite to try our VR game in person. ... (more)
Building on Lou’s brilliant idea to create a standalone floating experience within the game, we brainstormed together on our weekly call about how to take the idea a bit further. ... (more)
Between weekly meetings, Lou had the brilliant idea of adding a floating scene to Found in the Fjords. This would allow players the chance – outside of the primary mission of the game – to enjoy the virtual world we’ve created in our fjord. ... (more)
On WhatsApp, Lou reminded us: “It occurs to me that for something that we’ve been working on for a little over two months, we’ve really achieved a lot. DREAM TEAM. ... (more)
Today, we met to record the main points we wanted to share in our submission video for the Metaverse for SDG's Global Prize & VR Competition. We made sure to cover the educational aspects of our game, the empathic connection we are fostering, and the impact we hope this story will have for life below water. ... (more)
In our weekly meeting, we discussed some choices to be made for visual and audio design. The question arose as Aya was compiling sounds for our entry video and realized that actual recordings – while realistic – might be grainy, echoey, and/or full of distracting background noise from vessels and other environmental factors. ... (more)
Since embarking on this new creative journey into VR, I have been a bit of a one-person show, and have had limited opportunity to (and, to be honest, interest to) collaborate on a project. ... (more)
I finally managed to make a functional prototype animation of a humpback whale taking a big gulp. ... (more)
Finding the right workflow for setting up my humpback model for animation has been... shall we say... a challenge! ... (more)
Reading a recent, scathing article in Hakai Magazine about the uncontrolled tourism around whales in Norway left us all thinking. ... (more)
Fugloya Island was a favourite place of mine during our expedition to Arctic Norway. It is a bird sanctuary for puffins and razorbills, but for me it was the geology that got me excited - the black and white zebra stripes characteristic of migmatites. ... (more)
I love the wonderful people like UnrealLab who generously share their expertise on YouTube... Thanks to that generosity I was able to add a really awesome sea-surface texture to my fjord model. ... (more)
After a lot of learning and a fair share of re-doing, a functional demonstration animation of an orca carousel feeding (complete with tail swipe) is ready. ... (more)
I haven't been able to find much information about orca biomechanics, so I've had to rely on watching videos and trying to figure out the flow of the movement. ... (more)
Although orcas can be found in all of Earth’s oceans, the different populations vary considerably in behaviour, diet, dialect and appearnace. In fact, there are at least 10 recognized ecotypes istributed across southern and northern hemispheres. ... (more)
With less than a week until the first Women's Leadership Program of Sea Women Expeditions Arctic Norway 2022 kicks off, I have been trying to get a jump on some of the 3D modelling and animation I want to be able to incorporate into our storytelling. ... (more)
With less than a month to go before Sea Women Expeditions departs on the 2022 expedition to Arctic Norway I have been putting some time into figuring out how to use modern GIS programs, importing elevation and bathymetry (water depth) data, making maps, and even converting the data into 3D meshes in Blender (for use in Unity later). ... (more)