Award-Winning VR Experience // ‘Dispatch’ : 3D & Animation

‘Dispatch’ was awarded a Digital Craft Gold Lion at Cannes in 2018.

Nick Pittom from VR Studio Fire Panda approached JK to help develop 3D model assets, simulations and animations for the Oculus-funded, episodic VR series, ‘Dispatch’.

Directed and written by Edward Robles and assisted by the acclaimed studio Here Be Dragons, the 3D production & development team our side of the pond consisted of a team of three, with Nick as lead developer – together with James Kearsley and Richard Tongeman working 3D assets, simulation and animation.

Dispatch is harrowing 24-minute experiment in narrative storytelling, split into 4-parts. A virtual reality crime thriller series taking place through the eyes (and the minds eye of) the protagonist, Ted, a police dispatcher.

The experience presents to the viewer a minimalistic world – one which stylistic, glitchy wireframe graphics build up and appear based on the audio that Ted is experiencing through his radio – audio being a key driver throughout the experience together with strong visual cues. The visual design choice was driven by both a requirement to meet the limitations of the build for VR in Oculus Go and Rift, but also opted for to help highlight the story and intensify suspense, and so as not to exploit some of the graphic nature of the content within.

The experience features among others, a talented range of actors and voice actors, including Martin Starr – Bertram Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley fame. Software used was predominantly Unity, 3DS Max and the Adobe Suite. It debuted at Venice Film Festival in 2017 and won a Digital Craft Gold Lion at Cannes in 2018.

For a deep-dive behind the scenes on how the project was developed, see Nick’s blog over at Oculus, or read more in this article by TechCrunch.