Standing at the centre of the story: emerging problems and opportunities for animators migrating from the traditional storytelling frame to the 360 narrative view

While virtual reality has been around for some years, it is only now, with the emergence of cheaper, more robust hardware and software that animators have gained greater access to virtual reality technology, with the opportunity to create their own content. Leading practitioners in film, games and animation are beginning to explore the narrative possibilities and limitations of this new medium. As we note, this is a time of experimentation and discovery, where narrators are searching for ways in which to best reveal a story within a virtual world, and exploring the tension between passive watching versus a measure of passive interactivity of the virtual reality film viewer. In this paper within this emerging context, we provide a short analysis of the animated VR short Invasion (2016) from Baobab Studios, expanding into the experimental approaches and examples of student animators work from Middlesex University, the emerging new language of virtual reality and its opportunities for animators