Meta
Animated Warnings Content
Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You
In-Product Content
CAMPAIGN VIDEOS
Meta Quest Animated Warning
Meta Rift S Animated Warning
THE CHALLENGE
Explaining Proper VR Etiquette
For all that Meta has done to further VR technology (and they knocked it out of the park with the Quest), the thing we admire most is their determination to educate consumers on the health and safety of VR usage. A large part of the set up for Quest and Laguna headsets involves animated warnings – equal parts informative and entertaining – designed to educate VR newcomers. We’d already been working on illustrative animations for Quest, and we welcomed the challenge to evolve them into a fully realized CG look that Meta can carry forward.
THE APPROACH
Stepping Into Another Dimension
The Health & Safety team at Meta had decided to push their animated warnings into the 3D world, in order better meet the promise of VR. Our first task was to create a house style, rooted in the 2D animation work we’d already defined, that was flexible enough to expand into future narrative animation. It needed to include a roster of characters of all ages, along with pets, indoor environments, and fantastic virtual worlds.
CHARACTER DESIGN
SHOW SOME EMOTION
Beginning with bullet-pointed list of warnings that needed to be conveyed for each device, we worked closely with the team at Meta to write narratives and build assets tailored to those stories. While we were crafting the animations, we were also building a larger toolkit of assets for Oculus to leverage in the future. Our characters had to emote – they had to be able to act, in order to convey the nuances of the warnings. Doing these in CG gave us much more flexibility than our prior 2D versions had, and the stories paid off better thanks to the complex rigs we built for each character.
THE OUTCOME
A Virtual Victory Lap
Our Animated Warnings are now a routine part of set up for each device. Quest users are introduced to a family jumping into VR together for the first time: base jumping, fending off a T-Rex, and dancing the night away. Rift S users are introduced to three friends in different places around the world who gather virtually, in order to go adventuring in space and then relax at the north pole. The Animated Warnings were met with universal praise; and we’re proud of our collaboration with the team at Oculus. We look forward to the future of the characters we built, and the places they’ll go. Especially the cat guy – he’s our favorite.
