Watch Disney's Little Mermaid Animator Glen Keane Drawing in Virtual Reality

Except if you live on another planet you probably have heard about virtual reality which is about to take a bigger place in our lives in the years to come and today we have a great example of what you can do with it thanks to Disney's animator and Director Glen Keane who did the beloved Little Mermaid and Aladdin animated films.

The Vive VR headset use a HTC's position-tracking and has a the standout demo called Tilt Brush. According to Wired "this 3D painting experience is like Paper by FiftyThree in space -- you use wand-like controllers to splatter the air with oils, rainbows or pure light in real space, and can move around your creation in order to add depth and shading."

A new short film by the Future Of StoryTelling festival shows how impressive it caa be when Disney's Glen Keane, 61, put on the headset, and recreated some of his most famous characters from Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast in virtual reality with Tilt Brush (or at least something very much like it).

"I can put goggles on and I just step into the paper and now I'm drawing in it," Keane says in the video. "Today, all the rules have changed. All directions are open now, just immersing myself in space is more like a dance. What is this amazing new world I just stepped into? When I draw in VR I draw all the characters real life size. They are that size in my imagination. The character can turn... and even if you take the goggles off, I'm still remembering -- she's right there, she's real."

Have a look at the video and don't go away as i have more greatness with Glen Keane for you.


Glen Keane – Step into the Page from Future Of StoryTelling on Vimeo.

Now, Glen Keane did also recently a beautiful traditionally animated short film called "Nephtali." in this short film, Keane "uses both film and drawing in order to depict the journey of a ballerina that is drawn towards a higher power."

Pixar and Disney are now doing only 3D animation these days, but "Nephtali" is a good example of 2D animated art that makes you regret that most of animated studios if not all of them don' create anymore animated films in 2D.




And if you've missed it, her dis another animated short by Glen Keane titled "Duet" with absolutely no dialogue, but a wonderful soundtrack. It tells a story which follows the lives of a man and a woman as they journey into adulthood and succeed to find one another along the way.





Videos: copyright Glen Keane