Multisensory Storytelling - Gloomy Eyes

Overall, what a lovely little story Gloomy Eyes is. Maybe borrowing a little too much from Tim Burton and co. but its very, very well animated and realized. I love the way it decided to keep most things in the scenes teeny tiny, and the later acts use scale to great effect when introducing larger settings and bigger characters.

Plus, having Colin Farrell record your narration is like a cheat code for greatness.

Unfortunately I will say this was the most physically uncomfortable any of the things we've been assigned in this class has made me so far.

It wasn't the spinning around to take in the scenes that did me in, though sitting at the chair shoved into the corner of our Hyper Lab space did make that a little more awkward than it needed to be. It would have been good to have some kind of warning or notice at the start to clear slightly more space to take in the film easily.

What gave me a bit of a headache was how close things appear to the viewer while seated, which limits your ability to lean back away from them. It was actually some of the strongest I've ever experienced discomfort from vergence-accommodation conflict–whenever I tried to lean in to get a better or more comfortable look at a scene, after a few seconds of trying to focus on the character or other model my eyes would begin to twinge.

For the last act of Gloomy Eyes I actually got up out of my chair and stood for the rest of it, shifting around as needed. I found this way it was generally most comfortable to keep the scenes about 2-3 feet away from me and didn't have the same twinging. That also let me peer around and position myself more freely in general, which was kind of neat in its own way.

Last point: I think the Quest Pro didn't do this proper justice. I imagine it'd look amazing in a headset that can do true blacks/not allow for as much light bleed from underneath as the Pro does.