Ashton Kennedy - Converse VR Project Development - Weekly Log

[AshtonK]

Hi Launchpadders!

If we didn't get the chance to meet in person, my name is Ashton Kennedy. I'm a filmmaker with 8 years of (2D) video production experience in LA and Dallas. I am currently working on my MBA and have been focusing my studies on innovation and entrepreneurship. When I began exploring new industries, I saw that the virtual reality industry was taking off and desperately needed content creators and developers like ourselves. So I've put all my resources toward learning what it takes to create top-notch VR content and lay the foundations for building a successful full-service development company. I am excited to have such an enthusiastic network for support! If I can be of any service to any of you on your projects, please don't hesitate to ask! [ashtonnkennedy@gmail.com]

Company Background: 
Converse VR’s mission is to improve everyday
life by providing educational and entertaining interactive 360 video experiences, as well
as creating virtual reality applications that help people achieve their goals. We want to create content that inspires people
to adopt VR into their households. We will also serve Dallas / Fort
Worth area companies that need VR content development for their employees or
customers. Secondly, it is our goal to help unite the Texas VR community by building a connected network of local VR/AR professionals and by providing resources, such as cameras, equipment, and events. We want to collaborate with the Texas VR community to find the best products
to help grow the industry and market for virtual reality here in the lone star
state.




















Project 1 "VRelax": 

VRelax is a customizable application for Google
Cardboard and Samsung GearVR that allows users to tailor their relaxation and
meditation exercises to help them cope with stress and anxiety anytime and
anywhere. Users will be able to choose the environment, music, length and
guided therapy so it can fit whatever is ailing them in that moment. The
advantage of VR is that it helps close off visual and auditory distractions to
fully immerse the viewer in a different world providing an effective and quality
meditation or relaxation experience for the user.  

This project is inspired by two things: 1) The fact that there is a strong negative stigma around openly talking about mental health issues and addressing your own mental health, and 2) From my bouts with panic attacks, anxiety, stress and depression while working 10 hour days in a high stress role. I was never clinically diagnosed, but I wanted more ways to deal with it privately before I sought expensive counseling.

I'm currently using the VRelax project as my first Unity development project ever. Right now I'm learning C# and Unity courses on Udemy and through multiple books. I am also currently looking for a licensed psychologist (behavioral therapy) who might be able to advise me on current and newly developing exercises or therapies for those who have chronic anxiety or stress. I know there are many VR developers working in the mental health space and creating amazing apps (specifically for Oculus and Vive), but I definitely want to focus on creating an app that is both very easy to use and highly accessible on Mobile VR.

Project 2 "Untitled Interactive Comedy Series":
I'm currently developing a short film series on comedically bad dates where the viewer can switch perspectives to different people within the scene while the date unfolds to hear the internal monologue and reasoning of each person at different points in the date. We have an initial script completed, but will need to further tweak it to make sure the added interactivity makes sense and can be implemented effectively. The goal would be to empathize from each character's understanding of what's going on - so when you think you have a bad date, you'll understand why the other person thought it was a good date (or why they continued to let the bad date go on)!

I have a feeling we'll need to figure out a seamless way to teach people how to switch perspectives, or guide people to switch at specific times, and make those perspective switches are non-sickening, as mentioned during Launchpad. I have no idea if this is going to work, but I wanted to think of a way to add an interactive/immersive element to a theatrical play -- otherwise the story would likely be better told as a standard web-series or a play. I plan on renting a nice stereoscopic rig for this and shooting the scene from each perspective -- I hope to shoot a couple of these at the end of July or early August to start working with in Unity.

Before this I plan to shoot another first person perspective based short to get familiar with the mechanics of stereoscopic production (I've created some monoscopic 360 shots using 6 gopros, but not stereo) and post production/CGI needs before trying to take these videos in to Unity to hopefully get some fancy interactive elements!

Whew that was long! I hope you have an understanding of my projects so I can better outline my weekly goals moving forward.

My goals for week 2:
 1) Continue courses on Unity, Blender, and C#
 2) Plan out rewrites on the scripted series
 3) Set dates for each project and work backwards to establish deliverables

Ongoing goals: 
Continue search for partners on each project: Psychologist, Unity Development Experts

Thanks for reading!

-Ashton

[AshtonK]

Sorry for the very late weekly update. Things have been in flux lately and I wanted to gather my thoughts on my progress.

Part 1:  I'm almost half way complete with an Udemy course on Unity VR and Coding!
Working on a 3D basketball game to learn basic coding/UI/etc.

Part 2: Project 1 VRelax - After a few business development meetings with mentors and reading about everyone's amazing projects I realized I really needed to focus on one idea and one industry. I should focus my MVP development on an industry that fits my expertise and skill set, and where I plan to continue my business. While I'm very passionate about meditative apps in VR (and furthering the conversation around mental health), I think there are several more qualified (read: Doctors) VR developers inside and outside of this Oculus Launchpad community that will make truly wonderful clinically-grounded meditative/mental health/ pain management applications than little old me with a film degree. If any of you (@drszilak, Sandra, and others!) need any help with your development or outreach process - I'd love to help anyway I can! I really want to drive positive conversations around understanding mental health and I think the pervasiveness of VR will be a groundbreaking tool to use to do this. 

Part 3: Project 2 the Interactive Comedy Series -  Now that I've narrowed my focus on interactive 360 video content - I need to figure out my customer niche. I am currently leaning toward building these experiences for education - but I definitely want to make sure the material is well developed and provides interaction, or gamification, of the content being taught. I have a couple ideas in history and science I'm looking into, but for the time being I'm going to try my hand with bringing comedy onto our headsets.

Currently I'm now focused on diving into what it takes to produce "cinematic" VR with interaction. I just bought the LG 360 Cam (which works wonderfully with our Galaxy S6 phones FYI) and I'm quite impressed with it's stitching and "manual" control abilities. Its definitely time to see if I can shoot a test short film with this camera as a proof of concept and blueprint for a more extensive 3D shoot for a comedy series. 

Over the next week:

1) I need to test some of my initial script ideas with this camera to see if the blocking and story can be effectively told in 360. I will work on getting a short created within 1 - 2 weeks on here. 

2) I need to finish the Udemy course and move on to learn further coding. I also want to start slowly trying to build a Unity video player where I can later add interactive UI to my videos. I've heard about some assets for this, but I definitely want to make sure it works.

3) I need to further refine my product concept(s), as well as gather new customer validation - specifically focused on education. 

Thanks for reading!

[aleemhossain]

Looking forward to seeing your first short. Enjoyed your cat video!

[AshtonK]

Update for Week 3 and 4

Alright again I'm behind - WAY behind

My computer died the end of last week and I have not been able to make much progress at all.

The LG 360 Cam has it's issues but I hope to have an edit cat video montage up here shortly... Going to try editing with the most recent Premiere Pro update. Still working on finding a willing actor to try to shoot more of a short film experience - I plan on making this happen over the long holiday weekend.

I'm just getting back into my development courses as well.

I've been working on a new direction for the company as well researching potential markets. Right now I'm digging into education. I have a couple ideas for collaborative VR experiences for supplementing current curriculums -- focusing on history first. I hope to pitch educators and get their feed back this coming week.

Videos coming soon. :smiley:

EDIT CAT VIDEO:

[AshtonK]

My computer is still dead thanks to Apple's very awful repair system, but I've found a computer I can borrow for the time being while I continue to work on getting my computer fixed.

Moving into education has brought in some new challenges to begin researching:

Does experiential learning actually improve student performance? Many articles site internships as a huge boost in student success. Does a simulation have a similar effect as say a field trip? How much does an educational tool need to align with the curriculum to be adopted? Does it need to have include a "test" to measure a student's retention? Do schools or publishers expect STEM content? Or is history and liberal arts content of interest?

I plan on posing these questions to educators I know.

As for the content itself I've got a couple ideas for initial demos:

1) Walk throughs of historical places (gaze based navigation) that show quick historical reenactments (animated or live action) as they move to each place that progresses the story. I also think adding more interactive elements or puzzles in each place would be great once I have more development experience. Local locations I could possibly work with to start off: Fort Worth Stockyards, Dealey Plaza + Sixth Floor Museum, Alamo, State Capitol [government lesson], San Jacinto Monument, San Antonio Missions, and more.  Thinking that it might be interesting to tie all the content to a single teacher, like a Ms. Frizzle for liberal arts.

2) Simple games that immerse students in a period of time that focuses on following a particular story in history. 
 - Underground Railroad: students must pass a series of challenges to get to each safe house...
 - Edelweiss pirates: students become one of the "Edelweiss pirates" and pass allied propaganda to particular locations as they travel through Nazi occupied Germany and must avoid being caught.

I definitely believe the first content style will be easier for me to create a demo of in a short time. I plan on reaching out to see if I can get access to the first two on my list here in Dallas and maybe a historian who might be able to work with me on the project.

On an unrelated note just thought of a random game idea...

Spazzy Cats game:
As any cat owner knows every now and then your cat will randomly freak the hell out for no apparent reason, meowing and running as loud and fast as they can, especially when you're trying to sleep. It's your job to stun them with your favorite de-spazz method -- spray bottles, cat nip bombs, mouse toy sling shot, and more. You can mod them to be increasingly elaborate as you level up. More and more cats with stronger and stronger will power will be added as you move up levels. How much extra snooze time can you save from your cats' crazy outbursts?

Haha that's all for now.

[AshtonK]

Wrapped up my summer class last week which was part of a Student Startup Accelerator. I got to pitch my start up concept at 1 Million Cups in Dallas on Wednesday. My work in that class includes much what I've been working on for my pivot for this project. Attached are my pitch deck slides 🙂

As I've been doing more and more research it seems a weak point in American education is Math, specifically geometry. I think logic and math based games in VR could be very engaging for students especially if they can work in groups and then apply what they've learned through game play. 

Lucky for me I have a sister who knows how to model and created a wonderful little kiwi character that I hope to use to guide this experience.

Now I need to buckle in and design an initial demo. I am currently looking for developers to help me. I am also planning to meet with math teachers from a local highschool this coming week to help better inform the experience and better align to concepts they believe student's struggle with.

I do not want to abandon my love for video production and storytelling though. I'm working on the production plan for the pilot episode of a comedic web series to be shot on the Gear 360 to be shot in the next month.

Continuing to push forward and learn as much as I can. It's time to start creating and making sure I'm as ready as I can be to submit this plan for scholarship funds.