Till von Ahnen: Fractals That Shake You To Your Inner Core
From dreams he creates reality. From reality he creates wonders. Till von Ahnen‘s masterpiece Journey to the Inner Core is as perplexing and mysteriously beautiful as his mind is. He sees himself as a graphics programmer and a 3D-printing enthusiast. We call him a dream maker. Now let’s start the journey to his VR world.
VeeR: How long have you been creating VR, and what inspired/motivated you to join this field?
Till: I was playing with it since 2014 on the Oculus DK 2 and I made the final stepped into creating content for it when I got lent an Oculus from a friend.
VeeR: Where did you get inspiration for your fractal art? What kind of artistic expressions are you hoping to achieve with your work?
Till: My background is graphics programming so I toy around with algorithms resulting in weird visuals and new implementations of shaders every day. And once I stumbled upon 3D-Fractals where I found myself rerendering the scene over and over again being impressed by its appeal each time. This was the moment I thought “let’s make this 360 and I can just look around and dive in”.
I am trying to bring the beauty of fractals into a visual dimension of VR so people can immerse themselves in it.
VeeR: Would you explore other subjects with VR representation?
Till: I already am but for more interactive ways. For example, I am trying to create a VR Editor like Blender where you can “sit” in the scene and work like you would on a workbench. But that’s just for fun.
For my videos, I am sticking with fractals since I really felt in love with watching them.
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VeeR: What has been your biggest challenge in VR storytelling, and what were some of your solutions?
Till: For Me storytelling is not much of a subject in my works, but having watched a few VR movies myself I think one key aspect which feels wrong for me is that the camera/viewer is always dropped in the center of the action being overflowed with visual information and often lacking the audio tracks to locate action that is happening and in the end being overwhelmed. Thus I would more like to see either a better audio setup since our brains need audio to locate things we can not see. And maybe have the courage to move the camera out of the center of the action if possible.
VeeR: Is there any productional gear/software that you would like to recommend?
Till: Not really since I only use OpenSource software for my work. But always make sure you know what your hardware is capable of and understand its inner workings.
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VeeR: Would you like to share some tips with rookie VR directors?
Till: Be creative. I really loved another video on VeeR “The Pull” , which showed a completely new way of putting the viewer into the scene and playing with his “virtual” sense of gravity.
To follow Till von Ahnen, please go to: https://twitter.com/xoryouyou
3D, Blender, Fractal, Germany, Virtual Reality