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Illustrator Draws a Funhouse in Virtual Reality—By Hand

Tilt Brush, the Microsoft Paint of tomorrow, is looking good today.

Working for two straight days in Tilt Brush—the 'lux Microsoft Paint of virtual reality—Australian illustrator and designer Stu Campbell, a.k.a. Sutu, has created a four-part experience that feels like stepping into living paintings. While several artists have made unbelievable sculptures and designs in the program, SUTUWERLD jumps out because of its use of space to create a universe rather than an object.

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At the beginning of SUTUWERLD, you stand at the center of four tunnels, like four frames hung on the walls of a gallery. Your options are a sky peppered with floating islands and sea creatures, a clearing filled with TRON-like glowing animals, a Gundam-status robot fight, and a serene sketch of a city park. Walk through a tunnel and you'll be welcomed into a deeper reading of the scene, full of new details and perspectives invisible from the gallery wall. "The main thing for me was trying to use Tiltbrush in a way that didn’t look like every other Tiltbrush painting," Sutu tells The Creators Project. "I wanted my paintings to be worlds that encourage you to walk through and explore."

Sutu also collaborated with Jaymis Loveday, the artist who made the first music video in Tilt Brush, to bring their digital creations into the real world. By painting a green screen into the Tilt Brush world and mounting a Vive controller on top of a camera, they pulled this off:

Building in Tilt Brush is like the VR equivalent of the craft / hand-made, small-batch ethos. A project like SUTUWERLD might be easier or more polished if designed in Cinema 4D, but the fact that each virtual brushstroke came from a human hand gives each painting a distinctly human style.

Check out the details of SUTUWERLD in the images and video below.

See more of Sutu's work on his website.

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