The first part of 3DAR and Baobab Studios’ collaborative virtual reality production Paper Birds will release exclusively on Oculus Quest and Quest 2 on December 10th.
Paper Birds is an interactive animated VR film featuring the voice of Archie Yates (the breakout star of last year’s film Jojo Rabbit), who plays Toto, a young musician whose music “inspires the appearance of a flock of mysterious paper birds, which he’ll discover are the key to unlocking a portal between the physical world and a dark invisible world unseen to the naked eye.”
The first part of the story will be released on December 10th and runs for about 20 minutes, with hand tracking support. A second and final installment of Paper Birds will release sometime in 2021, also exclusive to Oculus platforms. You can watch the final trailer for Part 1 below.
Baobab Studios and 3DAR have produced some great VR experiences on their own, but Paper Birds is the first time they’ve teamed up to produce something together. Baobab were behind experiences like Bonfire and Baba Yaga, whereas 3DAR produced the more visually-intricate Gloomy Eyes featuring Colin Farrell.
We managed to try out Paper Birds earlier this year as part of the VR section of the Venice Film Festival, and Gloomy’s inspiration is very clear. Paper Birds’ art style shares many similarities with Gloomy Eyes and the end product is visually stunning. We found the story to be somewhat lackluster, but hopefully the second future installment manages to rectify that. For now, Paper Birds is worth checking out for the intimate, hand-crafted look of the animation — it’s quite an amazing visual production.
Paper Birds releases December 10 for Oculus Quest and Oculus Quest 2.
