Translating the Story

Deja Vu Dimensions has been busily ingesting the story of Emily of New Moon and translating it into storyboards to plan our virtual reality graphic novel. It's a little like how a director does a breakdown of a film script to account for locations, characters, costumes and the like.

Emily of New Moon is an interesting production because it is a drama and begins with a full cast of characters right in the first 34 pages. Our challenge is to highlight the actions and thoughts of these characters in a way that the graphic interpretation stays active and visually delightful. There is a lot of "camera directing" of the viewer's perspective in the storyboard development.

This is also a period production which is set in the 1880's so we are all doing our homework in the development of the design bible. We're looking up hair styles, architecture, clothing, facial hair, social norms and more. It's just what it takes to be confident that we are serving the period and original work with honesty and authenticity. But there is also a point where the text we utilize from the original story goes through a slight modification for the audience that will be reading it.

We believe it is somewhat unique to present a graphic novel both for the web and for virtual reality. We'll be 3D scanning locations, casting reference actors, creating reference costumes and even possibly integrating the use of neural networks for depth prediction of imagery. It's quite a production and we can't wait to share it all with you. Christina Morrison is our head artist and she's doing a fantastic job.

The web delivery of the graphic novel will be freely available and updated as pages are completed, so be sure to bookmark it and follow along. The virtual reality graphic novel will be available for purchase for popular VR headsets. This blog will offer viewers a behind-the-pixels view of the production and development process. We are so excited to have you along for the ride. Enjoy!