In 2018 I made a tiny Virtual Reality experience: Face Your Demons. It was my first-ever approach to character creation (Zbrush, Maya, Substance Painter) and environment design (Unreal Engine 4). It has been too many irons in the fire but I’ve learned so many life and technical lessons.

Worlds of art, technology, and communication evolve from year to year and so do the quality standards that the respective communities expect from the work of artists and developers. In this perspective, Face Your Demons is hellishly old and naive, yet I’m still inspired by and proud of the original message I wished to deliver at that time. For these reasons, I’m sharing it with you today.

A quote from Heaven and Hell by Black Sabbath will burn in front of your eyes at the beginning of the VR experience:

"The lover of life’s not a sinner, the ending is just a beginner. The closer you get to the meaning, the sooner you’ll know that you’re dreaming."

Why? Because It perfectly matches the freedom all artists should experience, whether they want to represent delicate issues or everyday stories. And they should experiment with creativity leaving worn-out cultural limits behind. 

The key is love for life itself: the trust in the innate human ability to recognize and honor it. Living guided by curiosity and open-minded thoughts. Training ourselves to genuinely recognize what we truly don’t know about the universe and ourselves. 

What's the point in blaming others and being frustrated if our perception of reality is nothing but an illusion?

Have you seen the magnificent Epic Games - Metahumans - demo release yet?

Besides the "yes, I'm going to use it every day" from many CGI specialists and the rightful "no" from my traditional arts friends (and my grandma), the most interesting reaction will come from those that are in the middle: the daily end-users of products that are going to contain these promising digital characters. 

I'm curious to see if the "MetaHuman Creator" software name itself will overwrite the ordinary concept of "character creation". 

Surely the offered quality and the diffusion of Metahumans powered applications will have a huge impact on the scene, but today I'm analyzing just the name itself: how the word "human", inside the daily chats, will influence (or not) the perception of final users? 

The reaction that I'm seeking will be noticeable through the verbal expressions that people are going to use in the long term. How much empathy will be used while referring to this incoming generation of Digital Humans? 

Verbs are powerful thought revealers and people generally create their own vocabulary around a topic. The end result is that 80% of technical terms will be rearranged in ordinary words. So, for the masses, are developers going to create MetaHumans? Are they going to design, build, use, incarnate, set alive, delete, destroy... MetaHumans?  

In your opinion, how smart is this name choice? 

I think a lot, and as a designer that works on projects full of storytelling elements, I'm happy with this novelty. I can't wait to see where it will take us, or rather, where we will take ourselves and our stories, thanks to this new tool.

And what about you? Are you inspired by this arrival?

P.s. here we are, a battle-ready @artiv.xyz trying the Live Link Face app for the first time: