11 Jul The making of: APEX
One of the most important voices in this conversation is the Dutch artist Arjan van Meerten. He is taking big creative risks, and by doing so, pushing the medium forward - René Pinnell, CEO, Kaleidoscope VR
Arjan van Meerten shows how he approaches his creative work: how he starts out with a bunch of looping sounds until he finds one to his liking and then builds the other music and animations around that.
Arjan mentions how the audio and the intense feeling of APEX is partly drawn from the experience of attending metal concerts when he was younger; that overwhelming feeling you get when standing in front of the pumping loudspeakers and literally feeling the music blast from the stage.
As in this video, people have often reacted to APEX saying they felt their bodies heat up and sense the warmth of the virtual fiery world surrounding them.
He gives you control, but gives you the freedom to feel like you don't have to be in control and he can still make you feel everything he wants you to feel - Maureen Fan, CEO, Baobab Studios
When making animations Arjan will also often skip the drawing board and head directly for a trial and error workflow. Trying out a lot of stuff until, again, he finds that one thing that catches his eye and works with the concept of the experience. That first animation becomes the jumping off point for many iterations, successions and alterations. Test and fix, test and fix, test and.. yes!
In between cuts, you see Arjan working in Unreal and Cubase, puzzling all these bits and pieces together.
He approaches this in an original way and has a vision. He has his own style for it and I think that's what defines an author - Yelena Rachitsky, Creative Producer, Oculus