Carmilla VR
After reading Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, I fell in love with the story. However, something about Carmilla and Laura’s relationship stuck with me. Something that the ending of the original short story did not satisfy. So I began contemplating a new ending, and how I might tell an alternate version of Laura’s story. I was also discovering virtual reality at the time, and the prospect of walking through Laura’s castle myself, of witnessing the story first hand, was too exciting to ignore.
I have written, storyboarded, and begun the concept art for Carmilla VR, and am currently building the demo environment in Quill by Smoothstep. As the project develops, the concept art will be shared here and on my instagram @peculiarpersone.
The Foyer
This room needed to have a feeling of dilapidated opulence, and the symmetrical staircases felt like an appropriate way to achieve that. However, there also had to be a singular clear path through the room. I used detritus on the left hand stairs to make climbing them as unappealing as possible, while the gothic stained glass windows behind the viewer on the right side light up a clear path to the second floor. While the wall behind the viewer does not appear in the finished mood painting, I still needed to design it for VR, and that design can be seen in the last image below.
Carmilla (2020)
“‘I wonder whether you feel as strangely drawn towards me as I do to you; I have never had a friend - shall I find one now?’ she sighed, and her fine dark eyes gazed passionately on me. Now the truth is … I did feel, as she said, ‘drawn towards her,’ but there was also something of repulsion. In this ambiguous feeling, however, the sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me; she was so beautiful and so indescribably engaging.” - from Carmilla, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
