Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created a stick figure drawing for their company web homepage as a playful way to allow visitors to the website know that the people who should be at the office are out attending the Burning Man festivities in Nevada.
The stick figure became the inspiration for other playful additions to the Google Website. Eventually, it inspired the now popular Google Doodles. Google Doodles are designed as a way to commemorate important historical occurrences, highly influential people, and holidays. As a result of their popularity, they have since become a mainstay for the Google ever since.
This gave rise to the company’s famous Google Doodles, which are usually designed to honor important historical events, influential people, and holidays, and have become a mainstay for the search engine ever since.
Google Doodles in the Present
It has been over 20 years since Doodle was launched by Google. As part of the celebration, Google is demonstrating its capacity by using Doodle in virtual reality to show off the work of renowned French filmmaker and illusionist Georges Méliès.
There are those who say that he ought to be known as the “Father of Special Effects.” high praise considering how far the medium has come from its humble roots as demonstrated by Georges Méliès.
The launch of Google Doodle is meant t coincide with the release anniversary of one of Méliès’ seminal works known as “À la conquête du pôle or The Conquest of the Pole.” This work was released way back in 1912.
The Méliès’ Doodle
The Google short film is a tribute to the legacy of Méliès as a magician, filmmaker, and visual artist. The Virtual Reality, Google Doodle, begins with Google Doodle manifesting Méliès setting up his camera in front of a black-and-white background that displayed the moon, several stars, and a rocket ship.
This is a tribute to the famous film of Méliès entitled A Trip to the Moon. There is a similar reference made in the course of the Doodle that displayed a scene where there is a cartoon version of Méliès springing from a larger than life playing card. This scene is a call back from another of Méliès films “The Living Playing Cards,” which was released in 1905.
History of Google Doodle
VR Google Doodle was not always Virtual Reality Google Doodle; it evolved from Google Doodles that were little more than stationary images into videos and even interactive games over the past decade. Yet this is the first time in which Google is opting to go the VR path.
The project is a collaboration between:
- Google Spotlight Stories;
- Google Arts & Culture; and
- Cinémathèque Française
Google Doodles are usually drawn from a pool of pitches numbering in the tens of thousands. These pitches come from both inside and outside of Google. This is according to Jonathan Schneider, an engineer based in Google’s Doodle division in an interview with TIME magazine in 2015.
The team then winnows out which ideas are feasible actually to realize. The idea is that the ideas will be a representation of people of all races, genders, and ethnicities from all countries around the world. In other words, the winnowing is done with a view towards promoting diversity as per Google’s internal policies.
Interacting with Google Doodle
Anyone who wants to check out Google Doodle may do so via Google’s Cardboard or its Daydream VR viewers upon downloading Google Spotlight Stories App.
If the user does not have a headset, the user can also check out the Doodle via a 360-degree video feed via Google Spotlight Stories Youtube channel.
Another method of accessing Google Doodle is to go to WWW.Google.com/Doodle.
What can be done?
Google Doodle is a creator’s tool. In the past, these were just drawings moving on to animated drawings. The latest evolution is the Virtual Reality Google Doodle. There is now a wonderful plethora of options that they can do when they put up the Google Doodle.
If you want to interact with Google Doodle there are many options:
- Send an email with a suggestion.
- Create a petition.
- Communicate with an influencer to try and start a viral campaign to get some attention.
- Use Youtube to attempt to create a viral video campaign to get people to join in the good fight.
- Go on Facebook to get attention for your advocacy.
The Beauty of VR
Virtual Reality is not a new concept. In fact, in the 90s there was already a trend towards VR as the next evolution of Video presentation. Of course in those heady days, VR was grainy, clunky and altogether not very beautiful. This is a function of the limits of technology. The early VR systems in the 90s were a throwback to video game graphics from the 80s.
Even today’s most advanced VR systems pale in comparison to the of the top of the line video game graphics. The reason for this is because pulling up a VR display is a lot harder to do than simple graphics on a computer or TV screen. Therefore, VR will lag behind what can be done with simple graphics.
What makes VR unique and demanding in terms of resources is because the need to render a true 3D VR object is truly taxing to the system that is trying to project the image. The programs are, but it is just that it takes a lot of computing power to render such advanced images.
In the future, VR could be projected from existing goggles to become almost indistinguishable from reality. After all, if the video can be rendered to appear almost entirely life like it should not take long before similar progress can be made for VR.
Conclusion
In conclusion, VR is not new technology, in fact, it has early development way back in the 1990s. VR Google Doodles is just the latest evolution of this technology. Of course just one look at the Georges Méliès tie-in VR doodles will demonstrate just what kind of potential the technology can have.
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