Facebook Adapts “Dragon Ball Z” （Zetto） into a VR Short, Paying Homage to the Original Comics

Facebook Social VR team’s permanent artist, Goro Fujita, pays homage to the original comics by producing a VR short based on the famous original comic DRAGON BALLZ（Zetto) .

Goro Fujita expressed his opinion on Twitter that “VR Comics will achieve something in the future”. He released a VR animation video that is accessible on Facebook Spaces, a social VR application created by Facebook.

The VR animation is adapted from a classic plot of Dragon Ball Z that Piccolo sacrifices himself to save Gohan. Fujita created the VR comics with the Oculus drawing and the drawing tool Quill,  and used animation effects to make it look like a mixture of Anime and Manga, a new type of animation that Fujita calls “manime”.

Goro Fujita said on Twitter that he believed the VR animated video was a “Verification of Concepts” as there were currently no full-length VR versions of branded comics being planned, such as Dragon Ball Z. Goro Fujita further confirmed that he usually preferred to create his own original content. However, he also said that using VR was more efficient in creating a scene than any other media he has used.

“I took a page from the original comics and did a VR interpretation for it, which made me fall in love with the Piccolo! This experiment is very meaningful! It will attract more people to read comics.”

You can check it out on Facebook Spaces, the company’s social VR app that lets you chat, share 360 ​​photos and videos, which is now a Quill project.

Square Enix has recently released a long-term comic project called Tales of Wedding Rings VR (2018), and last month, VR comic game of MyDearest  – TOKYO CHRONOS became a supporting target of Kickstarter, which provided powerful reasons for the emerging genres. With a proper understanding of the tool (in this case, Quill), a single developer can quickly create VR comics without voicing actors or mastering the game engine.