Watch: Animation Icon Glen Keane Demos 3D VR Drawing of Ariel and the Beast on the Future of Storytelling Summit

Animation legend Glen Keane has become an unlikely evangelist for bridging the gap between traditional drawing and new technologies.
Over nearly four decades at Disney, Glen Keane animated some the most compelling characters of our time: Ariel from The Little Mermaid, the titular beast in Beauty and the Beast, and Disney’s Tarzan, to name just a few. The son of cartoonist Bil Keane (The Family Circus), Glen learned early on the importance of holding onto your childhood creativity -- and how art can powerfully convey emotion.
In 2012, the 38-year former veteran Disney animator launched his own production company, Glen Keane Productions, in order to explore new ways to bring animation to life. His first independent project was the Oscar nominated animated short film Duet produced by Google’s Advanced Technology group and available via app for Google and Motorola's interactive storytelling initiative Spotlight Stories last year. Now, for his next experiment, he’s embracing 3-D virtual reality drawing tools, the subject of a new short, Step Into the Page, featuring some of his best known characters, as shown in the video in the player below:

This new, five-minute original clip is created as a promo to coincide with his upcoming appearance at the fourth edition of the invitation-only Future of Storytelling (FoST) Summit that takes place October 7-8 in New York City, with additional Google Spotlight Stories filmmakers still to be announced. The annual Future of Storytelling Summit is always a fascinating event for the insights it offers into the evolving technology and art of storytelling.
The Summit gathers leaders in communications, media, entertainment, and advertising to explore the evolution of storytelling from all angles: creative, technology, critical, formal and financial. Glen is a featured speaker at the summit and is sharing his views on the potential of animation and storytelling with respect to virtual reality technology.
Instead of a paper and pencil, Keane draws life-sized versions of Ariel and Beast in the short with an HTC Vive headset and the 3D painting app called Tilt Brush, (which is now owned by Google). Rather than just being static on a page, he's able to walk around his characters as if they were fully three-dimensional. While drawing in 3-D space is not a new technology, it’s novel to see someone like Keane, who is considered a master of hand-drawn animation, play around with the tools.
For details on the summit, visit its website at www.futureofstorytelling.org.

Glen Keane Demos VR Drawing for Future Summit