Sorta Scary Singapore Stories

Tusitala was commissioned by The Arts House to explore taking SingLit into the digital realm for the Textures 2020 festival, in line with the festival theme “These Storied Walls”. This was part of #BuySingLit for the third edition of Textures 2020, “A Weekend of Words” which celebrates Singapore literature and its diverse community.

The plan was to create a digital and participatory activity that would promote reading as a shared adventure that would take participants on a trip through the literary worlds of local authors.

Objectives

• Increase interest in the untapped genre of Singapore Noir / Horror
• Diversify #BuySingLit audiences to more than moms
• Reach out to youth and working professionals with exciting different sides of Singapore literature

As we were championing the reading in the digital experience, we needed to create an immersive experience that brought writing, audiobooks, and illustration together to introduce SingLit to the public in a new and exciting way.

Concept

In order to promote local literature, we decided to feature four local stories by local authors, paired with four illustrators to interpret a scene and bring you their versions of nightmares via VR headsets. 

We selected four local stories by Catherine Lim, Clara Chow Daryl Qilin Yam and Suffian Hakim in line with the theme of “These Storied Walls”, and commissioned four illustrators, Xiao Yan, Debbie Ding, Jolene Tan, and Justin Tiang, to interpret a selected scene using 360-degree illustration.

We wanted to offer a broad interpretation of what is scary in line with the theme of “These Storied Walls”, showcasing scenes that take place within walls ranging from the Singapore Flyer as a prison to a group therapy session for ghosts at the Old Changi Hospital.

Process

Working with illustrators to create a 360-degree illustration of a scene from a book/short story came with a number of challenges as they had to work across different softwares such as Panopainter, Procreate, and Adobe Photoshop.

While some were more experienced, the illustrators who were new to 3D illustrations had to get used to following the equirectangular grid, and to go back and forth between programs to adjust perspective issues or matching proportions.

In contrast to a simple 2D illustration, with 3D, much more details are needed to fill it up, and the processing of the 360 drawing is also tedious.

The resulting output, however, was rewarding. The 3D illustrations were experienced through VR headsets in person at The Arts House. VR headsets enhanced the experience with both vision and sound, allowing participants to experience literature in new ways.

Crowd on opening night, 13 Mar 2020