Interview with ZandyXR
Part of the "VR is Alive!" Artist Spotlight Series
For this interview we are fortunate to have ZandyXR (she/her) joining us to chat about being an artist in social VR!
Feel free to watch the shorter video if you have less time, or watch the full video to get to know more about ZandyXR.
Please introduce yourself, including your pronouns, and what you want the audience to know about you.
I'm Zandy (she/her). I go by Zandy because it's a nickname I had as a kid, so I prefer that as my name. Basically, I'm a VR artist, then world builder and designer, and I started back in May 2019. I was using VR in 2018 and I loved it, then I saw Goro Fujita doing stuff with Quill, and I was like, "well, that's really cool". I had to get a PC. I saw some artists using Tilt Brush and I was totally amped, like a moth to a flame. There was no stopping me at that point, and I've been going ever since.
May 2019 was the first time I picked up a virtual painting brush. I was inspired by several artists, and one in particular was SabbyLife. She did dailies for a year and did an amazing job with them. A whole bunch of us started to do painting on a more frequent basis, and it's almost like yoga. You go in it, and sometimes you'll be in for half an hour, sometimes you'll be in for several hours, depending on what you're working on.
When you become immersed in the process and not worry, you shut off everything. That's great, because you shut off all of your surroundings, too, being in VR. You just focus on the now, what you're doing now, and release yourself. All the emotion and so forth goes into the painting. I started in January 2020 doing daily painting, so this is my fourth year. I took two and a half weeks off, only because I'm not a fan of social media personally. I post to keep myself accountable. If you go to the gym, for example, you have a workout partner and they're going to hold you accountable. It's kind of the same thing. If I don't post, I'm not going to hold myself accountable to do it daily. It has nothing to do with competition. This is my own personal journey.
The whole process, for me, it's releasing emotions. Some days, depending on what's going on in the day, I may have one that shows my anger. In other days, it may show that I'm a jokester, it may show something funny, or it may show something that's very emotional. Each day that I paint, whatever I'm feeling on that day, is what I paint. When there are things like themes, it makes it easier. I encourage anyone who sees Inktober or Sculptober, and they're into art, and they want to try VR art, to try and get involved in those. Try it for 30 days, and see how you feel. But what's cool is everything that you create, you can use it to build worlds, you can use it to build products, and patterns, and digital assets that you can sell, or you can just do it for fun. I highly encourage everybody to try.
Art without any heart isn't art to me.
Can you explain what "dailies" are and why you do them?
It's 100% emotional for me. When I do dailies, I paint a different thing each day. Sometimes I know what I want to paint, sometimes I don't. The first 15 minutes I go in, I'm just moving my brush strokes around, just kind of getting a feel of what I'm going to do, and then it clicks. Sometimes I use reference photos and sometimes I don't. But again, it's all based on interpretation of life experiences. It's pretty intimate when you think about it, because if you think of any artist that puts their heart and soul into something, you feel the art when you look at it. Or when you're listening to music, when they put their heart and soul into the music, you feel the music. That's the whole thing. For me, my daily practice is like, this is my yoga. I spend on average about an hour doing stuff. Sometimes I want to stay in longer. One of the things in the art world that I am not a fan of is when people say, "try and do as much as you can in a short amount of time". No. You need to get to all those emotions. You need to feel those emotions as they come out. If it takes you five hours, it takes you five hours. Over time, the more you do, the better you can get because you're doing it every day. I see a change in my art from when I started to now, and it has to do with practice. So when I get in, I throw the music on loud. I mean, you don't see it. It's probably a good thing people aren't seeing what I'm doing while I paint, because I've got the music blaring. And then all of a sudden, some tunes on, like if it's a rock tune, I'll sound like this inside while I'm painting. You know, singing along to whatever the case may be. But it's all for me, it's emotion.
Everything I paint has to do with what I'm feeling. My goal as an artist is, when I do these dailies, I want people to look at it, but not just look at it I want you to feel. That's the ultimate goal. When you look at different things, which ones are you drawn to and look at and maybe see something in there that is actually reflecting on you as well. Which is what art is all about, right? Art without any heart isn't art to me. Whoever creates the world, it's part of them. It's very intimate. And I don't think people realize that.
What inspires you to share your dailies and how do you decide what to show or combine into certain worlds?
It's usually based on a theme and a lot of my worlds have a healing aspect to it, whether you realize it or not. Even if you think of the Halloween world, some people may think that sitting around the candles or around the fire is a place of comfort, right? Fire and Ice is a real popular world that I published. There I have the healing caves and the opal caves, which is this type of Magical Forest atmosphere. There's always a calming feeling, whether it's the music, even psychedelic trance has got some calming aspects to it. The reason being is because I want people to feel safe and I want them to deal with their emotions in a positive way and have fun and enjoy themselves at the same time. When I come up with the worlds, I usually have a theme. It usually happens when I have enough pieces that I think would go together well. I also have some that I've recently pulled from VRChat, but I can always upload them again. But they're pieces that are close to my heart.
I did a historical masterpiece series. Certain things were going on at certain times when I was painting them. Like the Sagrada Familia, I did the entire interior. Every single piece of stained glass is different in the entire cathedral. And that took me 23 days, but it was one of those times where you have a lot of stuff going on and you need to release that. So I painted for probably 8-10 hours straight for 23 days. And I broke it up. I had a break in between. But it's the entire interior of La Sagrada Familia. It's not just a piece of it. It's the entire thing. But those were times where I needed to get into that mode and release those feelings. And so I poured it into the art.
Given your daily creative process, how do you pace yourself to avoid burnout?
I can still do art every day, no problem. The social media bit I get burnt out on. The reason being is because there's lots of outside noise, lots of negativity. I think to avoid burnout, if anyone's interested in doing a daily, is to focus on your why, why you're doing it. There will always be somebody better than you. And you can't compare yourself to others because it's a process. Even if you think of when I started to now, I've evolved over time. I can do things a lot faster than I did when I first started. But again, my reasons for painting are different from other people's reasons for painting. I think if you are just painting to get the end result and to make money off of it, that's fine and dandy, but you're going to burn out because you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. You want to make sure that you are focusing on why you're doing what you're doing. Drown out the outside noises. Unfortunately, the more you do, the more static you get, believe it or not. I think it's because people aren't doing as much and they're comparing themselves with what I'm doing, but my journey is completely different from their journey. Mine is very personal. Do you know what I mean? Everyone's got their own personal journey. It's really important to focus on that and focus on your own journey and drown out all that outside noise that happens. If somebody's taking away your vibe, you need to separate yourself from that person. You've got to do things that make you happy and continue with what is true to you.
What advice do you have for new world builders?
Don't copy somebody else because a world is popular. Try and still make it something that represents you and not somebody else. I think what happens with world builders—and not just world builders—but happens in the art world and so forth is, prime example, the NFT apes. So those came out and then everybody's doing NFT apes. Instead of staying true to their own selves... You should be the trendsetter. Try and stay true to your own style and your own interests and create something that you think not only would you like, but other people would like too. I think it's really important to stay true and authentic as to who you are and show that in your worlds, or your art, or whatever you decide to do.
What parts of the 3D creative process could be better in your opinion?
It would be the ideal world if all of these programs work together, like seamlessly. You have certain things like Geometry Nodes in Blender and those are awesome. People create some really cool stuff with that and you can't bring it into Unity and make it work the same way, right? Even in the flow of things, people don't realize that when you get technical into the world building, it's not just bringing your assets in, it's decimating your assets. Sometimes that requires me to go into Blender. Sometimes brushstrokes have to go into Blender for that. I can't do it all in one program. That's the biggest hurdle, I think. In an ideal world, they would seamlessly flow. No problem. Same thing with the shaders, right? Certain shaders are going to work in certain types of platforms and it's not going to work in other platforms. It would be great if they all merged together. So you don't have to use a crazy number of programs to get the same result. I think that's the biggest frustration and time waster, really, when it comes to building worlds.
Can you explain your software workflow in more detail and how you bring your worlds into VR?
Basically, when I'm making the worlds, I have to do a couple things to them. I have to use Blender, I have to use Tilt Brush or Gravity Sketch or Open Brush, whatever. So now you have your assets. You have to think of your theme and then build it around and try to envision what you would dream it to be like and then bring it together. The reason why I have to use different programs for the world building is, again, I can't do it in Tilt Brush alone. I can't do it in Open Brush alone. I have to combine the brushstrokes. I have to decimate where I can. If it's a painted world, if I decimate it too much, I end up with holes. It's not the same as building a low-poly model in Blender and decimating it, or subdividing something and decimating it. It's not the same. The big thing with Tilt Brush and Open Brush is the draw calls, they're crazy! Because each piece, if you think of each daily I've done, so even if you look at these, the banana trees, that was a daily, the couches, that was a daily, the birds of paradise, that was a daily. So each of those brushstrokes, well, each of those pieces have to be combined, or else my draw calls go nuts. So that's a huge, huge challenge to VR artists. VR art is very different than working in Blender. You have more precision and control with Blender, and Maya, and all of those other programs because of the nature of those programs. But when you, when you're painting in three-dimensional space and you're bringing in those assets, you come and you have different challenges to try and increase the performance.
If you had a choice, would you rather use all these programs in VR?
Yeah, the reason being is because I would rather paint in three-dimensional space. For me, it seems more organic, You know? Because it's like, if you think about it, you're going to plant a plant, you're touching the plant, you're moving the plant, you know, you're interacting with the plant. It's the same thing. There's no limit to your canvas. Working in three-dimensional space, for me, seems so much more natural than doing it in 2D, but that's just me. I think if you're using 2D programs, the precision is by far better than it is in 3D. However, that's changing now. We're starting to see certain things being developed now since all of these art programs have come about. You can do a lot more with it now and there is more precision than when I first started. Like the Trevi, for example, I did that all by accident. There was no snap. The first brush stroke was a snap. That was it. You can't do anything else. I was using reference photos to create that and there was no precision. So that's the downside. Say you wanted to make an asset that if you were to print it out would be 5 by 10 feet. You can't. You can do that now, but you couldn't do it then because there was no tool that would help you measure real-world measures inside of 3D space. But all that's changing now. Blender now has Freebird, which is a VR plugin where you can do stuff in VR now. My biggest fear is that certain companies just limit people to Maya, Blender, this and that, instead of embracing three-dimensional programs that you can use in VR. Because I think you get a different style. You get a different feel for it. It's just different. It doesn't mean that one's better than the other. Why not embrace it? Since we're embracing VR and AR and all that other stuff, why not embrace all this other stuff a little bit better? You know?
How can we stay updated on what you're creating?
Instagram is my favorite account anyway, I'll post things there. I'm also on Twitter/X, and my store is the Unique VR Art Boutique, or you can look up ZandyXR and you'll see it. That website is where I have two clothing lines, one is called the Artisan Collection and one is the Casual Collection. The Artisan Collection is very raw VR patterns that I've taken from my artwork, and there are only a certain few pieces that I use for that. For that collection, I work with a distributor out of London and they hand sew everything. You can choose the material you want and the hardware for pocketbooks, for example, or raincoats or anything like that. For shirts, you can choose the type of fabric you want. I just put my designs on them and it's made to order. So that's very special.
As our interview comes to a close, what words do you want to leave the audience with?
You can always come back and redo your creations, and as your skills improve, you can make new ones. Just focus on your passion and go for it. That's the best advice I can give you.