Interview with Zayee: Part 2
Part of the "VR is Alive" Artist Spotlight Series
For part 2 of this interview (part one here) we are fortunate to have Zayee (he/him) joining us to chat about his creations in social VR! Zayee joins us from VRChat, where he specializes in building what could be considered spooky 👻 worlds.
: What part of the creative process do you like the most? Specifically, what type of development (modeling, animation, etc.) is your favorite aspect of dealing with the software?
Zayee: Definitely Unity and putting things together to make a different scenes. I enjoy modeling. I don't do a lot of materials and stuff but I do model some things. The fact that these ideas come straight from my mind and I'm able to just copy and paste from my mind into Unity is very satisfying. I really enjoy doing that in general.
Do you feel that the process of using Unity or Blender or some other part of software limits your creativity?
Of course not. Yeah, I don't think Blender or Unity are limiting at all. If you have an idea in your mind, I guarantee that you can do it. If you put your heart into it, you can do it. Use your heart to create and not your mind, creating art comes with loving what you do. I promise it's doable. Especially learning Blender. There are a lot of tools out there now with Blender, so you really can make anything! The resources and tutorials for those tools are also out there. I'm self-taught because I like figuring out random stuff in Blender. Making really cool stuff from just pressing buttons is satisfying to me. But yeah, not limiting at all. I think we're in a good spot for creating anything that we want.
How do you follow through or keep up with ideas that you have before you start building? Do you have a list you keep with worlds or assets to work on?
I have my own private Discord that has a big list of ideas on there. I think if I were to make a world from each of my individual Discord channels that have world ideas in it, I'd probably have 100-200 worlds on my list because I come up with ideas all the time. Whenever I come up with an idea, I go to my own Discord, make a new channel, name the channel or whatever that world name is going to be, then write notes in the journals and stuff like that. I have a huge archive of ideas and yeah that's how I keep up with that process before I actually make stuff. If I really like the idea, I'll make it and that's how half of my worlds become a thing today. But the majority of them are private so it doesn't even matter.
My mind kept telling me "hey this needs to be this far away from this and this needs to be perfect", but if you just build with your heart, I think it'll take you pretty far.
Where do you find the "spark" whenever you see an idea that you know you want to make out of all the ideas you have? What in an idea do you find that makes you say "Okay. I'm going to make this"?
Well, like I said before, a big part of my ideas come from what type of music I'm listening to or an experience that I had in real life. Usually if I know I'm able to expand the idea for a long time I usually go with that. For example, my main big project is called Dream Decay and if you've seen my worlds you probably know what it is. Dream Decay branches off into multiple worlds in my uploads. It branches off to more worlds on my list such as _00001, _00600, and there's a couple more. But yeah, it started off as just a regular idea of being trapped in your dreams and the only way to wake up is to go through these TVs within your dream and get a part of your brain back. I figured that I can expand a lot from that concept, so I went with it.
I like being able to expand upon my ideas because it keeps me going. It keeps me motivated to see what I can do. Another good example is a project called Distant Noise. This was supposed to be my Spookality submission two years ago, but again, I didn't finish it. The world that connects to Distant Noise is VHS Store, which is also on my account and that one's public, of course. That one's like a teaser/DLC almost, like pre-DLC before Distant Noise and that world connects to lore for the main horror map that's not out yet. But yeah, a majority of my worlds on my list, they expand from something. There's always a branch and extra part to it because I like doing that, I like continuing stuff and adding on to multiple ideas in different worlds.
I'm thinking back here to my experience in VHS since there's a fair bit of role play involved when I was there. I'm curious about how you create your worlds and then remain present in your worlds.
Realistically, I like immersing the player, so me being there and helping players get into the mood of what kind of place this is. It helps the immersive experience, right? Because if I'm there, I'm able to control certain stuff and I think people will start to get the gist of what kind of messed up place that the VHS Store is. Think of the underground church...I'm there. If you talk down there, I will probably send you down further to like purgatory or something. But also, who said it was role play? Because you never see those faces again.Â
I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But yeah, I just like immersing the player. So I try to be there to host events and stuff for my group.
What general advice do you have for newer social VR world builders?
I think the main advice I would mention is build with your heart. I see a lot of creators build too much with their mind and they overthink with perfectionism and oh, this should be this, this should be that. Just let it flow man. You'll notice with creators like DrMorro and his worlds Organism and Epilogue, that he was just building stuff and it's art and it's beautiful. I'm not sure if he had an idea or anything, but you'll notice how his world isn't perfect. You'll see like a lot of uneven edges and stuff that's not symmetrical, and that's what makes it art. Not everything has to be symmetrical. Not everything has to be perfect. Make stuff man. That was one of the things I struggled with a lot when I started making stuff. The Backrooms for sure, because I tried to make Backrooms as perfect as I could before I realized that was limiting. My mind kept telling me "hey this needs to be this far away from this and this needs to be perfect", but if you just build with your heart, I think it'll take you pretty far.
Are there any software tools in particular that you like that made life easier for you, that you’d like to share/recommend with the audience?
I'm probably the same as every other world creator. I use the classic trio of Unity, Blender, and Substance. Those three programs complement each other really well. You go from Blender to Substance to Unity or vice versa. I know some people do. They go to Unity straight into Substance, and if you know what you're doing, those three programs in particular are really nice to work with. Even Photoshop as well! I have been into Photoshop sometimes to fix simple textures for worlds.Â
I think being able to connect those three programs is a really good practice. Being able to go from Unity to Blender instead of from Blender to Unity is a decent practice. If you need references from what you've made in Unity, you can figure out what you need to do in Blender from Unity. Same with Substance Painter. But being able to have that skill to go back and forth between programs is really helpful. And creating that workflow is helpful as well.
Lastly, do you have any new worlds that you're building right now that you can tell us about? When will they be ready? And how can we stay updated on that?
My latest world that I'm working on is a project called Ergophobia, which is the fear of working. It's a four-player co-op, I'm putting up quotations, "horror map", where the players must work together to break out of a workplace. Each objective will complement the other player's objective. For example, this player can't enter this room without another player turning on the power, and those are things that only the individual player can do. I've been working on that project for a while. This is a very, very late Spookality project. Because of life, I've been so busy and haven't had time to work on it. But if it's not Ergophobia, it's this project, which is the Dream Decay universe and all the other worlds and stuff. Last but not least, I am working on the second part of Backrooms. Those three projects are the three projects that I'm working on. I'm also working on my own game, my own RPG Maker game.Â
If anybody would ever like to stay up to date with what I do, they can follow me on Twitter @mixdog, and I have a Discord as well. In the Discord, I publish work-in-progress pictures and stuff like that. Those are the two main ways to stay up to date with me.