A VR sketchbook

Tilt Brush studies, and a short cinematic series that never quite became a story.

Around the same time as the 360° video experiments, I was exploring Tilt Brush, Gravity Sketch, Blender and Unity to make 3D, VR-friendly illustrations — best viewed in a headset, but interactive enough with a mouse. Most of it started as simple forest and tree studies, comparing brushes. That led to an attempt at something more ambitious: a short cinematic series called Fionn, combining Tilt Brush sketches with Unity scene-building and a bit of Adobe Premiere Rush editing — skyboxes, character studies, a background scene for a story that never got further than a few test scenes, loosely inspired by The Táin (Thomas Kinsella's translation, illustrated by Louis le Brocquy).

The 3D pieces below are live Sketchfab embeds — drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Forest & tree studies

First Sketch

A simple forest built with the matte hull brush — efficient for VR, lighter on close-up detail.

Tilt Brush

Forest Scene

A larger forest, playing with fog to give the illusion of depth and space.

Tilt Brush

Tree Series: #1

Mixing wire and spike brushes on a single tree — the textures fight each other more than they should.

Tilt Brush

Tree Series: #2

Second tree, icing brush this time — quick, about twenty minutes, foliage still untackled.

Tilt Brush

Tree Series: #3

Third and quickest tree — matte hull brush, efficient for VR but light on cinematic detail.

Tilt Brush

The Fionn series

Book Series: #1

Comparing wire, matte hull and marker brushes on a book scene — the opening beat of the Fionn story.

Tilt Brush

Character Series: #1

Early character-building technique — mirror tool for symmetry, matte hull for the head, wire for hair.

Tilt Brush

Character Series: #2 (Fionn)

The first finished pass of Fionn himself, built from eight different brushes — rough, but a character at last.

Tilt Brush

Fionn cinematics

Fionn Series: Intro YOUTUBE

Halloween Ambience YOUTUBE

Fionn Series: Background YOUTUBE