Exploring Baobab Studios and their latest works.

1. EXPLORING BAOBAB STUDIO
AND THEIR ANIMATED 360
VIDEO
CLAUDIA RHODEN
CT 419

2. BRIEF OVERVIEW
• Located in: Redwood City, California
• Founded in 2015
• Deals with film production, graphic design, and virtual reality.
• Number of employees: 11-50

3. BAOBAB STUDIOS AND THEIR FOCUS
Baobab Studios creates Virtual Reality animation experiences. Through
compelling stories, believable characters, immersive worlds, beautiful art, and
high-quality animation, we aim to bring out your sense of wonder and inspire
you to dream again.
Other 360 videos:
• Rainbow Crow
• Asteroids!
• Invasion!

4. INTRODUCING THE BAOBAB TEAM
Mareen Fan, Chief Executive Officer
v Held leadership roles in gaming and the consumer
web
v Vice president of games at Zynga
v Worked on Pixar’s “Toy Story3” film
v Most recent collaboration “The Dam Keeper”, was
nominated for the 2015 Best animated short film.
Eric Chief, Creative Officer
v Career spans 25 years as a computer animation
director, screenwriter, story artist, film director and
executive producer
v Director and screenwriter all four films of
“Madagascar”
v Executive producer on “The Penguins of
Madagascar”
v Directed DreamWorks first animation film “Antz”

5. Michael Hutchinson, Chief Scientist
v Spent the last 10 years working in artistic and technical
roles in the animation industry.
v Technical lead for all character technology at
DreamWorks
Animation.
Larry Cutler, Chief Technical Officer
v Brings deep technical leadership over the past 20
years.
v Began his career at Pixar Animation Studios .
v Technical Director on the films Monster’s Inc., Toy
Story2, and A Bug’s Life.

6. INVESTORS

7. ASTEROIDS AND INVASION PROJECT

8. WHY MAKE A SEQUEL?
• We wanted to go further in that, because in INVASION!, you can’t actually
help the bunny except by moving around and using your body as a shield
between her and the aliens. But then the Touch controllers came out, and we
were like, “Oh my gosh, this is great. We can let you actually help the other
characters out in a more in-depth way rather than just moving your body
around.” We wanted to take advantage of that, and find a way to turn that
empathy that you feel for the characters into action—where you could really
be part of the story and actually help the characters, so you feel a sense of
responsibility for them but you’re no longer constrained. In a movie theater,
you feel really bad for a character, you love a character, but you can’t do
anything about it. How do we actually let you help—or harm—the other
characters?

9. COMPANY’S SUCCESS
• We think the reason why we were able to raise such a round in such a short
amount of time is given to the traction that we’ve had from the Series A
through now. We only founded about a year ago, so traction means
introducingInvasion! Consumer adoption-wise, Invasion! is one of the most
popular—if not the most popular—pieces of content out there in VR. We are
on just about every single platform: the HTC Vive, we launched day one on
the PSVR (PlayStation VR), we’re on Oculus Rift, on [Samsung] Gear VR, and
on Within, Hulu, Jaunt, etc.

10. COMPANY’S SUCCESS CONT.
• Baobab Studios has been dubbed the “Pixar of VR,” which is quite a feat given
the studio was just founded in 2015. But the startup already has a pair of VR
animated shorts to its name, Invasion! and Asteroids! (which launches early
next year) following the humorous relationship between a cute and fuzzy
bunny and a pair of aliens. Those shorts, written and directed by ex-
DreamWorks Animation writer/director Eric Darnell, have attracted the
attention of both Hollywood and venture capitalists.

11. WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOES NOT WORK
What works ?
Ø 3 degrees of freedom
Ø Clear graphics
Ø Doesn’t lag
Ø Response time to movement is fairly
good
What does not work?
Ø Does not have 6 degrees of freedom

12. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
• My personal experience of the videos were amazing. The graphics
were cool, and both sides of the camera were perfectly far apart
that it created one picture like how it suppose to be. Like the
company said, they wanted you to make you feel like you were
apart of it. I was using a Google cardboard kit so I’m pretty sure I
didn’t see the graphics at it’s best, but working with virtual reality
is something I don’t do everyday so everything seems cool to me
at the moment.

13. WHOSE DOING SIMILAR WORK?
• StartVR

14. WHAT DID STARTVR PRODUCE THAT WAS SIMILAR?

17. COMPARISON
• The graphics on Baobab’s 360 videos are better than StartVR’s
projects. Went WorthVR was a little off with making the
spacing between the eyes to make the picture blend together
to make one solid visual.
• Also with StartVR’s project, you can’t turn your head all the
way around, if you do, the video will stop playing. On the
other hand, you can turn your head all the way around in
Baobab’s 360 videos without the screen shutting off.

18. OVERALL EXPERIENCE
• My overall experience was fun to interact with. It’s
something new that I’ve never experienced before. I’ve
never dealt with virtual reality games or videos. I like that
virtual reality makes you feel like you’re actually there.
There are tools out there that even make you interact
with the characters, that’s something new that I’ve
learned while researching about VR.

19. LOOKING INSIDE BAOBAB STUDIOS
• https://youtu.be/nWu2xsoxW-Y

20. SOURCES
• https://www.oculus.com/blog/vr-visionaries-baobab-studios/
• https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/baobab-studios - section-
overview
• http://www.alistdaily.com/media/baobab-studios-expands-vr-entertainment-
bunny-power/
• https://startvr.co/studio/
• https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wentworth-vr/id1324336732?mt=8
• https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/baobab-
studios/investors/investors_list - section-investors