What if you could walk into a painting? Not just one painting, but a series of them—all unlike one another, but sewed together seamlessly within one universe. Australian illustrator and designer Sutu, real name Stuart Campbell, is an artist known to wield technology and art together in his work. His latest artistic tool wasn’t a paintbrush nor any other regular run-of-the-mill art program. Instead, he crafted his latest work in VR, using the art-creation tool Tilt Brush, to awaken what might be one of his grandest creations yet: SUTUWERLD.
SUTUWERLD is a four-room Tilt Brush project. The player has the ability to walk through the rooms—as you can in anything made in Tilt Brush. But Sutu’s experiment is far grander. “The main thing for me was trying to use Tilt Brush in a way that didn’t look like every other Tilt Brush painting,” Sutu told The Creators Project. “I wanted my paintings to be worlds that encourage you to walk through and explore.” Sutu achieves a serious sense of scale with SUTUWERLD, one that’s felt in a pointed mixed reality collaboration with technology artist Jaymis Loveday (creator of the first music video crafted within Tilt Brush), embedded above.
SUTUWERLD has an otherworldly quality
Despite being virtual, in Tilt Brush every stroke of paint looks hand-applied. Paintings look more like rough sketches, and that unpolished quality is part of what makes them work so well. Players can create their own art, or they can just admire others’ works up close and personal and see the imprints of their personal style. When Sutu entered the world of Tilt Brush for two straight days to craft SUTUWERLD, he wanted to imbue his works with life, as if they were living paintings.
Tilt Brush may elicit plenty of creativity from its users, but Sutu’s not wrong in implying that after awhile, they mostly share the same schtick. And in a way, art within Tilt Brush all have a very particular look about them—one that can only be crafted in virtual reality, and not in a real life landscape. SUTUWERLD shares this otherworldly quality, but expands on it by diversifying his style per “room.” A world where the viewer can view a monotone, simplistic smoking man in the same experience that they waltz into a grandiose battle of hypercolorful mechas. And it’s all a part of Sutu’s singular, wondrous vision.
You can check out part one, two, three, and four of SUTUWERLD on Sutu’s Youtube.
