Google Spotlight commissioned Felix to produce the animated interactive story ‘Rain or Shine’, an enchanting 360? animation which follows Ella, a charismatic young girl who loves being outside in the sunshine, but whenever she puts her sunglasses on she’s thwarted - her very own raincloud appears above her head and sprinkles her with unwanted rain. The story warmly illustrates Ella’s frustration in wanting to wear her cool shades in the sunshine, and follows her amusing but futile attempts to dodge the rain.

When the project started the software was in pre-Alpha stages of development, it would eventually need to allow a user to look around and control a scene by changing their visual viewpoint to follow a story, just like in real-life and in real-time, but via a smartphone screen.

It was absolutely vital to the Google Spotlight project that the software was not developed in a vacuum, we needed on-going feedback from storytelling masterminds to create a tool which would tell a great story in a new way, but in a new way that adds something to the story. The best approach to achieve that was to collaborate with gifted directors, from a variety of genres, at the top of their game because their focus is on telling a story in the best, most engaging form.

It’s a real accolade to be chosen to collaborate in developing a brand-new storytelling software for the world’s most popular viewing device, the mobile phone. By exploring its creative potential for storytelling, particularly via animation, but without any structure or limitations then the content is just a visual experience, not a story. The storytelling skill lies in achieving a balance by using Spotlight in a way that adds to a story, not creating 360 immersive content just for the sake of it.

Rain or Shine has over 200k views on YouTube, half a million downloads on the app store and has also been awarded Best VR Motion Picture at Cinequest VR.