KINGSPRAY GRAFFITI | NEWBIE vs EXPERTS

For this review, we’re changing things up a bit, as I’m lucky to know a community of excellent local graffiti artists who are masters of their craft, so we’re going to let a couple of them have their say on Kingspray Graffiti.  Ravesh D. and Lukas had never used VR before, so we had an hour before firing up Kingspray letting them get a feel for using the Quest, which more than impressed both of them. Once they’d both started to get their heads around it (and I initially had to promise them we’d come back to Superhot to get them to change to Kingspray), they gave this title some serious attention.

I’ll convey their individual thoughts on the title, and then offer my own notes and score by way of our ‘official’ review.

It’s the Feel

You have to get good and be good to get a good result. But the thing is I must have spent aw man, a lot of money on cans to get good. A lot of money. And that’s not having the other stuff too, like all the tips and the pearlescent sh!#. Hundreds of colours and finishes here, it’s @!#*ing crazy, though. I’m trying stuff on here that I have never tried out there. I can’t afford it! And you move around just like you’d expect. For me, it’s the feel. You forget you’re using the control things and just… It tricks you into thinking you’re using a can, and it acts just like it. Obviously, the shape of the can’s different, yeah, but I mean the feel is the same. And the menu sh!# isn’t complicated, it kind of acts like you’d expect. Obviously, in the real world, you wouldn’t have a million colours or whatever.

IT’S GONNA STAY @!#* ED UP

Ohhhh, the drips, man. It’s just what it should be like. And no undo thing. If you @!#* it up, its gonna stay @!#*ed up until you spray over it, I like that. If you’re starting out with graffiti, you going to get used to that real quick – because it’s costing you a lot of time and money. I wish I would have had this, man. You know, four years ago. It feels natural and real. It’s a bit @!#*ed up you can’t spray on some of the bits, like in the subway train bit. There’s some places the paint won’t take at all, like the computer is like, blanking you. So that’s weird. It reminds me of the fact I’m not actually doing it. But man this is @!#*ing crazy, I need one of these. I wish it did this thing where you could smell the cans, that paint smell as it comes out, though! That’s the only thing I would say is really missing.

THE ZONE

I mean I was saying to Rav, you run out of things to say because it’s real. You don’t think when you’re spraying ‘oh this is real, this is blowing my mind’. You just get into the zone with it. You forget you’re in there. I just concentrate on what I’m doing. It’s so awesome, I can’t say. I love that you can just walk around, you can pick a spot, and have at it, yeah? It’s so much freedom, and no-one’s gonna have a go at you for it. 

ALL YEAR IN THAT VIRTUAL THING

If it was me, if I was really picky, I’d say let me head out with a few cans. Just pick the cans you want from the shelves and head out then. So you’d be picking up the cans from your bag or the floor, you know the colours you had. That’s when it makes me feel I’m in the virtual world, the menu and the picking colours from a wheel. It’s like an app then, not the real world. But I get to use a hundred colours at once here. Makes me look better than I am. I normally do monochrome, black and white, two or three colours. It’s how I learned because it’s cheaper and it’s less to carry. But man, I could spend all year in that virtual thing, seriously, because you can just let your mind run free with it. All over.

TUNES AND VIBE

Did I say about the music? Oh man, I thought I was going to just slide on Spotify and use my own playlist or whatever, but Kingspray Graffiti has some tracks I never heard before that are @!#*ing A, and they aren’t even in a genre really or anything. Usually, when they do ‘street’ stuff like this you get some guy from EA, some office guy, sat in his office thinking ‘we’ll put some NWA on yeah?’ and that’s it, but this is all over the shop! It’s great, and I wasn’t expecting it. It’s so chill, the tunes and vibe of it, I wish it could be like that more often outside. 

KINGSPRAY GRAFFITI | DOC SAYS

I’m not a professional graffiti artist by any means, but I find Kingspray Graffiti every bit as wonderful as Lukas and Rav do. It’s a liberating and extremely well-executed title, with a huge amount of attention to detail. Everything feels convincing and slick, and there’s a pleasing array of environments to explore and spray away in. The graphics are very impressive, and the sound is acutely observed and immersive.

A special mention must be made of the soundtrack. There’s a lot of really excellent music on Kingspray Graffiti that suits the title perfectly, some of it entirely unexpected. It’s presented as different ‘radio’ stations, so there are different moods, all of which are surprisingly likeable and groovy. 

Editorial note: Sadly, the Scrcpy capture of the Kingspray Graffiti session with Rav and Lukas didn’t work out, but they have both agreed to record another and bring some graffiti artist friends along with them… So look for another 6DoF Kingspray feature soon!

There’s a delightful children’s book by seminal illustrator Quentin Blake called Angel Pavement. In it, a pair of rather gobby angels give a street artist a pencil that can draw in air. The resulting 3D doodles come to life in a colourful way and delight everybody who sees them. Google’s astonishing Tilt Brush is the VR equivalent of that concept, and it represents a significant milestone in the history of this new medium. Its release on Quest, alongside Gravity Sketch, makes Oculus’ little wonder something of a must-have for creatives and designers of all kinds.

THE VIEW BELONGS TO EVERYONE

This is not to say, however, that Tilt Brush has nothing to offer the casual user. It’s almost ridiculously easy to use, and its accessibility and sense of fun mean that there’s no barrier to entry. The very idea of drawing in mid-air in 3D space is obviously brilliant but can be grasped immediately by anyone wearing the headset. In the many sessions I’ve had introducing the Quest to friends, family, and colleagues new to VR (VRgins?), it is Tilt Brush that is universally adored. It entrances all who use it. The sense of childlike wonder it engenders in the user can’t be conveyed, it has to be experienced.

There’s no real barrier to entry here – if you can use your hands, you can create in Tilt Brush. You can draw with pure light, in any colour imaginable. The simple but powerful controls are perfectly easy to (literally) grasp; the palette with tools and colours in one hand, brush in the other.

It’s an excellent fit for the Quest controllers and feels effortless. You can create solid 3D shapes, scenery; daub rude bits on a snowman, or create trippy, pulsating tendrils of neon and then set them on fire. Tilt Brush rises to meet the imagination of the user and provides a creative platform for those who might otherwise feel they can’t draw.

FEEL THE NOISE

Worth special mention is the efforts Google have gone to to make Tilt Brush a convincing sensory experience, rather than an abstract one. Not only are many of the brushes animated, but everything makes an entirely appropriate sound with positional audio. Draw past your ear, and you’ll hear your selected tool move past you – be that the scratching of a pencil or the synthy pulsing of the neon tube brush. It seems like a small thing, but adds so much delight to the experience, and is another reason just to let go and have fun with it.

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Tilt Brush is already being used by artists to create incredible works, many of which can be explored in the gallery section. If you’ve experienced Vader Immortal (and you really should), then you will have experienced the part in which exposition explodes all around you, an animated 3D storybook. That was created in Tilt Brush, and only hints at the possibilities.

Tilt Brush legitimately represents a new way of creating art. It transcends age and ability, yet also provides talented artists with a unique platform to showcase and even transform the way they create. Tilt Brush is already being used in many different contexts; art installations, schools, and also for new forms of art therapy. Most importantly, it represents a massive amount of fun. It’s liberating and expressive, and its appeal is universal.