ERIC HANSON – FOUNDER

Blueplanet VR founder and lead developer Eric Hanson has an extensive background in design, architecture, photography and visual effects, working on major award winning feature films as leading VFX director at Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks, Dream Quest Images and Walt Disney Feature Animation.

Eric’s award-winning visual effects and design work can be seen in films such as “The Day After Tomorrow”, “Cast Away”, “Fantasia 2000” and “The Fifth Element”.

A passionate explorer, outdoorsman, Native American rock art enthusiast and expert hang gliding pilot, Eric is a Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Art in Los Angeles, leading and developing programs centered on film, visual effects, innovative emerging media, animation, film and virtual reality.

His innovative techniques toward comprehensive 360 environmental capture for immersive media projects in Fulldome, IMAX and VR lead to his present focus on full volumetric reconstruction for roomscale 6DOF VR, including projects for e.g. Bjork, MoMA Modern Museum of Art NYC, artist Ai WeiWei, Navajo artist Bert Benally, leading museums, The New York Times, and collaborations with many mission-driven international organizations focused on cultural heritage, nature and environmental protection, e.g. the Onward foundation and the Dunhuang Foundation.

A sought after international educator, speaker, and immersive film and photography thought leader, Eric’s high end immersive work and photography has been featured at prestigious events, film festivals and exhibitions around the world, e.g. the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Jackson Wild Film Festival, the Mountainfilm Festival, SIGGRAPH, AWE, and VRLA.

After co-founding and leading successful VFX and immersive media studio XRez Studios which focused on 360 capture technology, cultural heritage, and science visualization content, Eric founded Blueplanet VR in 2019 to focus more fully on nature and cultural heritage-related projects for virtual reality and related formats.

With its first version released in 2020, Blueplanet VR Explore is the company’s flagship product, featuring an ever-expanding range of unique, high quality VR experiences which have been captured using volumetric technology, allowing the viewer full freedom of movement — from sacred Buddhist temples to Icelandic waterfalls, from hidden Native Ameican sites acoss the US Southwest to deep caves, melting glaciers, volcano craters, and much more.

Recent work has led to collaborations with organizations such as the The Dunhuang Foundation, Frontline/PBS, The Navajo Nation, Ai Weiwei, and the Onward Project.

At USC Eric leads curriculum in Cinematic VR and Visual Effects, but mostly he wishes he could sleep more.

Read a recent interview with Eric in Voyage LA here: