This project is a preliminary experiment on VR (virtual reality) panoramic video technology in the field of children’s common sense education. VR technology, as a new industry, is still in the exploratory stage, although it can be used in many areas such as electronic game, life, entertainment, retail, education, and engineering. Recently, it is has become popular and developed rapidly.

The project aims to make a simple and artistic video for children. When they watch the video, they would be able to acquire an aesthetic sensory experience and vividly understand the principles of the knowledges. Therefore, some artistic elements and style were chosen from the famous paintings to create visual arts by employing After Effects to output the 360-degree video. By demonstrating combination of art and technology, children will be able to understand the knowledge better.

Teachers and parents do not need to explain the theory to children with the same scientific pictures. Children are able to use their own digital products to watch the VR panoramic videos and study by themselves.

During the project, the first step was to do literature review. Regarding the shape recognition and imagination of children, the concept of the abstract artist “Kandinsky” is chosen as the design reference.

The art revelation might help kids understand art and inspire imagination through a simple combination of geometric shapes. Children, who are between at the age of 5-10, were chosen as a target group, and they will unconsciously get in touch with the arts and learn about natural sciences through interesting videos and forms.

Water cycle might be a good choice for the project, There are many elementary schools, which are still using traditional pictures to explain how the rain formed. There are many videos on the Internet, but it is not likely to find interesting and artistic videos. Since the water circulation system is a natural science phenomenon, it exists in our surroundings. Hence, creating a VR 360 ° panoramic video would help children immerse in this environment and experience changes in natural phenomena.

By this idea, I created my mood-board and learn how to paint the panoramic picture in Photoshop. Panoramic background is quite important for the next video production. We can use a grid to assist in drawing a 360 scene in a 3D workspace and then export a panoramic picture.

Before I started to make a video, I had drawn a storyboard to decide the development of the story and the related elements. It mainly showed the rise of water vapor on the ocean and land, condensed into clouds, and finally, through the raining, the water return to the ocean and land.

During the production of After Effect, I tried two production methods.
First one, I imported 7 panoramic pictures to make the scene change, then added the effects which name CC environment, and created a camera with 15mm. We can see the way was easy to do the camera move and add animation. But I still want to try a stereo 3D scene.

The second method was that I drew each shape in different layer and created a center camera that all the shapes can surround the camera at a sufficient distance. This way can create more realistic 3D stereoscopic scenes. It took a long time to adjust the spatial position and it requires the editor to have a strong sense of space in order to accurately control the position and orientation of each object in the X, Y, and Z-axes.

When I finished all background, I began to add character’s animation. In my video, I created one bird and two fishes to explore the movement in 360-degree video.

In this part, I used the VR editor in AE for video editing. Here I used the second method to create characters animation on different layers, and set different key frames in the meantime to ensure that bird and fishes move at different locations simultaneously. In this way, while the targets watch the video by using a VR player, the viewer could see the moving object at different angles during the same time. It is also a point in the VR panoramic video, which requires constant develops.

Finally, I chose Beethoven piano music as background music, meanwhile, add seagulls and water sounds effects. Then，I opened camera and output the video in Adobe Media Encoder. Audience could experience the immersive viewing by the hearing which obtains a full range of artistic experience, and learn the natural sciences.

In the project, I discovered that VR technology has a wide range of applications in science education. It does not only allow students to closely understand the principles of natural science, but also it helps the teaching model of educational institutions.

However, in order to create a better 360 panorama story video, when we set up the plot, we not only consider what is happening in front of us, what actions we have, but also need to consider what happens behind the scenes.

Another thing also should be mentioned, which are the camera's movement and shot editing. Some software is not able to output the camera zoom in and zoom out, which only could show the moving. In addition to that, people sometimes might feel dizzy, if camera moves or Rotate immensely. In the same way, the 360 video will also have a discomfort for cutting the frame, which make audiences go back to another place on the shot. I tried to make a cut-panoramic video, but the effect was not ideal, audiences could not get an immersive experience.

However, according a research, when VR panorama technology is used in film and television productions, the whole movie has only one shot and without any switch, it also is not advisable, because long-time videos are considered to be boring. Therefore, there is still necessary to explore and discuss the use