--- title: Georges Méliès Honored With Virtual Reality Google Doodle description: The newest Google Doodle, and the first one to be done in virtual reality, honors the French filmmaker and illusionist Georges Méliès canonical: https://time.com/5262946/google-doodle-vr-georges-melies/ author: Lisa Eadicicco article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-05-03T04:04:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-12T20:10:52.000Z og:title: Google's First VR Doodle Honors French Filmmaker Georges Méliès og:description: The Google Doodle pays tribute to Méliès' groundbreaking work in special effects og:url: https://time.com/5262946/google-doodle-vr-georges-melies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltec04a649c2f7e3e2/69892f62db298725b825f8e3/google-virtual-reality-doodle.png?branch=production&width=651&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 651 og:image:height: 366 og:image:alt: Google Virtual Reality Doodle og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Google's First VR Doodle Honors French Filmmaker Georges Méliès twitter:description: The Google Doodle pays tribute to Méliès' groundbreaking work in special effects twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltec04a649c2f7e3e2/69892f62db298725b825f8e3/google-virtual-reality-doodle.png?branch=production&width=651&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The First Virtual Reality Google Doodle Honors French Filmmaker Georges Méliès > Sponsored content. 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It curates the day's top headlines with TIME's reporting and analysis across politics, world affairs, business, health and culture. It is free to join at time.com/newsletters. #### How do I sign up for The Brief? The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ## Video: How Google Makes its Doodles [Watch (HLS stream): How Google Makes its Doodles](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/upF0qp1E.m3u8) (3:23)  _Published 2018-07-07. Our videographer went to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California to meet some of the designers and coders who create the special, clever variations on the Google.com logo known as_  by [Lisa Eadicicco](https://time.com/author/lisa-eadicicco/)  ## Lisa Eadicicco Updated: Dec 12, 2023 8:10 PM UTCPublished: May 3, 2018 4:04 AM UTC  A scene from Google's first virtual reality Doodle celebrating Georges Méliès. A scene from Google's first virtual reality Doodle celebrating Georges Méliès. Google  by [Lisa Eadicicco](https://time.com/author/lisa-eadicicco/)  ## Lisa Eadicicco Updated: Dec 12, 2023 8:10 PM UTCPublished: May 3, 2018 4:04 AM UTC In 1998, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin added [a stick figure drawing](https://www.google.com/doodles/about) to their company’s homepage as a fun way to let visitors know they were out of office attending the Burning Man festival in Nevada. This gave rise to the company’s famous Google Doodles, which are usually designed to honor important historical events, influential people, and holidays, and have become a mainstay for the search engine ever since. Now, 20 years later, Google is launching its first ever Doodle in virtual reality to celebrate Georges Méliès, the French filmmaker and illusionist that some have called the “[father of special effects.”](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/28/entertainment/la-et-georges-melies-20111128) Google is timing the Doodle’s launch to coincide with the release date of one of Méliès’ popular works, “À la conquête du pôle (The Conquest of the Pole),” which was released in 1912. Google’s short film pays homage to Méliès’ legacy as a magician, filmmaker, and visual artist. The Doodle starts with Méliès setting up a camera in front of a black-and-white scene showing the moon, several stars, and a rocket ship, likely a tribute to his famous film _A Trip to the Moon_. Similar references are made throughout the Doodle, including a scene in which a cartoon version of Méliès emerges from a giant playing card, as he does in his film _The Living Playing Cards_, which was released in 1905. Google Doodles have evolved from stationary images to videos and interactive games over the past decade, but this marks the first time Google is bringing its Doodles into VR. The project was a joint effort between Google Spotlight Stories, Google Arts & Culture, and French film organization Cinémathèque Française. The themes for Google Doodles are usually plucked from thousands of pitches coming from both inside and outside of the company, Jonathan Shneier, an engineer on Google’s Doodle division, [told TIME in 2015](http://time.com/4152553/google-doodles-doodler-job/). The team then turns those ideas into feasible topics, with the goal of representing people of all races, genders, and ethnicities and countries from all over the globe. Those who want to view the Google Doodle can do so through Google’s Cardboard or Daydream virtual reality viewers after downloading the company’s Spotlight Stories app. Without a headset, it’s also possible to check out the Doodle as a 360-degree video on Google’s Spotlight Stories YouTube channel. ## Transcript >> The Doodle team was able to meet Ira Glass from This American Life, and he was just meeting us for fun. I guess, I'm not even sure why he was here, but we talked about potentially collaborating and they thought that it'd be fun to collaborate with us on Valentine's Day, so I took the lead on this project. >> We do Valentine's Day pretty much every year, and we've done your typical like lovebirds and, you know, flowers and things like that. But Ira and his team are awesome. >> They were able to pull stories that they have collected over the years, they've recorded new stories for us, and they're all about love in all different respects of the word. They sent us maybe 8 or 10 stories and they're all really fun and really sweet. >> The stories run the [ unk ]. There is a story about middle school love. >> I was in the cafeteria, just got on a drink of root beer and she walks up to me. >> There is a story about a new bride who's in doubt that she made a mistake. >> My husband, me and I, we're just so worried, his face I could tell. I said, " Where he could be ," you know, and I-- and I called the police because I thought he got lost or something happened. >> When I first got the audio from Ira, my co- worker and I listened to it together and we wrote down bullet points of where we wanted to have a little drawing come up. >> One of my favorite stories, it involves middle schoolers. We're titling it, " Puppy Love" so true to the title, I just-- I just drew everyone as a dog. >> Each stories are-- containing a little candy heart. >> And when you click on it, the heart will flip, the audio will play and you will also see the images that we've drawn to accompany the phrases. So, now we are all going to brainstorms together because we need the creative side and we also need the technical side to tell us what is possible and what isn't possible. For this one, it's a pretty conservative on the interactive side, because we didn't want to overshadow the audio. When I first started, they were no engineers on the team, we only did static doodles, but since then, we've started doing more animated stuff, more interactive work, and for that we needed a dedicated team. >> Some of our most like ambitious to those have come from engineers that are just incredibly talented and spare similar time for our projects. >> Sometimes the illustrators will come up with an idea that is way too wacky and just not possible yet. The technology hasn't been invented, but sometimes we're too conservative and it's great to have the engineers there to tell us that we can actually be way wackier with our ideas. The relationship with my engineer on this was to just keep my files size at a reasonable capacity, I was getting a little bit ambitious with how many frames I wanted to draw and my engineers said, " Hey, you need to double it ." >> We tried to do as many doodles as we possibly can. We're a pretty small team, relative to how many audiences are out there [ unk ], but yeah, we-- you never know what you're gonna get. 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