We are closing the year with a review on top influence games that created amazing 3d animation movies. Should we say it backwards? Product merchandising really likes a solid strategy where there´s a game+movie deals. In this video we´ll explore some of the key aspects that really shone in this year with AAA+ video game production titles such as League of Legends (KDA skins), Dragon Ball Fighters Z, Honkai 3rd impact and many other honorable mentions influencing the non photorealistical render trends.
Videogames are big money machines, not only there are world championships for teams representing countries to compete for big checks, but combine that with a movie marketing strategy and you´re turning an entertainment full circle chain in a trans-media product. Because if you have the strategy, a community, the theme, the characters, physical merchandise and a deal for a movie production: your strategy is ready and it will make an impact.
Marketing trends. When games pair with movies.
We're going to see some of those aspects with the top games with amazing 3d animation movies that raised the bar for either the technical, artistic, or licensing achievements. Some well known characters have stood the test of time and are refreshing their story arcs, while others being classical heroes are re-inventing themselves with whole new possibilities on the world of entertainment.
League of Legends - KDA (MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena))
KDA is the name of the short movie animation created for League of Legends new character skins, featuring vivid colors, K-pop music, snappy lyrics and a feel of 80's retro neon color palette.
Their marketing strategy to keep the game alive is to renew the character's stories and custom skins with awesome 3D animation. Zeronis, Senior concept artist at Riot games designed the costumes for the Kpop animated video which grew by million views every week. The KDA video was produced by a French animation company called "Fortiche".
Some of the eye-catching scenes in the video happen on the the subway ride sequence where we can see Evilyn surrounding Akali while she is wearing a "talking" mask. If you pay close attention the mask even performs speech using a tongue. The laundry scene where Ahiri floats, surely represents the leaving behind their former costumes to launch themselves into a new team using their abilities.
Motion capture technology was used at the League of Legends World Cup Championship opening act to match the performance of the KDA group characters onto a live stage.
Honkai 3rd impact (Action RPG)
Honkai 3rd impact is a game originally from China aimed at top performance tablets. It´s an RPG tech strategy game combined with "beat them up" combos to defeat enemies using power up weapons and armors. The artistic achievement in their viral marketing movies take full advantage of 3d animation with very dynamic cameras and sequences.
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Once a mission or story arch is completed the in-game cinematics are a feast to the eye. But they also set these animated movies so that people who don´t know the game, can get the chance to play as one of these characters. These scenes are composited by layering passes and they use after effects even for such minor details as animating hair strands.
Honkai 3rd impact is such a good example to set the mood and the tone for the story by driving the cameras dynamically around the scene, giving you a sense of depth even if we are watching it behind a flat monitor.
And is in this principle I´ll be presenting the rest of the cases for the movie production based off a videogame, since the player IS already accustomed to be dynamically involved in such action cuts from the game cinematic scenes themselves.
On the fighting scene we clearly see tension develop between the characters, no longer animated by 3's or 2's but creating a detailed movement for sensible visual queues. Once again, making you part of the action by reveling depth from the character's point of view, animated in ones.
Most of the line details are directly drawn into the frame. Since the cuts are short, this is nothing that studios cannot handle. They normally work on hundreds of drawings by hand, so what´s a little help by doing it over an existing image? The result = pure gold.
miHoYo Anime is the company that produces the Honkai 3rd impact movies.
DragonBall Fighters Z (Fighting)
Following the trend of classic series, Dragon Fighters Z is a video game created by Arc System Works, the company who brought you Guilty Gear XXrd. Currently they are working on a new title with the same 2D anime look called "GranBlue Fantasy" for the PS4 and just this last quarter of the year, they released an early preview of the "Kill-la-kill" videogame spinoff from the series by Studio Trigger.
Dragon Ball Z brilliantly created a new story arc last year where Goku awakened the Ultra-sense. Fans were eager to see this in the game and it also delivered a new Villain called Android 21. We see old familiar faces, and appreciate all the artwork (even the smear frames) that were created using 3D animation.
Now, before going to the real stuff behind marketing strategies from games to movies, let´s recall some honorable mentions in that category.
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Monster Strike (Training and skills adventure mechanics)
Monster Strike is a very popular and successful videogame for tablets and high end phones whose original animated series have been awarded in Japan with innovation for the 3D animation industry. Their shaders are really wonderful to admire. Some of the animated scenes are clean motion capture data with physics applied to hair.
Chapters are 10 mintues long for season 4. They publish on youtube every Saturday morning reaching many thousands viewers. If you haven´t seen monster strike by studio XFlag, go check it out on their official channel.
The Dragon Prince (Season 1 - Netflix)
Another honorable mention is for Netflix's the Dragon Prince, not that this is a videogame franchise, but it´s a very appreciated visual product for streaming services. Season 1 was launched on November and will surely continue for a second season. The characters are well constructed and I gotta say I was amazed for the quality of the show all together regarding NPR animation.
Sonder (Unity 3D game engine)
Last but not least SONDER is a story produced in UNITY 3D game engine. Producers wanted to see how a realtime project would be generated for stylized animation. All though Unity 3D game engine was prepared with some special addons and scripts to generate different kind of passes like motion blur, shadows, diffuse and others, the result is something to delight on. A very simple story about a man who wants to keep the love of his life by protecting a little blue plant. Here again, we see the camera work excell on giving depth to struggling scenes.
Last but not least we'll talk about how a well equipped strategy covers every aspect not only for videogames but also as aesthetics for future NPR movies.
Of course we want to talk about Spiderman.
Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse
With amazing download content to carry on new missions, we see the Marvel´s franchise through all videogame consoles lead the pointers to -yet another Spiderman movie- but not just any movie. "Spiderman into the Spiderverse" will introduce Miles Morales, a young teenage boy who will meet other spider heroes from other universes.
The art style for this movie took around 2 years to be fully developed in what we see today in the movie. I personally liked the design of the characters in this movie, they seem fresh, very well defined set of universe-rules that will totally immerse you into the story.
This frame already made movie history as the cinematography is very clear, readable, exciting. The artists want to know what do you think about the movie, so they kindly let the social media do it´s job on twitter using the hashtag #Spiderverse
The director of the movie is Peter Ramsey.Spiderman into the Spiderverse has been nominated by a lot of film experts as a quality movie for art direction, plot, and even rotten tomatoes gave it a 98% positive review, truly making history for a 3d animated feature length movie.
Even the hashtag #Spidersona started to crawl the web on twitter after the first week's premiere of the movie.
Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (continued..)
If you check the movie, the cartoon parts are hilarious, but overall Miles Morales is presented as a normal kid with normal problems, I guess this is what clicks with the audience. To have someone very human, with fears and doubts. This is why I believe this Movie will definitely be a winner at the Golden Globes for Animation, because we are transported with the coming of age of the protagonist and his responsibility to assume the role of a hero by defending the city from a catastrophe in the plans of the villains.
Art direction on this movie is such delight. If you noticed the connection between grafitty and the halftone dots a comic page has, we can definitely say the pop-art culture is present on every frame of the movie. Art team created a specialized set of brushes to develop concept art for the movie. Special rules apply to the movie: for example motion blur is only applied using RGB channel displacement and all highlights are to be represented using white halftones.
Soundtrack from this movie is genius. Taking you from heroic to funny comedy, to suspense. Soundtrack is something I definitely recommend you listen very closely.
I´d also recommend you take your chance and see it on 3D, it is totally a well-worth entrance to the theater for the experience.
Vaughan Ling created these amazing concept artworks for the movie "Into the Spiderverse" using Blender.
You can read the complete story here
Thank you very much. This is a year in review for NPR influence in games and movies. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
My name is Pierre Schiller. Don´t forget to subscribe, share and visit my blog. Happy new year.
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