[HN Gopher] Arcane director of animation on how they did it
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Arcane director of animation on how they did it
Author : Abishek_Muthian
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-11-21 13:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mashable.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mashable.com)
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Title edit reasoning:
|
| Original title: 'You don't have to play 'League of Legends' to
| enjoy the masterful animation of Netflix's 'Arcane'; Is an usual
| Mashable clickbait.
|
| Subtitle: 'The series' director of animation takes us through
| exactly how they did it.'; Is better and I've condensed it.
|
| Besides the title and source of the article it has some valuable
| information about how the animation studio blended the 2D, 3D and
| hand painting to deliver appropriate animation for the story
| without offending the game players who have invested in the
| characters.
| dymk wrote:
| I don't follow, what component of the original title is
| clickbait? "League of Legends" is relevant to Arcane (it's the
| basis for the show) and your edit removed it from the title.
| modeless wrote:
| Just watching the trailer I thought that this is by far the most
| beautiful animation I've ever seen. I can't imagine the amount of
| work it was to paint all this stuff. The only fault I found with
| it is the face animation. The beautiful faces move in a stiff way
| that seems out of place.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Gonna throw some shade, Blizz gonna have to catch some strays
| here.
|
| It's fascinating to see how Blizzard keeps missing the boat on
| taking some of their ideas beyond the corporate 'ambition' cap
| Activision put on them.
|
| Here's some animation they made for their competing MOBA heroes
| of the storm years ago:
|
| https://youtu.be/J2LiUsEOqcU
|
| They just don't run with any of their ideas anymore, and alas,
| Riot has a fucking whole TV show on Netflix. I won't even link
| the superb WoW Warlords animated stories.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I mean.... this article kind of sums up my thoughts on this:
|
| https://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-week-for-blizzard-has-been...
| ayngg wrote:
| Blizzard has been the walking dead for a very long time now.
| They could very well be the Xerox of the video game industry.
| At that point of merger, they were big dogs in esports, and had
| the best rts, arpg, and mmo games out but they haven't done
| anything up to that level since then and have been completely
| incapable of capitalizing on their position, letting all of
| their advantages slip away.
|
| They failed to capitalize on custom wc3 maps, so dota allstars
| spawns the moba genre with LoL, Dota2, smite, and countless
| others, tower defense games and other maps all spin off to make
| their own games. They make SC2's custom map functionality worse
| which cripples any chance for capturing further innovation.
|
| They completely torpedo e sports with the release of SC2 which
| many consider just inferior to SC:BW, completely ignore WoW
| arena, or any kind of innovation at all with WoW, only
| releasing uninspired expansions to further milk addicts. Now
| players have gotten bored enough to jump ship to FFxiv and they
| are losing their cash cow. Lets not forget the entirely
| forgettable Warcraft movie too.
|
| Even Overwatch was supposed to kill cs:go but it is basically
| treading water now, especially since the sequel was delayed and
| Jeff Kaplan has left. The pro league is a joke compared to the
| big names. HOTS was abruptly abandoned. Hearthstone was
| basically their only great success (but I assume is stagnating
| like everything else now), without it they basically have
| nothing which is why they have turned to remakes recently (and
| have failed spectacularly with wc3r and had to outsource d2r in
| response). They basically have nothing substantial until d4 or
| Overwatch 2, both of which were delayed until 2023 at the
| earliest. Now with all the workplace culture scandals they are
| hemorrhaging talent on top of everything and have effectively
| lost their position as one of the most desirable studios to
| work for in the industry.
|
| I don't think Blizzard knows how to make good games anymore,
| that part died long ago.
| dmitriid wrote:
| The last battle on the bridge in _Arcane_ has maybe 15-to-20
| seconds of action, and it 's more engaging, exciting and
| mesmerizing that... most anything in the past many years
| baby wrote:
| Blizzard has been following the money like crazy, while Riot
| Games has been doing passion project after passion project. I
| think that pays off.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I absolutely adore Arcane for a ton of reasons, and it's gotten
| me very interested in the setting of Runeterra.
|
| I am not a League of Legends player.
|
| One of the things that I love about Arcane is the gorgeous and
| unique art style. It's just a beautiful series. Some of the
| sequences are jarring in their departure from the rest of the
| series, but in a good way - think gasp of delight, not immersion-
| breaking.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| I love this art style and the environment design so much. Just
| hit pause at _any_ point and it looks like a wallpaper. Try it!
|
| The _only_ thing that bothers my a tiny bit is that they added a
| bit too much film grain in my opinion; but hey, can't have
| everything :)
| huhtenberg wrote:
| > _Just hit pause at _any_ point and it looks like a
| wallpaper._
|
| Though not an animation, I find that Oblivion is like that too.
| baby wrote:
| That show is the most amazing show I've watched this year (along
| with Inside on Netflix). I highly recommend it, even if you're
| not into animated shows.
|
| Also I played a lot of LOL back in the days, and I didn't
| remembered any of the characters or saw any link to the game. My
| SO has never played the game. So the relation to the game really
| stops at the subtitle (and the look of the characters).
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Arcane reminds me a lot of the locations in Dishonoured, (by
| games company Arkane)..
| cm2012 wrote:
| Arcane is the best show I've ever seen, live action or animated.
| I've never played League before. Just an incredible story, well
| told.
| 2wrist wrote:
| There is a sequence at the end of episode 7 which is so well
| done, it is stunning. The series is a good watch.
| jayeshsalvi wrote:
| Just what I was looking for. IMHO Arcane marks a milestone
| progress in Animation technology.
|
| Also glad that the article confirmed that they don't use MoCap.
| It was such a great choice. I recently watched another visually
| exquisite animation movie on Netflix (the one in the Bright
| universe). There they used completely flat shading to achieve
| toon look for characters and environment, but made the characters
| move with MoCap animations. It looked very eerie.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I don't know LOL, but even after just a few minutes from the
| first episode I was blown away. So much details!
| kranke155 wrote:
| There's nothing new about the tech. It was just the willingness
| to go that far artistically. (am a 3d artist working in the
| industry)
|
| Mitchell's vs the Machines and Into the Spider Verse are good
| examples of how the industry is slowly moving into allowing
| different styles of animation than the Pixar Standard.
| ketzo wrote:
| God, it's been said a thousand and one times, but in case
| even one person reading this hasn't seen it: you _have_ to
| watch _Into the Spider-Verse_. I remember my mouth literally
| falling open at some of those scenes, and I 'm not even,
| like, particularly "into" animation or anything. Such a
| visually astounding movie (aside from everything else to love
| about it).
| dmitriid wrote:
| It's very surprising that in the 30 years of computer
| animation the sources of actual experimentation with the
| style come from ... Marvel and Riot Games.
| dagmx wrote:
| I wouldn't say Arcane does anything new in terms of technology.
| It definitely pushes the style and technique involved, but not
| the technology.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Is it possible for a PS5/Series X game to look as good (not pre-
| rendered) as Arcane?
|
| When I first started watching, though it looked amazing, I joked
| that this is how end-of-gen PS5 games will look like.
| crate_barre wrote:
| This is just on Reddit today:
|
| https://reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/r0f9aw/realtime_control...
|
| Graphics should get there honestly.
| dagmx wrote:
| Pointing to a photorealistic image in response to a heavily
| nonphotorealistic and art directed show doesn't make much
| sense.
|
| Arcane doesn't push the technology for graphics. You could
| get visuals like it in the PS3 or PS4 era .
|
| What it does really well is art direction, a lot of which is
| cinematography. Games can do it already, it's just a matter
| of a studio wanting to commit to that style.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| The big, unsolved problem there is that much of the 'look'
| relies on great camera composition and lighting specifically
| for that shot. This is something that's pretty specific to film
| and can't be recreated for games where the player is the one in
| charge of the camera.
|
| To put it another way, even if the real-time renderer was every
| bit as good, a game wouldn't quite retain the same cinematic
| feeling except in some limited cases/genres.
| mdorazio wrote:
| For those who haven't seen it yet, Arcane really is beautiful to
| look at even if you don't like LoL. It's worth a watch just for
| the sheer level of art that went into many of the shots.
|
| Unfortunately this article doesn't provide much actual detail on
| the production process. From the descriptions here and watching
| the series, it seems to be what I'll call "Borderlands on
| Steroids". 3D camera, characters, and elements, but 2D matte
| paintings for backgrounds and hand-painted textures on everything
| to look pseudo-2D. The added 2D explosions and random elements
| are probably done in post. Great composition overall and very
| satisfying to watch.
| calibas wrote:
| Borderlands really shouldn't be the one getting credit for this
| art style. Codehunters was first: https://vimeo.com/7432584
| dylan604 wrote:
| Reminded me of Afro Samurai, but I see that AS came out a
| year later than Codehunters.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I agree with your comparison with Boderlands, But I also think
| XIII[1] was a pioneer of the said effects in a game(or at least
| from the ones I've played in early 2000s).
|
| Arcane had similar impression on me as 'Spider-Man: Into the
| Spider-Verse' did in terms of animation quality perhaps Arcane
| is even more visually appealing considering a personal bias for
| steam-punk(Arcane-punk seems to be a term now); Sound
| Engineering is great too.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XIII_(2003_video_game)
| baby wrote:
| I think Into the Spider-Verse was amazing, but Arcane's story
| is more adult.
| allturtles wrote:
| Are we just talking about cel-shading here, or something more
| specific? cel-shading goes back at least to Jet Set Radio in
| 1999 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Set_Radio).
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I'm personally quite curious as to how they managed to achieve
| such painterly lighting. Even with aggressive post processing
| and touch-ups, they had to have been doing some shader magic to
| achoeve the base of the effect.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Painters painted the textures. There's some simple lighting
| on top when necessary, but it's mostly old school hand
| painted textures. People have gotten used to viewing
| productions that use math (shaders) to emulate paintings
| and/or reality, which are incredible in their own right. But
| this is simply a team of extremely talented painters, who are
| masters of light, tasked with painting 3D models and tweaking
| textures per scene.
| slx26 wrote:
| Seconding this. I've never played LoL, and it has to be clearly
| said that the show is perfectly enjoyable without having any
| background. In fact, the plot twists will be more enjoyable if
| you know nothing about the game. So if anyone has doubts,
| seriously go watch this one. It's breathtakingly beautiful, but
| the story doesn't fall behind.
| larrik wrote:
| I would add to this: playing LoL and knowing the characters
| and story doesn't add _that_ much to the experience. It feels
| very much like its own thing.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| The whole thing actually looked eerie to me for a few episodes.
| It really looks like a moving painting in a way that I've not
| seen before. Worth a watch simply for the animation.
| ggregoire wrote:
| Anyone has a source about the production costs?
| Rumors/estimations say $10M per episode but I can't find any
| actual confirmation.
| egypturnash wrote:
| This article _really_ lacks a clip, or even just a trailer, to
| show this stuff in action.
|
| There's a trailer pretty prominently featured at
| https://arcane.com/en-us/ if anyone wants one. Looks pretty nice
| though IMHO it feels like it'd work better as a Moving Painting
| with a lower frame-rate, the way Spider-Verse did - there is
| definitely such a thing as "too high" when it comes to framerates
| in stylized work.
| scrollaway wrote:
| I don't think any trailer can do Arcane justice. The animation
| style varies quite a bit across the series. (Not as much as
| Love+Death+Robots, but still quite a bit).
|
| Without spoiling anything, I'll just say there's a large supply
| of scenes that are animated incredibly beautifully and in very
| unique ways. Arcane is the first series that made me cry PURELY
| from the beauty of the animation. (The plot is great, but
| nothing exceptional -- This is a series I love just for how
| well it's animated and how well it plays with its own music)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The reading experience on the website is terrible. Scroll through
| ads to find content? And then automatically get redirected to
| another site before you can complete the whole thing (could've
| been a fat finger on my part because of the number of ads, but
| still).
| jessaustin wrote:
| It's not at all like that for me, probably because I have
| installed the basic tool that is necessary for using the web at
| all. Please, improve your life:
|
| https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
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