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Arcane director of animation on how they did it

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    But the context of the whole article was the interview with the animation director about how they managed the animation, I felt inclusion of "You don't have to play 'League of Legends'" in the title was a deliberate attempt to get reactions by pitting LoL players vs non-LoL players.
w4rh4wk5 5y ago
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 5y ago
  > Just hit pause at _any_ point and it looks like a wallpaper. Though not an animation, I find that Oblivion is like that too.
  - w4rh4wk5 5y ago
    I agree. Assassins Creed Valhalla is also quite beautiful, but I still think Arcane is on another level in terms of composition, color palette, shapes, attention to detail, etc.
jayeshsalvi 5y ago
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.
- dagmx 5y ago
  I wouldn't say Arcane does anything new in terms of technology. It definitely pushes the style and technique involved, but not the technology.
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  I don't know LOL, but even after just a few minutes from the first episode I was blown away. So much details!
- kranke155 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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).
    - tomnipotent 5y ago
      > Such a visually astounding movie Could not have been a better introduction to Miles Morales. I'm so ready for another dozen Spider-man movies featuring his character.
mdorazio 5y ago
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.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XIII_(2003_video_game)
  - baby 5y ago
    I think Into the Spider-Verse was amazing, but Arcane's story is more adult.
  - allturtles 5y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Set_Radio).
    - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
      I meant the combination of 2D, 3D and hand drawn elements.
- 5y ago
darth_avocado 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
modeless 5y ago
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.
- gravelc 5y ago
  Watch the show. The expression of emotion is outstanding.
2wrist 5y ago
There is a sequence at the end of episode 7 which is so well done, it is stunning. The series is a good watch.
endisneigh 5y ago
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 5y ago
  This is just on Reddit today: https://reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/r0f9aw/realtime_controlled_cgi_puppets_in_unreal_engine_5/ https://reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/r0f9aw/realtime_control... Graphics should get there honestly.
  - dagmx 5y ago
    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 5y ago
  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.
  - Pulcinella 5y ago
    Agreed. Guilty Gear Strive (and also Xrd to a lesser extent) do a really, really good job of mimicking 2D animation while being entirely dynamic, 3D animation. Of course, as you said, a lot of that is because it’s a 2D fighting game. So the players have no control of the camera or lighting. Each character in a match has lighting hand applied separately from the other character and separate from the lighting of the environment, so they always have perfect lighting, even if it isn’t physically correct. And just like how Arcane was in production for ~5 years, there is no secret to how Guilty Gear looks: it’s just a lot of hard artistic labor. It isn’t necessarily like the only thing preventing games from looking like Arcane is a hardware problem.
crate_barre 5y ago
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 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 5y ago
  I mean.... this article kind of sums up my thoughts on this: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-week-for-blizzard-has-been-the-best-week-for-riot/ https://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-week-for-blizzard-has-been...
- baby 5y ago
  Blizzard has been following the money like crazy, while Riot Games has been doing passion project after passion project. I think that pays off.
- ayngg 5y ago
  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.
ggregoire 5y ago
Anyone has a source about the production costs? Rumors/estimations say $10M per episode but I can't find any actual confirmation.
Chris2048 5y ago
Arcane reminds me a lot of the locations in Dishonoured, (by games company Arkane)..
bovermyer 5y ago
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.
baby 5y ago
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).
cm2012 5y ago
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.
- gravelc 5y ago
  Fair call. It's up to 12 on the IMDB all-time best list, and still rising. https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv
egypturnash 5y ago
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/ 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 5y ago
  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)
rafaelvasco 5y ago
I was in awe the entire thing. Best animated series I've ever seen. Textures, animation, lightning, facial expressions, overall effects. Everything is top notch. I don't even play LoL and I was left wanting a single player game with all the characters.
ianai 5y ago
Reading these comments. I did like it, overall, but not enough for breathless praise. I guess I’m the only one who found the series needlessly violent and forcing the plot points too much. It’s an overall trend I’ve noticed: tons of violence and almost no way to resolve conflict but with violence. Feels like a cultural shift toward war at times.
riffraff 5y ago
I have to say, I love the style, and the animation is certainly good, but after four episodes I realized I was in uncanny valley due to mouth animation. The mouths mimic real movements but fail to do it properly, you can notice it especially when the lips should come together on plosive sounds. Still, it's an entertaining show and I wish they'd do more like it.

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 5y ago
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.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  But the context of the whole article was the interview with the animation director about how they managed the animation, I felt inclusion of "You don't have to play 'League of Legends'" in the title was a deliberate attempt to get reactions by pitting LoL players vs non-LoL players.

w4rh4wk5 5y ago

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 5y ago
> Just hit pause at _any_ point and it looks like a wallpaper. Though not an animation, I find that Oblivion is like that too.
- w4rh4wk5 5y ago
  I agree. Assassins Creed Valhalla is also quite beautiful, but I still think Arcane is on another level in terms of composition, color palette, shapes, attention to detail, etc.

jayeshsalvi 5y ago

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.

dagmx 5y ago
I wouldn't say Arcane does anything new in terms of technology. It definitely pushes the style and technique involved, but not the technology.
_trampeltier 5y ago
I don't know LOL, but even after just a few minutes from the first episode I was blown away. So much details!
kranke155 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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).
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    > Such a visually astounding movie Could not have been a better introduction to Miles Morales. I'm so ready for another dozen Spider-man movies featuring his character.

mdorazio 5y ago

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.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XIII_(2003_video_game)
- baby 5y ago
  I think Into the Spider-Verse was amazing, but Arcane's story is more adult.
- allturtles 5y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_Set_Radio).
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    I meant the combination of 2D, 3D and hand drawn elements.
5y ago

darth_avocado 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

modeless 5y ago

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.

gravelc 5y ago
Watch the show. The expression of emotion is outstanding.

2wrist 5y ago

There is a sequence at the end of episode 7 which is so well done, it is stunning. The series is a good watch.

endisneigh 5y ago

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 5y ago
This is just on Reddit today: https://reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/r0f9aw/realtime_controlled_cgi_puppets_in_unreal_engine_5/ https://reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/r0f9aw/realtime_control... Graphics should get there honestly.
- dagmx 5y ago
  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 5y ago
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.
- Pulcinella 5y ago
  Agreed. Guilty Gear Strive (and also Xrd to a lesser extent) do a really, really good job of mimicking 2D animation while being entirely dynamic, 3D animation. Of course, as you said, a lot of that is because it’s a 2D fighting game. So the players have no control of the camera or lighting. Each character in a match has lighting hand applied separately from the other character and separate from the lighting of the environment, so they always have perfect lighting, even if it isn’t physically correct. And just like how Arcane was in production for ~5 years, there is no secret to how Guilty Gear looks: it’s just a lot of hard artistic labor. It isn’t necessarily like the only thing preventing games from looking like Arcane is a hardware problem.

crate_barre 5y ago

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 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 5y ago
I mean.... this article kind of sums up my thoughts on this: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-week-for-blizzard-has-been-the-best-week-for-riot/ https://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-week-for-blizzard-has-been...
baby 5y ago
Blizzard has been following the money like crazy, while Riot Games has been doing passion project after passion project. I think that pays off.
ayngg 5y ago
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.

ggregoire 5y ago

Anyone has a source about the production costs? Rumors/estimations say $10M per episode but I can't find any actual confirmation.

Chris2048 5y ago

Arcane reminds me a lot of the locations in Dishonoured, (by games company Arkane)..

bovermyer 5y ago

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.

baby 5y ago

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).

cm2012 5y ago

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.

gravelc 5y ago
Fair call. It's up to 12 on the IMDB all-time best list, and still rising. https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv

egypturnash 5y ago

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/ 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 5y ago
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)

rafaelvasco 5y ago

I was in awe the entire thing. Best animated series I've ever seen. Textures, animation, lightning, facial expressions, overall effects. Everything is top notch. I don't even play LoL and I was left wanting a single player game with all the characters.

ianai 5y ago

Reading these comments. I did like it, overall, but not enough for breathless praise. I guess I’m the only one who found the series needlessly violent and forcing the plot points too much. It’s an overall trend I’ve noticed: tons of violence and almost no way to resolve conflict but with violence. Feels like a cultural shift toward war at times.

riffraff 5y ago

I have to say, I love the style, and the animation is certainly good, but after four episodes I realized I was in uncanny valley due to mouth animation. The mouths mimic real movements but fail to do it properly, you can notice it especially when the lips should come together on plosive sounds. Still, it's an entertaining show and I wish they'd do more like it.