🎞 Arcane
| Realization of a 3D rendering accompanied by animations and visual effects of the Arcane poster.
Overview 🔎
Arcane is an animated series designed by the Fortiche studio for Riot Games and released on Netflix in 2021. This traces a part of the story related to the famous video game League of Legends.
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The intention behind this project was to design an animation of the official poster of the series through an "infinite loop" audiovisual production.
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Process 🛣
In order to realize this project, I went through several well-defined stages.​
1. Realization of the scenarios (3D, VFX, Animations, Editing) in order to clarify the direction of the project and to know all the elements to be produced.​
2. Creation and configuration of the composition within After Effects: dimensions of the production (1080x1920 px), choice of the number of frames per second (60 FPS), duration (30 sec.).​
3. Cutout of all the elements of the poster through After Effects in order to constitute the plans of the 3D part. Deletion of elements, additional adjustments and retouching were necessary to perfect the plans, using Photoshop.​
4. Insertion of the plans previously cut in the 3D space then configuration of the camera and its path.​
5. Creation of the different animations.​
6. Design of the visual effects (VFX) using plugins.​
7. Editing of the production: General color correction and details enhancement.​
8. Assembly of the production on Premiere Pro: Insertion of the composition, research, addition and editing of the soundtrack.​
9. Production export (H.264): 1 video file (.Mp4); 2 vertical cover pictures (JPG & PNG), 2 horizontal cover pictures (JPG & PNG).
Audiovisual production details 🎞
🎞 Composition
Dimensions: 1080x1920 px.
Frames per second: 60 Fps.
Duration: 30 seconds.
Composition: 3D editing with a shot by 2-nodes camera.
An adjustment of the scale and a slight change to the location of each character has been made so that the elements match to the production parameters
🪄 Photo retouching
Insulation of each part of the mechanism related to VI for the realization of the animations
Removal of the visual effects
Reconstruction of certain parts hidden by elements in the process of creating the various plans for the completion of the 3D rendering
When making the cutouts in order to obtain the different plans to create the 3D part of the production, it was necessary to proceed retouching to faithfully reconstruct the plans behind each cut element.​
In addition, a more rigorous work was carried out at the level of the VI mechanism in order to isolate each part on the one hand, for the realization of the animations. Then, in order to restore the hidden part at the level of the upper edge, for good reason: the original dimensions of the poster.
✂ Cutouts (from the foreground to the background)
1. Title (out of 3D)
2. Statue
3. Jinx
4. Viktor
5. Caitlyn
6. Jayce
7. Silco
8. Mel
9. VI
✨ Effects & Elements
  ○ Color & Brightness
      • Slight flickering of the light reflection on VI's cheek
      • Slight flickering of the Silco eye
      • Slight flickering of the green parts of the statuette
      • Slight flickering of the reddish reflection on Caitlyn and Jayce
      • Slight flickering of the light emitted from the city streets
      • Flickering of the golden parts of the armors and the title
      • Color corrections
      • Slight details enhancement
  ○ Visual effects (VFX)
      • Appearance of the "IV" (logo)
      • Orange particles emitted by the eye of Silco
      • Bluish particles released behind Jinx
      • Virid particles emitted by the statuette
      • Bluish particles released behind the title
All the elements and effects were made in After Effects by hand and using plugins.
âš™ Animations
  ○ Camera
  ○ Hair and mechanical part of VI
  ○ Mel head
  ○ Jayce head
  ○ Arm and stick of Viktor
  ○ Statue
  ○ Clouds
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All the animations were made by hand, some of which required additional cutouts in order to animate a very specific element without hindering other elements (eg: VI's hair).
🎵 Soundtrack
"Goodbye" from Ramsey - Arcane League of Legends, Soundtrack from the Animated Series.
Takeaways 📣
It was not a question of carrying out a large-scale project here but rather of developing a simple production and in particular focused on the animation of elements with a highlighting of the 3D effect in a vertical format.
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The completion of this composition will have allowed me, among other things, to refine the way I proceed in order to animate very specific parts of an element by isolation, while coordinating each of the movements to obtain an elegant result.
Julien Carlier Productions
2023