Friday, August 5, 2022

Arcane: Documentary on the Making of an Animated Series

Arcane is an animated series on Netflix based on a video game called League of Legends. The series was a big hit for Netflix and for Riot Games.

It was an artistic breakthrough too, weaving existing characters from the game into compelling story arcs, and mixing 2D and 3D animation in a way that made it look like paintings come to life.  


Nine months after release of the TV show, they have released the behind-the-scenes documentary on the story of the making of the show, and the documentary is free to watch on YouTube.

As behind-the-scenes documentaries go, this one covers all the beats: interviews, studio shots, and informal scene setting. They went the extra mile here, with some really intriguing camera angles and settings, and creative editing. There will be additional episodes of this behind-the-scenes series, and the first one ends with a good cliffhanger.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great post, so many talented people at Riot.

A question unrelated to this post, sorry James!

I've been watching a lot of your youtube videos about plein air painting in gouache and watercolor, I also have both your (brilliant) books Color & Light and Imaginative Realism.

You use a verity of different materials to prime the paper before painting, Caesin, Acrylic Gouache, sometimes you elect to lightly glaze with a thin layer of watercolor or water soluble gouache, other times you leave the canvas blank and go straight into painting, slowly layering in detail and making decisions as you go.

What are the deciding factors on how you choose to prepare the canvas/page?

Trying to make some decisions on where to start in terms of materials/paints.

James Gurney said...

Unknown, I treat all those methods as basically the same. The thing I avoid is a priming that's too thick or shiny, because there might be cracking or adhesion problems.