Resident Evil: Village 

The new cinematic for the game Resident Evil Village, created by our artists, premiered on 1st May 2021. The animation was created for the legendary Capcom studio, the producer and publisher of such hits as Street Fighter and Devil May Cry. Producer Marina Borokhova, CG supervisor Wojciech Idzi and Jakub Jabłoński, director and art director, talk about working on the film.

The animation constitutes a cinematic introduction, as well as ending, to the latest game from the Resident Evil franchise. Thanks to the trust and openness of the client the project itself was created entirely by us, starting with the initial concept and script, through character design, artwork and all animation stages, up to the final audio layer.

“Good cooperation with Capcom studio and complete openness towards our creative ideas gave us an artistic freedom usually reserved for original animated shorts creators. Due to unique art style of the project, we had to change our typical workflow and work in unconventional manner.” Marina Borokhova says. “We did a lot of development work on textures, shaders and lighting to make it look like a paper cutout animation. In order to achieve an effect similar to  a traditional shadow play, we decided to use key frame animation of the characters instead of motion capture.”

In line with the client’s vision, the video was created using the conventions of a dark fairy tale, as a metaphor for the events in the game. Jakub Jabłoński, the project’s director and art director, wrote a story about a girl lost in a forest and created a world full of magical creatures and fabulous locations, all in the style of papier mâché and cutouts. Every character in the film constitutes an original creation on the part of the director as a fairy-tale alter ego of the characters from Resident Evil. Such stylings allowed us to adopt a completely different approach to the production, which was particularly motivating for the entire team.

“The Animation Team, under the supervision of Oleh Ridzel, did a fantastic job of bringing our characters to life. Agata Wacławiak and Michał Pancerz, under the watchful eye of the invaluable director and art director, Jakub Jabłoński, developed the visual arts and took us into the fairy-tale world of The Village,” Wojciech Idzi explains. “Unconventional projects are often based on elements that take on their full dimension only after the final composition, and that is why the cooperation with the Compo Team led by Łukasz Przybytek was so important. The music by Marcin Przybyłowicz, as well as the sound and voice-over recordings prepared by Platige Sound, complement the entire picture. It is definitely one of the more interesting projects I’ve had the opportunity of co-creating.”

Involved in the creation of cinematics for more than a decade, we usually work on materials that are an extension of the stories in the games, or a specific reflection of them. However, The Village was a completely different project as it was an integrated piece of storytelling that played an important artistic role in the game itself.

“This time, we had to show the game world through the filter of our own fairy-tale imagination. Each set design, character and piece of history constitutes a crooked mirror reflection of the world presented in the game. Fairy tale, children’s book and shadow theater are the keywords. Add to this the unique papier mâché and multi-layer cutouts that we made the characters and scenery from and we have our dark story that is only seemingly aimed at kids who like fairy tales,” Jakub Jabłoński comments. “Thanks to the courage of the game’s creators, Platige gained enormous trust and artistic freedom. We forgot that we were doing commissioned work. Throughout the entire course of the project, we felt as if we were creating another Platige short just for ourselves. Thank you for this opportunity!” he concludes.

Credits