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Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 27, 2014. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The “Dragon Age 2” project was nominated in the “Best Postproduction” category in 2011.
The Hungarian animation studio Digic Pictures is becoming a real specialist for lonely heroes. The studio has made the mouths of fans of major franchises water in several award-winning game trailers, focussing in particular on the central character. In the trailer for the role-playing game “Dragon Age II”, the Hungarians take it to the extreme and guide the viewer through a perfect battle choreography, the hero’s final duel with his opponent.
The result is impressive with its details and great slow motion – a masterpiece, despite the short production time and the flooding of the studio on the Danube. It is a truly overpowering opponent who enters the stage at the beginning of the trailer for “Dragon Age II”. A horned giant with a battle axe and broadsword, who is opposed by warrior after warrior, but against whom no one can stand. At the foot of a mighty fortress, the giant defeats an army, but finds no opponent who is a match for him. Finally, the battle seems to be over and the giant slays the prince, whose guard has also fallen. The dead nobleman’s crown rolls down the steps in front of the fortress gate. Whenever it hits the rocky steps, its echo sounds lost on the forecourt, which is now littered with the dead. But where it lands, a man is still standing upright.
It is the hero of “Dragon Age II” and the scene is set for the epic duel in which the giant finally meets his equals. It is precisely these moments that make the dramaturgy of Digic Pictures’ trailers so special. In almost every work by the Hungarian studio, there is a moment when every fan of the respective game suddenly gets itchy fingers, when the audience in the darkened conference rooms of some gamer convention erupts into spontaneous cheers at the premiere of the trailer: The young chieftain’s view of the vast plains in the trailer for “Civilisation V”, the turning point in the trailer for “Assassin’s Creed 2” when the assassin Ezio suddenly receives reinforcements, or the appearance of the lone “Dragon Age” hero, who experiences the climax of his long rise to power in the trailer. Each time, viewers are left with just one thought – they absolutely have to play this game now. So the dramaturgy is practically always right when Digic Pictures delivers a trailer.
Great epics, told in two and a half minutes
However, it’s not just the flair for good stories and the ability to tell a great epic in two and a half minutes that repeatedly persuade the major game studios to use Hungarians for their advertising films. It is also the studio’s passion for games that can be felt in the products. Many of the employees are die-hard fans of the big game franchises and know what a trailer for a new instalment of a game series they also love must feel like. So it’s no surprise that publisher Electronic Arts and game studio Bioware turned to Digic Pictures to commission the trailer for the eagerly awaited second instalment of the “Dragon Age” series. They already knew each other and had already planned a project together, but this did not materialise due to time constraints. When the opportunity arose, we were thrilled to take on the DA2 project – much to the delight of the many Bioware fans on our team,” says Eszter Bohus, spokesperson for the company. Bioware only gave Digic Pictures a rough plan of what to show in the trailer and what story it had to tell. “Our task was to apply and interpret the written story, translate the words into images, think up scenes and create the rhythm of the film with the right camera movements,” says Bohus.
Rise to power in five months
Dragon Age II is about the main protagonist’s rise from a poor war refugee to a respected nobleman and finally to a warrior whose decisions would change the world of Dragon Age forever. In the process, he finds allies and forges close friendships – but must also make tough decisions for the good of his hometown that affect his personal life and cause friends to turn their backs on him. This is exactly what the trailer should show: The great power of a hero approaching the climax of his adventure – but also the cost that comes with it for him. Lonely hero, great tasks: Digic Pictures brings the main character of “Dragon Age II” to life. It quickly became clear that this would not be easy. “Right at the start of production, we could see that the full scope of the story wouldn’t fit into the given two and a half minute length of the trailer,” says Bohus. “So we had to condense the story and there were parts that we had to leave out.” Time was also of the essence, with only five months available for production between the order and the planned premiere at GamesCom in August 2010. So the studio quickly focussed on the fight scenes: Digic Pictures boiled down the rise of the main character, the countless battles that the player would later fight with him, to a single epic duel. The brutal battle, the overpowering opponent that the hero is the only one who can stand up to, all of this was intended to symbolise the challenges and action of the later game. In a way, the limited time for the fight scenes was actually an advantage. The tight schedule forced the studio to avoid lengthy planning in order to shorten the pre-production time. The choreography was therefore not created in the usual precise but time-consuming animation process, in which every movement is meticulously planned and extensively tested using Previz. Instead, the director began recording motion captures at a very early stage. Instead of using clearly predefined set designs and fixed motion sequences, he controlled his characters for the trailer more like a film director in a live-action film. The result is dynamic, raw and almost spontaneous, a fact that perfectly matches the mood of the trailer.
A duel with claws and teeth
In the finished film, the viewer can almost smell the blood as the two opponents clash in their duel to the death. The giant, who had just been invincible, seems to have found his master and is driven back and wounded by the hero’s blows. But the hero also takes a beating. It is not a heroic battle, but a fight for bare survival, fought with swords, claws and teeth. The crude nature of the approach does not make the fight look overly artistic and skilful, as is the case in many animated fight scenes. This fight is a brawl, wild and untamed. This feeling of immediate closeness is enhanced by the skilful use of slow motion: in the middle of the hectic turmoil, rapidly edited and shot in constantly changing camera angles, the director suddenly slams on the brakes and shows the punch to the face, the cut across the ribcage, and the blood sprays through the air with unbearable slowness. This makes the scene feel very real. When the horned opponent finally disarms the hero and seems to threaten him with certain death, the viewer stands with the character in the corner and awaits the final blow – an atmospheric density and identification with the character that is rarely achieved in a game trailer. It was the slow-motion scenes that presented the Digic Pictures team with particular challenges: “Although it doesn’t sound like it at first glance, the slow-motion and time-warping effects were some of the most problematic parts of this work.” For the slow motion effects, the team relied on both a simple slowing down of the animation time and spline interpolation. Neither method was allowed to affect the visual components: From the animation of the characters to the sprite texture animation and particle effects to the simulations for the duelists’ clothing, hair and bodies, everything had to be synchronised with each other and the modified animation time so that they could continue to interact as desired in the final product. To do this, the studio had to develop its own caching solutions for Maya in order to be able to animate and simulate in “normal time” and then interpolate the appropriate subframe positions of all objects and effects between the individual frames.
Trademark improvisation skills
Digic Pictures benefited from the fact that the studio likes to improvise anyway and writes many plug-ins for its own work. Digic has its own philosophy when it comes to the software it uses: during the initial phase of a production, the studio favours simpler tools for the designs. Later on, compatibility with the rendering pipeline and, of course, the reliability of the result are the most important factors. Specifically, the studio relies on Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush, Bodypaint and Photoshop to create assets, with the first two being supported by the numerous plug-ins developed by Digic itself. The various scenes are put together in Maya, where the animations are also created. Maya serves primarily as a kind of technical framework in which many of the ready-made plug-ins are replaced by Digic’s own solutions. The robustness of the software when used in large productions also played a role in the decision in favour of Maya. Digic uses Arnold for rendering, with the finishing touches being applied in Nuke.
Danube flood jeopardises production
In the middle of the time-consuming work on the proprietary plug-ins for the “Dragon Age” trailer, a challenge arose that the studio really hadn’t expected. As if the tight schedule wasn’t challenging enough, the forces of nature also began to hamper the production. The Digic Pictures studio is located on a park-like island in the middle of the Danube, which is also used for large open-air events. While work on the trailer was in full swing, a major flood announced that would also flood the island. Where music fans usually flocked to the Sziget Festival, the floodwaters of the Danube were now set to crash mercilessly against the walls of the buildings. Within just one night, the team therefore had to dismantle all the equipment, move it and set it up again in the alternative offices. Work had to resume the next morning – otherwise production would have been delayed and the publisher would have had to postpone the premiere date. There was still a huge construction site to work on: The script for the trailer envisaged a dream sequence in which the hero, driven into a corner and seemingly facing certain death, sees his adventures pass before him once again – the battles he has had to fight, the friends he has made and lost, and a love that is on a knife’s edge. The atmospherically dense fight scene with the two opponents and all the technical challenges would suddenly be interrupted by a quickly edited sequence in which dozens of shots would be shown, each with its own characters and scenery. The team had to design completely customised assets for shots that lasted a fraction of a second – a nightmare, especially given the time constraints. “Such complexity should actually be avoided in this genre [of game trailers],” says Eszter Bohus. “So we tried to adapt the sets and assets to the length of the scene and to only use them to the extent absolutely necessary for the respective shot.”
Finally, one more trick
There was even time for a trick at the end: instead of running the dream sequence from the hero’s beginnings to the fi nal moment of the duel, the director simply reversed the time sequence. “This illustrates the price the hero has to pay for his last spell: The loss of his memories.” For in the end, it is the will to power that inspires the hero once again, giving him the strength for a final blow, an act of fi nster magic: with his blood, he conjures up two gigantic paws that grab his opponent and tear him apart in mid-air. He was victorious – but paid a high price for it. Bioware was delighted with the finished product and commissioned Digic Pictures to create two logo animations, which can now be seen at the beginning and end of the trailer. They are based on the two central visual elements of the “Dragon Age” universe – the red dragon and copious amounts of blood. They frame the trailer and anchor it in the world in which it is set. For the studio, working on the trailer was definitely a positive experience: “We were really excited about this opportunity,” says Eszter Bohus. “In my experience, the combination of a tight deadline and relative creative freedom is always a bit difficult.” There were always major structural changes right up to the last minute. “But we managed to finish the project on time.” In any case, the result is impressive.
