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Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 1, 2018. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Conan the Barbarian was created by author Robert E. Howard at the beginning of the 20th century. The muscle-bound character achieved great fame through the film adaptation in the 1980s, when “Conan the Barbarian” was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s springboard to Hollywood. Conan is very well known and therefore recognisable, as he has already appeared in numerous comics, books and films. So there was no shortage of references when the team at Goodbye Kansas Studios in Sweden, with offices in Hamburg, London & LA, set about designing the character for the trailer. It tells the story of how the player starts the game.
In the first step of the concept phase, Goodbye Kansas director Fredrik Löfberg compiled images of Conan that showed how he imagined the character. He mainly orientated himself on drawings by illustrator Frank Frazetta.
Director Fred Löfberg remembers how the first thoughts about the look of the main character went: “Together with FunCom, we discussed the main key points that should appear in the trailer. We ask ourselves questions like: Who is Conan in this trailer and how will he act in the future game?”. To complement Fred’s image selection, Senior Character Artist Jonas Skoog collected as many Conan images on the internet as he could find: “We wanted to create a fresh version of Conan, moving away from his hair style and the boots he had in the 80s, but still keeping the classic Conan elements. He also needed to look scarred, battle-hardened and more raw than a classic bodybuilder, so more real and powerful. Ultimate Fighting fighters served as a good reference for this, which allowed us to achieve a more natural look for our Conan.”
Jonas created all the concepts directly in 3D with ZBrush. The team continuously showed the designs to the client until everyone was happy with the character’s design. Developer FunCom gave the team a lot of freedom in the design, allowing them to create a version of Conan that felt both old and new: a barbarian with one foot still anchored in his pop culture past, but with a very modern design and appearance. From this point of view, there was a great basis from which the actual production model could be developed very quickly.
High demands on the 3D models
The production window for the trailer was very tight at three months and 39 team members, mainly because the 3D characters in the trailer would be seen in very extreme close-ups. Conan and the female protagonist Razma had to be designed in great detail, right down to the smallest pores and wrinkles. During asset construction, the team added millions of hairs, minute skin texture details, fine cloth simulation and an accurate representation of human skin scattering.
“For the skin details, I used scanned high-res displacement maps of real skin that I sourced from the website Texturingxyz. I painted these onto the model as 16-bit textures using Mari. Once the textures were extracted, I imported them into ZBrush and applied them to the scuplt as a separate layer. Finally, I sculpted some details and elements for the final touch,” explains Jonas. “The basic groom of the hair was created in ZBrush and Maya, we added the procedural details with Yeti. The final look was then created using variations in shading and texturing,” says VFX supervisor Henrik Eklundh.
Due to the long fight sequence that the 3D models in the trailer had to be able to handle, an extensive rig was created that could only handle the movements actually required for the scenes. This had to be planned precisely in advance due to the tight budget.
Female martial arts
In the Conan universe, female heroines are so strong that they can even fight Conan, which gave rise to the idea of Razma. She is a warrior princess with many scars who is rescued by Conan and then fights shoulder to shoulder with him against the wild desert beasts. Razma was supposed to embody a modern, female hero character, feminine and at the same time more agile than Conan and equal to him in many ways, especially in terms of her fighting skills. Conan’s rig could not be reused, she was given her own. “The creation process for Razma was more difficult than for Conan, because a female body requires a more sensitive design than a male body and many questions are raised. Her hairstyle with the many plaits was also very tricky,” says Senior Character Artist Jonas. For the scene with the dripping blood, Razma’s foot was 3D-printed and the blood was filmed in real life. The material could then be integrated perfectly into the rendered scene.
Desert beasts as opponents
The beasts in the trailer are supposed to be wild animals that look perfectly adapted to the harsh life in the desert. The team was inspired by a variety of creatures, but decided on something feline – a deadly predator with the agility of a puma and the brute strength of a sabre-toothed tiger. The spines on its back were integrated to emphasise the animal’s connection to the rugged landscape. The lack of fur and lips was intended to emphasise the demon-like style of the beasts. Like the human characters, it was sculpted in ZBrush and textured in Mari. The hair grooming came from Blender, the final look was added during rendering with V-Ray.
It was important for the animals to feel big at all times, even if you don’t see them interacting directly with Conan and Razma. For this reason, the animators invested a lot of time in designing the movement style and tempo. The sudden explosion in movement when the animals launch their attack on the two heroes was inspired by real-life footage of tigers and lions on the hunt.
As strong as Conan
Based on the animatic, it was clear which scenes and actions had to be shot with the motion-capture actors of Conan and Razma. Goodbye Kansas Studios worked closely with the stunt team to choreograph the movements and find the right action. “Thanks to this solid foundation, we were able to experiment with camera angles during the shoot and even add shots and movements without risking losing sight of the big picture,” says the director.
Finding a suitable actor for Conan was crucial to the success of the trailer character and not an easy task: his personality had to convey size and power so that he would be just as impressive as the Conan character. The team found the right actor in bodybuilder, personal trainer and gladiator Daniel “The Beast” Atterhagen, who turned out to be the perfect fit.
Razma was played by two actresses: One actress played her in the scene where she hangs on the cross, another acted for the fight scenes. The beasts were also played by MoCap actors so that the two warriors could fight against real opponents. The artists realised the facial animations using the MoCap recordings as a reference aid with keyframe animation.
The main complication was replacing the motion-capture actors of the beasts with the hand-animated animals in post-production. Numerous adjustments had to be made until everything felt correct and realistic and every movement of Conan and Razma correlated with that of the CG beasts. The animation artists added numerous fine animations, refined the movements and breathed real life into the creatures in this way.
Hostile desert landscape
Of course, the right look and feel for Conan’s surroundings was also important: the fantasy land of Stygia was to be based on a real-life model. The team chose the desert landscape of Jordan for this. The team built the base of the landscape in Maya, then refined the environment with some paintovers, extra details and comp variations of matte paintings and real image projections. “This solution allowed us to stay within budget and still achieve great results,” says VFX supervisor Henrik. To bring everything from the smallest grain of sand to a massive sandstorm to life in the desert, the team simulated every single frame using Houdini. Other elements were added during the compositing process using Nuke. When it came to lighting, it was important that the heat and strength of the sun was visually conveyed. This was achieved using an intense light source, sunburnt skin, shimmering heat and sweat, grit and sand drifting through the air – this combination creates the impression of a harsh environment where death lurks at all times. During the battle scene, which is made even more dynamic by the sandstorm, the viewer should feel the power of the storm, but at the same time there still had to be enough sunlight to make everything recognisable and maintain a cinematic look.
As this was the first project for Goodbye Kansas Studios with V-Ray, there were still some teething problems with the rendering, especially in the realisation of the CG eyes. This problem was solved after the rendering process in compositing. FunCom took care of the final sound design.
“It was nice to see how the sound further enhanced the effect of the images,” recalls VFX supervisor Henrik.
