Insights on Arcane and Animation Industry

[Music] [Music] i was about 14 years old when i first saw league of legends i was walking through the local library and there were some kids playing on the pcs there i remember thinking huh nerds a couple years later my sister had a friend over and they were playing league on a school laptop i walked straight past them couldn't give a [ __ ] i am now 26 years old i still couldn't care less about league yet arcane league of legends is my favorite tv show of all time it actually took me a couple of weeks to pick up purely because of its connection to the game but i soon discovered that for these creators the objective was never to create a spin-off or an adaptation instead it feels more like an elaborate heist a way of getting one of the largest game publishers in the world to pay for something with unabashed creative freedom outside of the traditional animation production space but i also feel like somewhat of a fraud when it comes to being an anime fan my favorite tv show is arcane my favorite film is spider-verse one made in france and the other made in the united states but the thing is something of this level absolutely could have and still can come from japan in fact cg anime has been constantly experimenting with the combination of 2d effects and backgrounds coupled with stylized 3d models but never quite to this level they have the talent they have the tools they have the creative ambition but unfortunately and this goes for world animation not just japan they don't have the circumstances [Music] four animators both within and outside of japan arcane is a source of some mixed emotions it is incredible inspirational but also impossible in the west animation is often seen as lesser by production companies and the animation guild is currently fighting for better pay for animation workers in japan there is much more respect for animation but that's prompted an overproduction crisis where too many shows are being made at once often with unreasonably tight and inflexible schedules arcane's production began in 2015 with the show airing six years later in 2021 while riot games had considered hiring professional tv show runners they instead drew from their own staff who had no experience in writing tv but years working on league of legends law they needed this time to actually learn how to become tv writers and bring on people who could help them turn a moba into a compelling drama series but perhaps more importantly this time was necessary for the animation team riot games had worked with the french fortieth productions in the past starting with the get jinxed music video and later kda pop stars both becoming viral sensations when arcane was first starting to be developed fortisch was only a 16 person team but through production they had the time and funds to grow into 300 strong with multiple studios across europe and it wasn't difficult to find animators to join up show them a couple of clips from the pilot episode and they're already at their desks asking when they could start in fact they're actually totally full right now and have had to turn away plenty of hopeful animators who have become entranced with the first season after all fortisha's house style is compelling a unique blend of 3d and 2d with a profound excitement for spectacle [Music] so since they already kind of knew what they were doing riot's staff adopted a policy of letting them do their own thing unlike a lot of animation in the west where the dismissive term vendor studio is common foresees was treated like a creative partner and there are plenty of examples of the animators taking the script more as a guideline than strict wrongs but most importantly the creators of arcane had time to think and experiment they spent the first two years creating the pilot episode the same amount of time it takes to make some full anime and then after a delay while they tried to get the rest of the show greenlit it would take roughly five months for four storyboard artists to draw out these incredible detailed storyboards that serve as a scaffold for the 3d animators the result is a show where every single frame feels like a painting begging to be placed above the mantelpiece in fact the team claims have not used motion capture at all giving every frame that handcrafted feel while still keeping it natural through the use of plenty of reference footage and it's not like motion capture is at all a problem but rather the team had a vision and were able to execute upon it without compromise all becomes annoyingly tempting to say thank you riot games but honestly i'm much more tempted to thank the arcane team specifically over riot games leadership the creators of arcane were pitching a money sink to their bosses and they absolutely managed it a former artist that riot mentioned that the project was almost axed several times and so it is frustrating watching riot games leadership bragging about the show amid accusations of them covering up sexual harassment at the studio and with the knowledge that the higher-ups didn't have nearly the amount of faith that they claimed to have today but it's important to recognize that it's not a monolith and so i don't think it's contradictory to put both [ __ ] you riot games and thank you riot games in the same sentence but it is worth recognizing that the arcane team at riot would have also been affected by the toxic company culture that pervaded the studio for years just a taste just riot has been selling arcane as a way to reward league of legends fans while bringing in new players at the same time and that's likely how these artists sold it to their bosses but the way the creators talk about it to the rest of us has been a bit different i've even seen quotes from people at fortish who say they'd never even played to league of legends before there have even been some hardcore league of legends fans irritated by how lacks the creators have been towards the canon of the game and that's intentional arcane wouldn't have the impact it has without a profound amount of creative freedom where artists had the opportunity to give back their own ideas you don't write a scene like the echo and jinx fight that's a moment that is all about the visuals i've seen a lot of people that say that only a company as large as riots could create something like arcane that only they would put that much money into tv animation but alexi wanaroy the character animation lead says that the animation budget isn't actually as high as people have been assuming based on the quality of course riot was dishing out for imagine dragons but fortisch were looking for ways to cut down on costs and ironically it was that cost cutting that was part of what made the show special they don't have disney's expansive 3d backgrounds but they do have wonderful 2d paintings they don't have the lighting tech if your favorite marvel movies but they do have texture artists that can create the impression of atmospheric lighting what the team found was that the supposed money men the people who think they know best about how to make and save money were outclassed by artists who were much more familiar with what it takes to make something world class without the cash from a major studio so instead what riot was paying for was for a smaller team to dedicate all their time to one big project their music videos like kda were only made while they were waiting to get the rest of the show greenlit and even with the first season of arcane being huge they have no plans to juggle multiple shows at once but when it comes to hollywood and the anime industry they're much more interested in quantity over quality especially when it comes to tv animation animation studios across the world will be stretched in every which way resulting in a load of new shows but few that feel truly remarkable the result is that i'm sitting here speaking to you today with an absurd backlog of media to watch i am embarrassed by how much anime i drop a couple episodes in purely because i get busy with other things but when something as creative and groundbreaking as arcane gets released i'm clearing my schedule sorry blade runner black lotus and i imagine a lot of others did the same thing according to netflix it was the number one english language tv show on their service on the week of november 15th but it's all too predictable that other companies will learn the wrong lessons from arcane executives will latch onto the idea that it was a video game show and decide that that was what made it successful or they'll find superficial things like it's a steampunk setting or political drama and while those are parts of what make the show great its success is derived not just from what's on the screen but also what's behind it and when looking into the production of arcane i couldn't help but look back on a far less favorable situation the production of 2016's berserk given more time i genuinely believed berserk could have been amazing but that was a resource the team severely lacked developing the look of a show is something that should take time like it did with arcane animation tests experimentation the occasional [ __ ] up but in the case of berserk they had less than a year for pre-production and then less than a year to complete the show production began in spring of 2015 for an air date of summer 2016. the [ __ ] ups made it to screen director shin into gucci was ambitious and really wanted to capture the grittiness and detail of the late kentura miura's art and while they'd finally worked out an aesthetic by the end of 2015 they had no time left to actually turn that into the show they hoped it would be they didn't even have time to render it out so a bunch of lighting tech and detailed models were removed just to get something onto the television where arcane felt unshackled by the burdens of deadlines and skipped budgets the 3d anime industry is still caged up there's a huge demand for more and more tv animation but most of these teams aren't equipped for it usually focusing on outsourcing before suddenly being pushed into mean production roles have you heard of studio balkan before how about type zero the company not the final fantasy these are outsourcing houses who provide animation for video games commercials and help out other companies with their tv shows today they are the creators of tesla note a 3d anime based on a premise concocted between the writer of tiger and bunny and the late president of a casting company called gambit the result is messy it's not exam levels of hilariously bad but it does make you wonder what is the point of this what's the point of having an anime that i'm not just going to forget about by the end of the year but going to actively be wanting to forget about i think some of these people really believe that if they've written a good story then it doesn't matter what the animation looks like as if dunkirk would be just as good if a toddler was holding the camera wear this inexperience there's got to be time to learn forties production also hadn't made a full animated tv show before but they also weren't expected to craft arcane from start to finish in a couple years the secret to arcane's success wasn't just that it was a great story but rather that it's a great story told brilliantly through its excellent sound and pictures and instead of just being ordered around the french animators were able to push back and contribute with their own narrative ideas no matter how revolutionary the original concepts of tesla note or exxon may have been if the animation teams aren't given the tools or influence to help deliver it it's always going to be a bit mediocre now i don't want to infer that given all that time in independence exam and tesla notes would have also been nominated for nine annie awards like arcane has the team at forties are always going to be remarkable and they were working within their specialty but the circumstances are still important in the wake of arcane many animation creators have been looking back on their projects thinking about in the words of sting what could have been there's always going to be a balance between trying to execute an ambitious vision and meeting the often inflexible deadlines that you've been given while tackling corporate bureaucracy yet even with these restrictions we've been seeing cg anime punching above its weight for years when orange launched their first solo created show land of the lustrous in 2017 it felt transformative this was what 3d anime could be but today it feels like more than half of all cg shows are in this medium purely because the producers couldn't find a 2d anime studio arcane is great because it worked in the opposite direction to most anime instead of asking who's going to animate this idea it was what idea should we work with fortish on and they became creative partners which totally should be the standard for more animation studios orange sanjigan kamikazedorga shiragumi kara like fortish each of these prestige animation houses have somewhat of a house style that i would absolutely love to see entirely unrestrained from the pressures of an inflexible deadline they are all currently creating incredible shows but you can't help thinking what could have been with an arcane-like production i mean okay it's not gonna happen there's always going to be a load of excuses made there will be people working for disney sony warner brothers telling show runners that they can't possibly afford to spend the same as riot games but at least for me all i need is one good show i'm going to be thinking about arcane for months i'm not even gonna bother finishing tesla notes and so sure while it might not be the future of 3d anime there are lessons there that absolutely shouldn't be ignored [Music] thanks for watching the caniper effect and thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about arcane for me it's a story about trusting animators there's always going to be a fear that artists aren't going to be able to give you back exactly what you're looking for but under the right circumstances and i think we're seeing it with arcane you're going to get back something even better but before i go i'd like to thank these incredible people for supporting the channel in particular i'd like to thank alan barcaro austin hardwick dead amit eddie lahecker edwin shale faux wizard frizzy canadian frog kun fuji jacob bosley jawburst jr pictures my own mother nailer drink nolan soga quentin elkin smith rylan taylor and tommy roman if you'd like to see more videos like this please consider visiting patreon.com slash the caliper effect [Music]

[Music] [Music] i was about 14 years old when i first saw league of legends i was walking through the local library and there were some kids playing on the pcs there i remember thinking huh nerds a couple years later my sister had a friend over and they were playing league on a school laptop i walked straight past them couldn't give a [ __ ] i am now 26 years old i still couldn't care less about league yet arcane league of legends is my favorite tv show of all time it actually took me a couple of weeks to pick up purely because of its connection to the game but i soon discovered that for these creators the objective was never to create a spin-off or an adaptation instead it feels more like an elaborate heist a way of getting one of the largest game publishers in the world to pay for something with unabashed creative freedom outside of the traditional animation production space but i also feel like somewhat of a fraud when it comes to being an anime fan my favorite tv show is arcane my favorite film is spider-verse one made in france and the other made in the united states but the thing is something of this level absolutely could have and still can come from japan in fact cg anime has been constantly experimenting with the combination of 2d effects and backgrounds coupled with stylized 3d models but never quite to this level they have the talent they have the tools they have the creative ambition but unfortunately and this goes for world animation not just japan they don't have the circumstances [Music] four animators both within and outside of japan arcane is a source of some mixed emotions it is incredible inspirational but also impossible in the west animation is often seen as lesser by production companies and the animation guild is currently fighting for better pay for animation workers in japan there is much more respect for animation but that's prompted an overproduction crisis where too many shows are being made at once often with unreasonably tight and inflexible schedules arcane's production began in 2015 with the show airing six years later in 2021 while riot games had considered hiring professional tv show runners they instead drew from their own staff who had no experience in writing tv but years working on league of legends law they needed this time to actually learn how to become tv writers and bring on people who could help them turn a moba into a compelling drama series but perhaps more importantly this time was necessary for the animation team riot games had worked with the french fortieth productions in the past starting with the get jinxed music video and later kda pop stars both becoming viral sensations when arcane was first starting to be developed fortisch was only a 16 person team but through production they had the time and funds to grow into 300 strong with multiple studios across europe and it wasn't difficult to find animators to join up show them a couple of clips from the pilot episode and they're already at their desks asking when they could start in fact they're actually totally full right now and have had to turn away plenty of hopeful animators who have become entranced with the first season after all fortisha's house style is compelling a unique blend of 3d and 2d with a profound excitement for spectacle [Music] so since they already kind of knew what they were doing riot's staff adopted a policy of letting them do their own thing unlike a lot of animation in the west where the dismissive term vendor studio is common foresees was treated like a creative partner and there are plenty of examples of the animators taking the script more as a guideline than strict wrongs but most importantly the creators of arcane had time to think and experiment they spent the first two years creating the pilot episode the same amount of time it takes to make some full anime and then after a delay while they tried to get the rest of the show greenlit it would take roughly five months for four storyboard artists to draw out these incredible detailed storyboards that serve as a scaffold for the 3d animators the result is a show where every single frame feels like a painting begging to be placed above the mantelpiece in fact the team claims have not used motion capture at all giving every frame that handcrafted feel while still keeping it natural through the use of plenty of reference footage and it's not like motion capture is at all a problem but rather the team had a vision and were able to execute upon it without compromise all becomes annoyingly tempting to say thank you riot games but honestly i'm much more tempted to thank the arcane team specifically over riot games leadership the creators of arcane were pitching a money sink to their bosses and they absolutely managed it a former artist that riot mentioned that the project was almost axed several times and so it is frustrating watching riot games leadership bragging about the show amid accusations of them covering up sexual harassment at the studio and with the knowledge that the higher-ups didn't have nearly the amount of faith that they claimed to have today but it's important to recognize that it's not a monolith and so i don't think it's contradictory to put both [ __ ] you riot games and thank you riot games in the same sentence but it is worth recognizing that the arcane team at riot would have also been affected by the toxic company culture that pervaded the studio for years just a taste just riot has been selling arcane as a way to reward league of legends fans while bringing in new players at the same time and that's likely how these artists sold it to their bosses but the way the creators talk about it to the rest of us has been a bit different i've even seen quotes from people at fortish who say they'd never even played to league of legends before there have even been some hardcore league of legends fans irritated by how lacks the creators have been towards the canon of the game and that's intentional arcane wouldn't have the impact it has without a profound amount of creative freedom where artists had the opportunity to give back their own ideas you don't write a scene like the echo and jinx fight that's a moment that is all about the visuals i've seen a lot of people that say that only a company as large as riots could create something like arcane that only they would put that much money into tv animation but alexi wanaroy the character animation lead says that the animation budget isn't actually as high as people have been assuming based on the quality of course riot was dishing out for imagine dragons but fortisch were looking for ways to cut down on costs and ironically it was that cost cutting that was part of what made the show special they don't have disney's expansive 3d backgrounds but they do have wonderful 2d paintings they don't have the lighting tech if your favorite marvel movies but they do have texture artists that can create the impression of atmospheric lighting what the team found was that the supposed money men the people who think they know best about how to make and save money were outclassed by artists who were much more familiar with what it takes to make something world class without the cash from a major studio so instead what riot was paying for was for a smaller team to dedicate all their time to one big project their music videos like kda were only made while they were waiting to get the rest of the show greenlit and even with the first season of arcane being huge they have no plans to juggle multiple shows at once but when it comes to hollywood and the anime industry they're much more interested in quantity over quality especially when it comes to tv animation animation studios across the world will be stretched in every which way resulting in a load of new shows but few that feel truly remarkable the result is that i'm sitting here speaking to you today with an absurd backlog of media to watch i am embarrassed by how much anime i drop a couple episodes in purely because i get busy with other things but when something as creative and groundbreaking as arcane gets released i'm clearing my schedule sorry blade runner black lotus and i imagine a lot of others did the same thing according to netflix it was the number one english language tv show on their service on the week of november 15th but it's all too predictable that other companies will learn the wrong lessons from arcane executives will latch onto the idea that it was a video game show and decide that that was what made it successful or they'll find superficial things like it's a steampunk setting or political drama and while those are parts of what make the show great its success is derived not just from what's on the screen but also what's behind it and when looking into the production of arcane i couldn't help but look back on a far less favorable situation the production of 2016's berserk given more time i genuinely believed berserk could have been amazing but that was a resource the team severely lacked developing the look of a show is something that should take time like it did with arcane animation tests experimentation the occasional [ __ ] up but in the case of berserk they had less than a year for pre-production and then less than a year to complete the show production began in spring of 2015 for an air date of summer 2016. the [ __ ] ups made it to screen director shin into gucci was ambitious and really wanted to capture the grittiness and detail of the late kentura miura's art and while they'd finally worked out an aesthetic by the end of 2015 they had no time left to actually turn that into the show they hoped it would be they didn't even have time to render it out so a bunch of lighting tech and detailed models were removed just to get something onto the television where arcane felt unshackled by the burdens of deadlines and skipped budgets the 3d anime industry is still caged up there's a huge demand for more and more tv animation but most of these teams aren't equipped for it usually focusing on outsourcing before suddenly being pushed into mean production roles have you heard of studio balkan before how about type zero the company not the final fantasy these are outsourcing houses who provide animation for video games commercials and help out other companies with their tv shows today they are the creators of tesla note a 3d anime based on a premise concocted between the writer of tiger and bunny and the late president of a casting company called gambit the result is messy it's not exam levels of hilariously bad but it does make you wonder what is the point of this what's the point of having an anime that i'm not just going to forget about by the end of the year but going to actively be wanting to forget about i think some of these people really believe that if they've written a good story then it doesn't matter what the animation looks like as if dunkirk would be just as good if a toddler was holding the camera wear this inexperience there's got to be time to learn forties production also hadn't made a full animated tv show before but they also weren't expected to craft arcane from start to finish in a couple years the secret to arcane's success wasn't just that it was a great story but rather that it's a great story told brilliantly through its excellent sound and pictures and instead of just being ordered around the french animators were able to push back and contribute with their own narrative ideas no matter how revolutionary the original concepts of tesla note or exxon may have been if the animation teams aren't given the tools or influence to help deliver it it's always going to be a bit mediocre now i don't want to infer that given all that time in independence exam and tesla notes would have also been nominated for nine annie awards like arcane has the team at forties are always going to be remarkable and they were working within their specialty but the circumstances are still important in the wake of arcane many animation creators have been looking back on their projects thinking about in the words of sting what could have been there's always going to be a balance between trying to execute an ambitious vision and meeting the often inflexible deadlines that you've been given while tackling corporate bureaucracy yet even with these restrictions we've been seeing cg anime punching above its weight for years when orange launched their first solo created show land of the lustrous in 2017 it felt transformative this was what 3d anime could be but today it feels like more than half of all cg shows are in this medium purely because the producers couldn't find a 2d anime studio arcane is great because it worked in the opposite direction to most anime instead of asking who's going to animate this idea it was what idea should we work with fortish on and they became creative partners which totally should be the standard for more animation studios orange sanjigan kamikazedorga shiragumi kara like fortish each of these prestige animation houses have somewhat of a house style that i would absolutely love to see entirely unrestrained from the pressures of an inflexible deadline they are all currently creating incredible shows but you can't help thinking what could have been with an arcane-like production i mean okay it's not gonna happen there's always going to be a load of excuses made there will be people working for disney sony warner brothers telling show runners that they can't possibly afford to spend the same as riot games but at least for me all i need is one good show i'm going to be thinking about arcane for months i'm not even gonna bother finishing tesla notes and so sure while it might not be the future of 3d anime there are lessons there that absolutely shouldn't be ignored [Music] thanks for watching the caniper effect and thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about arcane for me it's a story about trusting animators there's always going to be a fear that artists aren't going to be able to give you back exactly what you're looking for but under the right circumstances and i think we're seeing it with arcane you're going to get back something even better but before i go i'd like to thank these incredible people for supporting the channel in particular i'd like to thank alan barcaro austin hardwick dead amit eddie lahecker edwin shale faux wizard frizzy canadian frog kun fuji jacob bosley jawburst jr pictures my own mother nailer drink nolan soga quentin elkin smith rylan taylor and tommy roman if you'd like to see more videos like this please consider visiting patreon.com slash the caliper effect [Music]

Transcript for:Insights on Arcane and Animation Industry

Transcript for:
Insights on Arcane and Animation Industry