Hi travelers,
Most everyone has honed in on one of the more unique elements of our announcement trailer: Alta’s internal monologue and struggle at the end.
That last section of the trailer was so significant and important to us as a team, we always knew essentially what was going to happen, but the finer details did take a bit more trial and error to get juuuust right.
Here’s a little behind-the-scenes reflection on that final close-up Alta shot from Liz, our Cinematics Lead & Animator!
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I was responsible for getting Nat F’s great storyboard foundation into 3D pre-vis for the cinematic shots, and animating the long shot of Alta and Boro at the end. Ana and @arainydancer animated the rest and did wonderfully!
The animated scenes were made specifically for the trailer, but we used the same process we do for our in-game cinematics. I’d take Davey’s writing, get the key emotional points into animation, and have some back and forths to get the right feelings locked in before pushing for final animation.
Since it was the same process we used for the game, production for the trailer was incredibly smooth for the team.
The part we had to hone in on the most was the ending, there was a lot of down to the frame editing to get the right “things are okay, things are NOT okay” balance. Originally, Boro didn't comfort Alta at the end of the trailer, and we instead cut to a moody atmospheric shot of the nearby environment. The idea was to leave viewers on that suspense right after her breakdown to elicit a strong emotional response, but we found that it wasn't landing and mostly just left people confused.
We needed a more human connection to leave people on, and we found simply showing Boro’s concern for Alta the strongest option emotionally. It best represented their dynamic as characters while also giving a good representation of the feelings within the game itself.
In this video, you can see the whole shot of Alta without the quick interjections between the shop and her sword:
The interjections were something I wanted to add in to keep an excited, unnerving tempo and to have people ask things like, “why are these otherwise pretty and calming shots of the shop presented so sinister or uncomfortable? What’s the significance of showing the sword there and in such a dark composition? Why show these things during her breakdown?”.
Animating Alta’s face during this shot was a fun challenge! I had to convey her thinking her dialogue without her physically speaking it and had to make sure the transition between her being “okay” and “not okay” happened both naturally and at a good tempo. Acting challenges aside, animation itself was really fun and easy for me thanks to the rigging by @moomanibe!
I’m really happy to see the trailer land and have so many people intrigued and excited to find out what the game has in store! It’s been so awesome seeing how it’s resonated emotionally with people and I’m super excited for people to get to play and see the work I’ve done in it
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We hope you enjoyed that little bit of insight to the process -- if you've got questions about other elements of the game, let us know. As always, we'll do our best to answer what we can...while leaving plenty for you to discover when it comes time to finally visit Wanderstop on your own.
Until next time,
🍵💛 Jenny and the Wanderstop team