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REALTIME team up with Ukie to #RaiseTheGame on diversity

The #RaiseTheGame pledge, an initiative from UKIE, is a collaborative and high-impact commitment to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in the games industry — creating cultures where everyone belongs, voices are heard and ideas can thrive.

We are proud to announce that we are supporting the #Raisethegame initiative by pledging to create change within our own organisation.

Companies signing up to the pledge work towards:

  • creating a diverse workforce by recruiting as fairly and as widely as possible
  • shaping inclusive and welcoming places to work, by educating and inspiring people to take more personal responsibility for fostering and promoting diversity and inclusion
  • Reflecting greater diversity within games at every level from game design and development through to marketing and community engagement.

REALTIME joins developers, publishers and other companies associated to the video games industry who have also signed-up to the pledge, including Xbox, Mediatonic, Rare and EA.

Says Tony Prosser, Managing Director of REALTIME, “We wholeheartedly support the principle of equal opportunities and nurturing a diverse and inclusive environment within our business. Signing up to Ukie’s #Raisethegame pledge is a hugely exciting step for REALTIME; diversity in our workforce ensures diversity, innovation and resilience in our work, which is a vital to our company culture.”

The Watch: Pre-vis & Post-vis explained

Welcome back to part 2 of our series on the VFX work behind BBC America’s latest Terry Pratchett adaptation – ‘The Watch’. In part 1, we covered the initial design process behind the two dragons at the heart of the story. There’s Goodboy, the hand-held dragon with the power of a flamethrower. Then there’s the Noble Dragon, the terrifying, smoky city-razer causing chaos.

In part 2, we’re going to talk about the pre- and post-visualisation work that went into creating the two unique dragons. So, without further ado, let’s jump in!

Pre-vis 

Previously, we talked about creating a unique look for the Noble Dragon; something audiences had never seen before in a dragon. We decided on a smoky, ethereal design that created an air of mystery and unknown terror about the creature.

Once we had a model, we went on to create tests to show how the FX would look and behave on a basic flying version of the model. The brief we received from director Craig Viveiros was that it should look like plane trailing contrails. He wanted the dragon to have a sinister visual impact and pose a serious threat to the characters. 

We used a basic model of a dragon for our test, with a very simple rig. We draped it in smoke to give an idea of what it would look like in the final series, and the test scene was a simple animation block-out with the dragon breathing fire. This previs ensured that the director and execs could all agree how the dragon would behave and look when it flew, ahead of starting work on shots.

Once we had a test everyone was happy with, we created a fully rigged model of the Noble Dragon model sculpt we had created, which we then put through various flight cycles to show how it moved in the sky. This was part of our team’s internal process for developing the animation for the Noble Dragon. 

Post-vis

Principle photography took place in South Africa, creating the live action plates we needed to incorporate our dragons. The art department created a full-size replica of Goodboy for actress Lara Rossi (Lady Sybil) to hold in shot. He was then replaced in post-production by the CG Goodboy. This was partially to help with her performance, but we also hoped that in wide shots we could use that rather than the CGI model, to reduce costs.

Post-vis was done of all the key CG sequences using a mixture of filmed plates and full CG environments. This allowed for a continuing creative dialogue with the showrunner, director, and producer, as well as Lola VFX who were in charge of creating the cityscapes. 

Alongside this, the look dev of the Noble Dragon was started. There were a number of issues with a huge creature who is made of smoke, fire, and lightning that had to be solved. Legibility being the most important. As she had to work in both day- and night-time situations, a flexible tool set of passes was created to suit all conditions. It allowed for independent control over her eyes, smoky body, internal lightning, fiery throat and belly, as well as a skeletal pass to add definition to her skull and chest for the closer shots.

By doing this, we accomplished what we needed to; we made this dragon distinctly different from anything that’s come before. It takes what people think when they hear the word dragon and turns it on its head.

The same can be said for Goodboy, who presented his own, if somewhat smaller, challenges. While the Noble dragon was all about the big picture, Goodboy is all about detail. From the scarring on his face to the texture of his wings, fine, nuanced animation allowed this character to transition from cute to deadly, beginner to proficient flyer.

In the end, both dragons came away looking different to anything we’ve seen before. And we think both dragons are a great addition to the series . This was a great project for us to flex our creative muscles and deliver something the client could be proud of.

REALTIME’s team of highly creative individuals can take your project to the next level with fantastic ideas and visuals. If you want to find out more, get in touch with me at [email protected].

From concept to completion: Dragons in The Watch

In early 2021, BBC America aired the fantastical new Terry Pratchett adaptation – ‘The Watch’. A fantastical world as rich as Terry Pratchett’s Discworld required some innovative VFX work to bring this adaptation to life, especially the dangerous Noble Dragon that threatens its world and the cute, but fiery, pocket-size dragon Goodboy. 

REALTIME was a key creative partner on the series, creating a range of 2D and 3D VFX, including for the two very different dragons. Uniquely anarchic and thrillingly entertaining, the character-driven drama follows several of Terry Pratchett’s best-loved creations on a riotous and emotional odyssey.

But how did we approach such a task? In part one, we’re going to run through the initial stages as we worked to meet this unique brief. Let’s run through our VFX journey…

A tale of two dragons

This project presented two specific challenges: creating the smaller Goodboy, a dragon who fits in the palm of your hand, and at the other extreme, the colossal Noble Dragon, a creature the size of a jumbo jet, with enough firepower to destroy a city.

From the brief, we had to create something never seen before. With two distinctly different creatures to create, we started with the concept art. It’s at this stage we began to sketch out the look of the dragons, building an idea of how to bring them to life in 3D. In an age of Game of Thrones and other high fantasy, dragons have become part of the zeitgeist. Our goal was to make something brand new that gave the series two unique dragons of its own.

The production team had originally wanted to use a real gecko to ‘act’ the part of Goodboy. The wings and fire breath would just be added in post-production. In practice, this was a very challenging task to accomplish on set, as we saw when we suggested production do a camera test early on. It proved too difficult to work with a real lizard. This meant Goodboy needed to be a full CGI creature, but also work with the budget limitations of the series.

We still wanted to have the feel of a real-life lizard, so drew inspiration from the armadillo lizard. As we would be getting much more up close and personal with this creature, we had to focus on bringing life to it, capturing his personality and character. We visualised a rescue puppy to help us understand the kind of emotional response we wanted Goodboy to elicit from viewers, adding details like his broken wings and scars.

Goodboy might well be the cutest character in the series – just watch him sing – but he also has a dangerous side as a hand-held flamethrower. There’s a lot of personality to Goodboy that had to be brought out through the VFX work. He needed a cheeky personality with an expressive face, but we had to be mindful of budgetary considerations when designing his body and rigging his face. 

In the grand finale of the series, Goodboy takes centre stage to stop the rampage of the Noble Dragon. Without spoiling it for you, it proved a great opportunity to bring some of Goodboy’s personality to the forefront and finish the series with a bit of Pratchett-esque tongue-in-cheek wit. He is quite a young and inexperienced dragon, and we played this up in his attempt to fly. He launches off with a running jump, but his flight is very bumpy as he has to learn as he goes. 

For the Noble Dragon, with its awe-inspiring size, we needed a different approach. To make it feel different to the dragons featured in other popular fantasy series and films, we wanted to give it an ethereal, smoky quality. This meant it would need to go through multiple stages and be highly FX-driven.

When we designed the Noble Dragon, even though its scales wouldn’t be seen by the audience, we still rendered a version with them because we need to know how it looks and operates. 

But we’ll talk about the Noble Dragon in more detail in part 2 when we dive into the pre- and post-vis processes. This is where the two dragons really came to life. Stay tuned for part 2!

REALTIME has a team of highly creative individuals who can elevate your project with fantastic ideas and visuals. If you would like to find out more, get in touch with me at [email protected].

 

Four of the most inspiring women in the games industry

The video game industry has a reputation as a male-dominated space. At REALTIME, we are committed to playing a part to change this. To mark #IWD 2021, we are planning to sign up to the #RaiseTheGame Diversity pledge by UKIE. 

In 2019, 46% of gamers in the US were women. It’s a hobby that transcends gender and in this 21st-century world, we can move beyond this outdated viewpoint. Despite this, only 24% of game developers worldwide were women. Almost half of all gamers are women, yet there aren’t enough voices representing them.

Thankfully, that number is on the rise and we only have amazingly talented and skilful women to thank for that. They are working behind the scenes to bring games to life and lead the way for other young girls. Here are just a handful of the many inspirational women in the games industry who have had a huge impact. 

 

Robin Hunicke

Robin has had a rich and very impressive career. Starting off at EA, she worked on multiple games, including MySims as lead designer and Boom Blox as a producer. After leaving EA she went on to produce the award-winning Journey for the PS3 at thatgamecompany. If that wasn’t enough, she worked for Tiny Speck to develop Glitch. 

Robin is now the co-founder and CEO of the game studio Funomena, a studio that describes its games as “experimental, playful, and engaging” and is behind the charmingly bizarre Wattam. Robin is well-recognised in the industry for her support of indie games, experimental approach to game design, and advocating for women in the games industry. 

 

Aya Kyogoku

Aya worked her way up at Nintendo to the role of sequence director on Animal Crossing: City Folk. After City Folk received mixed reviews, Aya, as one of the two directors, decided to take a different approach with its sequel, New Leaf. She used her position as director to address the gender imbalance in the industry by hiring a team that was 50% female. She also encouraged members of the team, no matter their role, to make suggestions for the game. The tireless efforts of Ava and her team led to New Leaf selling over 12 million copies and receiving some of the best reviews for the series to date. 

That was until Aya Animal Crossing: New Horizons came along. Aya struck gold again, creating a game which the world very much needed last year. The game received the “Game Of The Year” award from the Japan Game Awards and sold over 1.88 million copies in three days in Japan. 

Twitter also announced it was the most tweeted about game in 2020. In the year that saw the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, along with massive titles such as The Last of Us Part II and the Final Fantasy VII Remake, that’s no easy feat.

 

Dona Bailey

Dona’s first exposure to video games was when her friend took her to a bar with an arcade to show her the game that the song “Space Invaders” by The Pretenders was named after. Already working as a programmer, she realised Atari was using the same microprocessor. So she decided to leave her job and moved to California in hopes of working for them.

Dona joined Atari’s coin-op division, where she was the only woman. In a four-person team, she worked as the software developer and engineer on the legendary game Centipede. It became one of the most commercially successful arcade games during the arcade golden age. 

Dona is also credited with designing the game in such a way so as to appeal to a broader audience. As such, Centipede became one of the first coin-op games with a significant female player base. She was a true trailblazer, and who knows if the industry would be the same without her impact.

 

Danielle Udogaranya

Of those working in the games industry, only 2% are black. And across all ethnicities, only 28% are female. So we estimate about just over 0.5% of the people working in the entire games industry are black women, and that fact hasn’t gone unnoticed. Representation matters and Danielle Udogaranya is at the heart of the discussion in gaming.

She’s known by her Twitch moniker ‘Ebonix’, but she is also a hugely influential voice in the wider industry and co-founder of Black Twitch UK. As a Sims streamer and customer content creator, she advocated for more inclusive skin tones. Her efforts paid off last year when EA added more than 100 skin tones to The Sims 4, as well as more options for black hairstyles.

She knows just how much people crave representation. She put it best when she said: “I wasn’t met with any push back, but rather embraced by the community, because I was creating content which allowed them to feel represented and see themselves in their games.”

 

Honourable mentions

Four definitely isn’t enough; there are too many great women in gaming to name. There’s Bonnie Ross, current corporate vice president at Xbox Game Studios and head of 343 Industries, the team helming the Halo series. Or what about Siobhan Reddy, studio director at Media Molecule, who just released the revolutionary Dreams?

Some talented voice actresses have brought their characters to life through amazing performances. Ashly Burch is one such name, starring as Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn and Chloe in Life is Strange. Both Ashley Johnson and Laura Bailey delivered outstanding work in The Last of Us Part II. And we can’t not mention the extremely talented Yoko Shimomura, the composer behind many stellar soundtracks, including those for the Kingdom Hearts series and Final Fantasy XV.

But this is just a drop in the industry. Women are our community managers, our concept artists, our programmers, our animators, our writers, our QA testers, and all those in marketing, advertising, and PR.

There’s still a long way to go in bridging the gender gap in the games industry, but with women like this leading the way, we’re well on our way to gender equality in the industry. The work they are putting out today could be the inspiration many young girls need, and we can’t wait to see who the next rising star will be.

We also want to point out the great work Code Coven is doing with their female-led, games industry-focused online bootcamp. Their inclusive and friendly learning environment is sure to make the games industry a more diverse place to be. And if you would like to discuss your next project, get in touch with me today at [email protected].

How the mobile gaming market is going from strength to strength

In the last few months alone, the gaming industry has seen the highly anticipated release of the next generation of consoles. Both the Xbox Series X/S and the PS5 were sold out worldwide as gaming enthusiasts scrambled for their piece of the next-gen pie. And as we’ve seen, there’s plenty on the horizon to look forward to.

But despite this fervor, the console market, along with the PC, is only half of the picture. No single platform alone can stand up to the might of the mobile gaming market. It should come as no surprise; everyone has access to a hefty library of games right in their pocket. We all know that elderly relative or have that technophobic parent who still manages to find time for a bit of mobile gaming.

So, as we continue into 2021, what does the current state of the mobile gaming market look like? And how will the wider gaming industry respond?

 

Pixel perfect

Despite the overwhelming popularity of mobile gaming right now, believe it or not, it can only continue going up. The global gaming market made approximately $159 billion in revenue in 2020. The mobile gaming market accounted for $77 billion of that – roughly 48%. This is estimated to reach over $100 billion by 2023, making it a very lucrative market.

There are currently around 950,000 games on the Apple App Store, roughly 33% of all apps available. Even though they aren’t the majority of apps available, they still manage to account for 74% of consumer spending.

And it’s easy to see why. They’re accessible to all. In fact, the mobile phone is the most popular device for gaming, beating out consoles, PCs, and tablets in 10 major markets across the world. It’s a market that can’t be ignored. The trend of major studios and publishers making their mark on the platform will only continue. Nintendo are one of many to release original content for mobile, including Mario Kart Tour and Super Mario Run. How long will it be until we see Sony and Microsoft mascots making their debut?

 

Moving to mobile

In a way, both of these parties are making their mobile move – they’re turning to cloud gaming. Microsoft has xCloud which currently allows you to stream to compatible mobile devices and Sony has Remote Play which allows you to seamlessly connect to Android and iOS devices. 

This move comes as a recognition of the enduring popularity of mobile gaming, ensuring they can reach even more people. It could also be seen as a way to combat the encroachment of mobile gaming by giving avid gamers a way to play that’s most convenient to them. Most of all, it’s just the smart move. With 5G becoming widely available, cloud gaming on mobile might be about to see an explosion of its own.

Developers are also making the most of this popularity, with many of the most popular games right now having their own mobile version. Surprise hit Among Us is both a PC and mobile game, with players connecting with each other no matter which platform they choose. The free-to-play nature of the mobile version means even more people can jump into a game with their friends without having to make the financial commitment. Fortnite also has a sizable audience on mobile devices, and even League of Legends has made the jump with League of Legends: Wild Rift. PUBG, Minecraft, Stardew Valley – all these PC-level games available in the palm of your hands.

 

Incoming investment

With so much money available, it only makes sense that it’s attracted the attention of those with deep pockets. Over the last two years, the gaming industry has seen over $9.6 billion dollars of investment. And a significant chunk of that is going to the mobile market.

Tencent in particular has been busy; they poured $90 million into Pocket Gems, creators of the Episode series, and $126 million into Glu Mobile, creators of Kim Kardashian Hollywood. Then you have larger publishers buying smaller mobile developers to add to their own repertoire. This includes the likes of Ubisoft who acquired Ketchapp, giving them access to a specialist developer and allowing them to expand massively in this arena.

But the huge money came from the usual Wall Street investors, with hyper-casual gaming studio Voodoo receiving a staggering $200 million investment from Goldman Sachs. Private equity firm KKR bought a minority stake – yes, minority – in mobile marketing platform AppLovin for $400 million. This huge investment from such big names is surely the signal that mobile gaming isn’t only lucrative now, but will continue to be well into the future.

As long as mobile phones exist as a platform, mobile gaming will continue to exist. With annual releases pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved, how long is it until we see console-level graphics running natively on our phones? That future must be imminent.

REALTIME is on the cutting edge of the gaming industry. We’re here to help any studio looking to bring their mobile game to life with an audience-grabbing trailer. If you want to find out more, get in touch with me at [email protected].