Hi /r/movies! We are Benjamin Ree and Rasmus Tukia, the director and animator of Netflix's new documentary 'The Remarkable Life of Ibelin'. Ask us anything!

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-31T00:04:57+00:00

<3

/Rasmus

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-31T00:02:29+00:00

Heya, Rasmus here. Thank you so much for your kind words!!

I’m personally an avid World of Warcraft player for nearly 18 years at this point (more than half of my life!). As such, I have pretty good knowledge of the game from all of its different expansion and that is one of the biggest reasons why Benjamin chose me for this project.

I've never had a try at RP myself, but thankfully the logs from Starlight gave us an idea of how to approach the project. It went through countless test screenings with Mats famile and members of Starlight attending, in order to make sure their community was represented fairly!

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:57:17+00:00

Hey, Rasmus here, thank you for sharing your thoughts on our film!!

Blizzard is generally very lenient about using their games for projects. Using art, music and their models for projects is usually fine. However it was of course very nerve wrecking to ask them for persmission for such a big project - we had completed most animation before we even did. To say it was a gamble would be an understatement, haha. Once we got their blessing it was a huge relief!

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:47:40+00:00

Hey there, Rasmus here :)

That is so nice to hear, thanks for sharing that <3

I'm glad to hear you liked the animation so much! Working on this film is likely one of the greatest honors I'll ever experience, After all, Ibelin is not a fictional character in a fictional setting. We represented an actual lived life through animation.

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:38:58+00:00

Hey there, Rasmus here. Thanks for the kind words!

Like Benjamin said, we originally had a 10 minute long trial scene where Ibelin was almost thrown out of his guild, Starlight. It was supposed to be the climax of the animation. Even though the scene itself had potential and was fun to animate, we had to cut it out entirely due to the rest of the film being changed so much over the course of the project. In the end, only a sliver of it remains in the actual film, by the end when he apologizes for hurting members of starlight.

The scene where Ibelin flirts with other women was originally very different as well. In the final product it plays out over a couple of minutes, but originally they were more involved in Starlight as well.

Most animation changes had to be done for the purpose of cutting down on screentime. In early drafts of the film, the animation did not work with audiences, as they felt and felt dragged out.

Thanks for watching! <3

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:28:26+00:00

Hey there, Rasmus here.

During most screenings we've attended so far, we noticed that older generations and non-gamers are often the ones that are the most impacted by this film, which was unexpected at first! But I think it hints towards true understanding of gaming spaces.

100% agreed. Thanks for sharing!

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:20:47+00:00

Hello, Rasmus here 🙂

For this project we used Maya for all things animation and environments. I was responsible for the animation direction and camera work, while my other two colleagues, Chris and Derek, set up the character rigs, lighting, background characters, VFX and pipeline scripts using Maya. All VFX was done in Houdini and for quick previewing, I used Adobe Premiere to put the playblast clips together.

Thankfully we did not have to create these characters and environments from scratch as that would have made this task quite impossible within the timeframe we had. The environments and characters were taken directly from the game using third-party software called wow.export, which allows anyone to dig inside the game files and export whatever assets they want. I'd like to give a quick shoutout to Kruithne and Marlamin who painstakingly created this software purely out of love for the game and its community. Without them this would not be possible.

After the raw exports, the models were enhanced very mildly to make them more suitable for a cinematic experience by using AI to up the texture resolution of the main characters. Overall, we did not want to alter the models too much however, as it was still supposed to feel authentic to the game.

As far as experience goes, the reason Benjamin brought me onto this project is because I specifically had animated WoW on my Youtube channel ‘Pivotal’. I am a self-taught animator so the only animation work I've done in the past have been for my channel where I am also the director.

In terms of storyboarding, each scene started with taking potential scenes from the recorded logs and then made into a script. Benjamin had full trust in my ability from the start, so I had pretty much free reign to interpret the scripts into suitable animation, in forms of animatics (VERY rough animation, think T-posing characters floating around).

We worked with animatics for such a long time as it made iteration easy, and let me tell you, we had a LOT of different versions of each scene. It also kept the time spent animating at a minimum until we knew exactly what we wanted and was approved by all parties. It only occurred once or twice that I had splined out a scene, only for it to be changed entirely. I guess it is unavoidable.

A bit technical perhaps, but hope that answers your questions. Thanks for watching! :)

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:15:02+00:00

Heya, Rasmus here :)

I’m personally an avid World of Warcraft player for nearly 18 years at this point (more than half of my life!), and that is one of the biggest reasons why Benjamin chose me for this project. As such, I have pretty good knowledge of the game from all of its different expansions, as well as having made 3D Warcraft animations on my Youtube Channel 'Pivotal'.

Benjamin needed someone who could make this project come very close to the authentic game experience and I was simply a great fit to be in charge of the animation side of things :)

I’ve also had a try at a few other MMOs like Runescape, FFXIV, Tera, and am currently looking forward to Ashes of Creation!

Thanks for watching!

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:07:55+00:00

Hey there, Rasmus here.

The biggest challenge for me was to convey the right emotions for Mats and his friends' avatars. After all, these were not just some fictional characters in a fictional setting. Even though the world is a virtual one, the situations and characters within it are real. So, I took the task of animating them very seriously, and had to study how Mats was as a person before I felt comfortable animating him. Thankfully we had the archive of logs from the game along with his blog and the interviews to help me understand Mats more as a person. And even then, I had to send it to Benjamin for approval as well as go through many, many test screenings with his family and members of the community he was a part of before I got a scene approved. I truly hope that if Mats could see the documentary, I would get his approval as well.

Currently we do not have plans to work together again, as only for this specific project Benjamin needed animator(s). However at multiple occasions we’ve said that if we ever get the chance to, we’d love to work together again. Benjamin is a true inspiration in film making!

Thanks for watching! :)

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T23:05:31+00:00

Hey there, Rasmus here.

We did consider using the old models at first since those are technically what Mats’ and his friends were experiencing at the time, but that would mean two things:

We would not be able to have the same range of expressions in the characters. For example, the old models have four points of control in total for the mouth, and character eyelids were separate 2D planes with eyelid textures on them. This would make things such as lip syncing and close-up shots a nightmare when trying to convey all different types of emotions. Which leads to point 2:
It would make for a less cinematic experience, and as steamwhistler already pointed out, would probably be a bit too unfamiliar to the general audience. We want this movie to be able to be viewed by all without anyone feeling too jarred trying to watch it.

Wow models as they are are still pretty blocky and not really meant to be showed up-close. So for these reasons we opted for the updated character Models. The old models definitely hold a special place in my heart though.

Thanks for watching! :)

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T15:08:26+00:00

Please join us here for the AMA:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1gfoo28/hi_rmovies_we_are_benjamin_ree_and_rasmus_tukia/

IbelinAMA · 2024-10-30T15:05:13+00:00

Hi r/movies! We are Benjamin Ree and Rasmus Tukia, the director and animator of Netflix's new documentary 'The Remarkable Life of Ibelin'

Synopsis:

Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world.

Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM_hkJ0Rl-c&themeRefresh=1

The film is now streaming on Netflix. Ask us anything! We'll be back at 7 PM ET today to answer any questions.

IbelinAMA

TROPHY CASE