Honor of Kings 3D animation series

The first personal hero animation under the worldview of “Glory of Kings”, “Glory of Kings: Chapter of the Broken Moon” takes the hero Li Bai as the protagonist.Through his perspective, the audiences will get a glimpse of the entire worldview of “Glory of Kings”, which opens up a part of the huge world. Consequently, the main creators need to establish the artistic style, visual effects and emotional tone of the entire series through “Broken Moon”, making this “first chapter” an amazing first draft.

As an animation work, visuals and special effects are its foundation, and “Broken Moon” not only achieves visual innovation and breakthrough, but also is a very rare way to reversely empower the story through art and visual effects. Representative, this just reflects the platform’s determination and confidence to create high-quality animation.

From the perspective of intuitive visual presentation, the art of “Broken Moon” is a very classic and of a gorgeous oriental fantasy style, whether it is the majestic Tai Chi Temple, the grand majesty of Dali Temple, the quiet beauty of the winding water cup, or the dim Lights and Clouds in the desert, and everything is exquisite and luxurious, creating a prosperous and prosperous scene. As a derivative of the game IP, “Broken Moon” follows the style of the  “Glory of Kings” series of character posters and concept art, with a luxurious yet subtle depiction. At the same time, the animation also made a lot of attempts and previews in terms of color tones, hoping that subtle changes in color could better convey the emotional changes of the characters in conjunction with the advancement of the storyline.

For the small climax of the story, the creative team put more effort into it. For example, the exciting fight between Li Bai and Di Renjie in Dali Temple was specially designed with light and shadow, allowing the two to fight with weapons in the dark Dali Temple without candlelight. At the same time, lightning occasionally flashed across the scene, illuminating the silhouettes of the two combatants, and then darkened again. The Dali Temple, which had plunged into darkness, provided more room for imagination, increasing the tension and intensity of the fight.

In order to truly realize the final artistic effect of “Broken Moon”, the animation made an attempt to “upgrade” the art process compared with ordinary full-length animation. It refernced the film animation productionpipeline with starting from the draft of the storyboard. Do a lot of previs and designs, for example, make many different design for the same scene, and then determine the direction of refinement, or do a lot of reference before starting each design, including taking into account the history of the environment. factor or a supporting role in promoting the entire plot. The art execution design is based on the concept of the script, scene framework, special props, etc. The performance in the storyboarding process needs to consider the actual scenery, props and other factors, and constantly optimize the character positioning, plot rhythm, etc.

The  “Broken Moon” is not only about improving the details, but also about improving the overall visual volume. There are 77 scenes in four episodes, presenting 1179 shots with a top-notch visual effects to each frame. For an 80+ minute animated series with 1,179 shots, the volume of assets is much more than that of previous animations.

   “Broken Moon” also did a lot of words on the design of the basic character expressions, and made quite a few specialized expression in addition to the basic expressions, such as raising and lowering eyebrows when arrogant, eyebrow arching The subtle changes in winking, or the childish and slightly pouting look when meeting parents are all within the design of the creative team. The animation retains Li Bai’s characteristic of casual, arrogant, and boyishness but also presents another side of him that is impulsive and easily influenced by emotions, allowing the audience to see that Li Bai is not just a simple character, but a man had past and obsession. A living “person” whose thoughts, joys and anger come from the heart. During the overall production process, the art team of “Broken Moon” produced a large number of manuscripts around the characters, ranging from references to concept sketches, concept color drafts, production drawings, three views, etc., totaling 2,000+ copies, and the differentiated elements in the animation The number of supporting character models is as high as 145, and the amount of work can be imagined.

“Broken Moon” not only expands and extends the heroes and their motivations based on the game, but also makes separate designs for the props of the supporting characters and the furnishings and props in the supporting characters’ homes. It is reported that there are 701 3D props , 11 supporting props including machine beasts, machine birds, etc. There are 77 medium and large scenes alone, and there are countless small scenes; in terms of art, special effects, There are 677 pictures of the scene design, and one picture contains all the structure, atmosphere, cameras, props and sets. The actual output of the design is at least 5 times more. In addition, there are 68 reference of sand tables, which  made from God’s perspective with eye’s view to ensure the logic and rationality of the scene.

The pipeline of “Broken Moon” has as many as 22 complex steps, including script, static 2D storyboard, dynamic 2D storyboard, character design, scene design, prop design, visual effects design, colorkey atmosphere map, model production, mattepainting, LookDev, expression design, rigging, expression plug-in development, expression library, action library, live animation reference shooting, motion capture and restoration, simlution, special effects production, lighting production, renderingn, compositing, editing and Color correction, etc., it took five year for the entire pipeline.

The labor cost per minute of “Broken Moon” is 4-5 times that of a typical animated series or film. In order to solidly meet the production needs of “Broken Moon”, a production team of about assembled 200+ people, including nearly 150 artists, most of whom have the background of CG production. It can be said that “Broken Moon” has a very professional team and adopts the production method of theatrical animatio. Behind this, it’s the serious attention of Tencent Video and Honor of Kings on this IP and great support from the platform. It reflects the entire team’s high requirements and pursuit of quality. It is also the team’s ambition to adopt the concept of animated films to promote the upgrading of the national comic process.