Platige Image’s game division, led by Director Tomek Bagiński, follows the success of their epic The Witcher 2 cinematic with a stunning game teaser for CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077, a follow up to Mike Pondsmith’s successful Cyberpunk 2020 games of the 1990s. A showcase of Platige Image’s design and execution capabilities, the snapshot of a violent far-future dystopia is building enormous momentum for the game’s September release, earning a Silver CLIO and nearly six million hits on YouTube.
That the cinematic scooped up a Silver CLIO is just the latest positive development for Warsaw based Platige Image, which recently opened a new branch in New York. “This CLIO is a testament to the skill set that defines Platige Image’s team, especially with such fierce competition from the best studios out there,” noted Platige Image NY Managing Director Julian Cdae. “We are revved up to serve the US market with similar projects built with our ingenuity, technical innovation and competitive rates covering all aspects of postproduction.”
The cinematic, which Platige not only created but helped to write, is a compelling masterpiece of the slow reveal, set in a still-framed world that at first shows only what appears to be a woman’s face, then a bullet smashing to bits upon impact with her cheeks as police fire at her, followed by progressive frames that reveal her to be a killer cyborg surrounded by piles of dead bodies. News cameras hover over the violent scene, evoking the 24-hour channels of today in order to create a visceral connection between the viewer and the futuristic footage.
In a departure from the formulaic videogame heroines so commonly cobbled together from banal component parts, Platige Image built their character from an actress captured on IR’s 72×18 megapixel camera system, a state-of-the-art setup that captures 1.27 gigapixels of 3D color data from 360 degrees in a single shot. So vivid were the images that only the actress’ scanned hair follicles had to be recreated from scratch.
“Ever since we set out to create it, we knew the promo would work only if the female protagonist engendered a serious emotional response in the viewers and pushed the boundaries of the typical female videogame form,” notes Bagiński. “The ability to work with a real actress and Platige Image’s access to IR’s outstanding camera thoroughly transformed the film, as the scanning enabled us to capture this fleeting element of authenticity, to use the beauty of a real person.”
Platige Image faced considerable challenges in creating the cinematic, setting to work on the project while CD Projekt RED was still in the game’s core development stages. As Platige Image sketched out dozens of ideas for the teaser, the game developer honed the concept, style, look and feel of the game itself. Each influenced the other in a highly productive creative seesaw. “Developing the game and promo simultaneously made the film a logistical and organizational challenge, but it also imbued it with much more spontaneity and creativity,” notes Bagiński.
Credits:
Director / Story: Tomek Bagiński
CG Supervisor / Animation Director: Maciej Jackiewicz
Executive Producers: MarcinKobylecki, Jarosław Sawko, Piotr Sikora
Producer: Marta Staniszewska
Concept Artists: Damian Bajowski, Jakub Jabłoński, Maciej Kuciara, Maciej Rębisz
Additional Concept Artists: Jakub Bogaczyński, Adam Trędowski, Rafał WojtunikCD PROJEKT RED
Concept Artist: Robert Adler
