Launched in 2009 as a “small, unpretentious studio”, the French studio Fortiche hopes to reconquer the world with the release on Saturday of season 2 of Arcane, an animated series adapted from the video game League of Legends. Intended for those over 16 years old, this retro-futuristic style fiction follows Vi and Jinx, two sisters who are torn apart against the backdrop of conflict between Zaun, a territory of the slums, and Piltover, a rich city of the dominant, in a world where magic and technology intertwine.
A surprise success
Faithful to the Riot Games gaming universe, acclaimed for its unique aesthetic mixing 2D and 3D, season 1 of Arcane created a surprise by dominating the Netflix series rankings for three weeks in 65 countries, before receiving multiple awards, including four Emmy Awards.
What to build pressure before the arrival of the nine new and final episodes on Saturday? “We would like to repeat this success,” confides Pascal Charrue, co-founder of Fortiche Production and co-director of Arcane. “But we don’t have to be ashamed of our images. We tried to reach and even exceed the level of requirements of season 1,” he adds. This “requirement”, characteristic of the “Fortiche touch”, is reflected in the high budget allocated to the project.
A unique visual work
Eight years of work, 12 hours of content, 700 collaborators… With a production and promotion budget of around $250 million, according to Variety magazine, Arcane is the most expensive animated series ever made. Fortiche’s animators do everything “by hand”, each producing less than half a second of film per day, explains Martial André, animation supervisor at the Paris studio.
Each 3D character has around 300 controllers to manipulate the face and body, from eyebrows to knuckles. “The animators film themselves to understand the bodily mechanisms to be reproduced,” explains Martial André. “Each decor is a handmade digital painting,” insists Barthélémy Maunoury, creative director and co-director, with numerous references to Art Deco and Art Nouveau.
Thanks to Arcane, Fortiche, launched in the apartment of one of its three founders, has changed dimension. The studio, now based in Paris, Montpellier and Las Palmas (Canary Islands), employed up to 450 people simultaneously.
Collaboration with Riot Games
Since 2013, Riot Games, seduced by Fortiche’s style, has collaborated closely with the French studio. “You always feel that the artist behind the image really cares about what they do,” explains Christian Linke, co-creator of Arcane and creative director of Riot Games. The studio has also distinguished itself in other projects, such as Marvel’s Rocket & Groot series and music videos for the British group Gorillaz.
If season 2 of Arcane marks the end of the main story, Riot Games is already planning new stories around other characters from the League of Legends universe, thus promising to extend the rich collaboration with Fortiche.
