It is an event that all geeks and gamers on the planet have been waiting for two years: the world release ofArcane, the first animated series on the Netflix platform, inspired by the world of the phenomenally successful video game League of Legends, Saturday November 6 – available Sunday November 7 in France.
At the origin of the project, we find the heavyweight Riot Games, American publisher of online games with 180 million monthly users worldwide. But when the nine thirty-five minute episodes were produced, it was a French animation studio, Fortiche Production, which stood out.
A big leap forward for a company renowned for its unique visual style – luscious graphics blending 2D and 3D with an “adult” identity – but which had never materialized such an important project. The studio created by Pascal Charrue, Jérôme Combe and Arnaud Delord in 2009, whose main work until then focused on the realization of advertisements and clips, thus enters the big leagues of animation.
In 2013, Christian Linke, artistic director of Riot Games, was looking for a studio to make clips on the universe of League of Legends. “I have spent hours watching all the productions on the web from all studios on the planet. I came across a clip of Fortiche, it was fantastic. I immediately wanted to contact them. “ This clip is from La Gaviota from the French Limousine group, produced in 2012.
“It corresponded to our skills”
Fortiche does not need to be asked to answer the call of the Americans. “Jérôme and I come from the world of video games, explains Pascal Charrue, 44, director for Arcane. Even if we weren’t particularly delusional League of Legends, it corresponded to our skills, we knew we could do something good. “ Immediate success.
The video for this video featuring a character from the game, released in 2013, now has over 100 million views on YouTube. “We then thought that everything was going to come together with Riot, but we had to wait a year before seeing them come back”, remembers Jérôme Combe, lookdev – both artistic and technical director – on the series. Fortiche then continued to stand out, in particular with an advertising clip for the Gorillaz group, also renowned for its strong visual identity.
Fortiche then signed a new clip for Riot Games, in 2014, then an animated miniseries for Marvel, Rocket & Groot, in 2017. A year later, the relationship between Riot and Fortiche grows stronger, with a video for the virtual K-Pop group, inspired by the universe of League of Legends, K / DA, which has 400 million views on YouTube, as well as a clip for the World Championships in League of Legends, in South Korea.
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