Personally, I love and get inspired by movies and games with a similar style, like Spider-Verse, Valorant, League of Legends cinematics, Marvel Rivals, Apex, and others. It wasn’t about technical limitations – we just decided to pursue this style. For me, the biggest challenge was figuring out how to achieve the hand-drawn, 2D-inspired style in a 3D, real-time environment – and do it quickly. Since this was for a cinematic, we could’ve handled some effects in post-production, but we decided to create everything entirely in Unreal Engine. Together with Paul, I was responsible for implementing the visual style, from developing the character and environment shaders to the post-process effects.

When we looked at references, we realized traditional cel shading wouldn’t be enough. We needed a painted normal workflow for the characters, weighted outlines, hatched lines in the transition from midtones to shadows, and smears or lines to convey movement instead of traditional motion blur. Out of all these, the most challenging was definitely the movement smears.

What I enjoyed most was the synergy within the team. Everyone, across all disciplines, was equally ambitious and committed to pushing boundaries, even with the tight timeframe. Plus, the freedom to experiment with wild ideas made the whole process incredibly fun. That’s how we came up with the motion smears and the ‘super saiyan’ shot.