Last week’s viral video hit – in the games world at least – was the gripping trailer for Deep Silver’s forthcoming zombie survival game, Dead Island.
Over the weekend we received confirmation from our friends at Axis Animation in Glasgow that they are the company behind the animation. Directed by Axis owner and director, Stuart Aitken, the trailer was created in collaboration with the brand team at Deep Silver.
“Deep Silver were really keen to create something different, something that would really stand out and when they put forward the initial idea for the ‘reverse’ sequence I saw the seed of something great there,” said Aitken.
The trailer, accompanied by gentle accompanying music, runs backwards, showing the aftermath of a zombie attack on a family in a hotel room. The qiality of the animation, as well as the content drew praise from all corners of the internet. Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow called it “…a fantastic piece of horror storytelling.” while Joystiq said the video is “…pretty much a jaw dropper.” Wired agreed, telling readers “It may be the best videogame trailer I’ve ever seen.”
Deep Silver have been delighted with the trailer – and the reaction to it. Global Business Development Director and acting producer on the project Malte Wagener commented, “Axis exceeded all our high expectations and then some on this project and really hit this one out of the park.”
“We set out to create a rather unique trailer concept that would focus on delivering emotion and atmosphere while transporting the key elements and features of Dead Island. With the help of Axis and the great collaboration between our cinematic Director, Anton Borkel and Axis’ own Stuart Aitken, we ended up creating something that was a breathtaking combination of pictures, story and music which formed an atmosphere of intensity that – for us – was beyond words.”
The Axis team brought in motion capture experts Audiomotion and fellow Scots Dimensional Imaging and Savalas to capture the character performances and for music composition and sound design respectively.
Based upon the response to last week’s release of the trailer, the Internet rumour mill has gone into overdrive. Several sites have reported that the film rights to Dead Island have already been sold (quickly refuted by Deep Silver). The ultimate tribute to the trailer’s popularity and impact, however, can be seen in the fact that the animation has already been recreated in Minecraft.
Once you’ve got the geeks on board, the rest of the world will follow…
Congratulations to Axis (and Savalas, Dimensional Imaging and Audiomotion) for an incredibly impressive piece of work.
