Axis Studios, Scotland’s multiple-award-winning animation and visual effects company, has announced it was the company responsible for the cinematics in Sony Interactive Entertainment & Sumo Digital’s new Playstation 5 launch title game Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure is Sackboy’s first stand-alone game and one of 19 launch titles for Sony’s long-awaited next-generation Playstation 5 console. Axis delivered 23 minutes of seamless in-game cinematics, directed by Olly Reid, in 4K at 60fps for both PS4 & PS5.
Axis Studios collaborated with the Playstation 5 team as the cinematics partner to define the cinematic style – and develop the storytelling language. The studio worked closely with Sony and Sumo from script, to 2D storyboards, to edit – all the way to final real-time cinematic. This ensured the clear-cut linking of the narrative to the look and feel of the surrounding gameplay.
Axis pushed themselves to take every aspect of the animation to another level, bringing their vast experience in creating realtime cinematics to ensure the player feels the key story moments.
Traci Tufte, Executive Producer for Realtime comments:
We were thrilled when Sony asked Axis to be involved in the project. Realtime is a key area of focus for Axis, we are always excited about opportunities that grow our knowledge and expertise, and allow us to work more dynamically with the client.
Working directly with the game development team so early in the cinematic process, allowed for a deeper collaborative relationship. Axis’ real-time pipeline was built for maximum flex and adaptability. This allowed syncing with Sumo’s game build and made way for an efficient shared workflow on Sackboy.
The freedom and trust which has developed out of this way of working allowed the team at Axis to focus on the visual storytelling.
Michael Zaman, Head of Realtime comments:
Not only did we bring the story to life but the fluidity of our pipeline meant that we integrated our whole real-time pipeline with Sumo. This allowed us to deliver the project to both a high-quality bar and on schedule.
Sackboy: a Big Adventure is one of three real-time projects Axis Studios has in production in 2020. The studio’s other in-engine releases, are Gears 5, The bOnd and Deathloop.
Axis also recently revealed that it’s working on what is believed to be the largest feature-length animation ever to be produced in Scotland.
