To create Dragon Hunter's futuristic, medieval world, filmmakers turned to Paris-based Mac Guff Ligne, which had no experience with a 3D-animated feature. All images © 2007 Futurikon Films, Trixter, LuxAnimation, France 3 Cinéma, RTL-Tvi.

It all started 12 years ago when graphic book writer Arthur Qwak came up with a story idea based on dragons and hunters. He developed his original five-page treatment into a detailed story while working with Valerie Hadida on character design. The concept was intriguing enough to be developed into a comic book series, and an animated television series (it briefly aired on Cartoon Network in 2006). Now, Dragon Hunters has become a 3D-animated feature film directed by Arthur Qwak and Guillaume Ivernel (who also was the art director for the movie).

The story takes place in a futuristic, medieval world that is infested with a variety of terrifying creatures collectively known as dragons. Good-hearted swindler Gwizdo and noble warrior Lian-Chu have been taking advantage of the situation: they pretend to be heroic dragon hunters and collect "advance payments" for dragon kills... that never come. During their journey, they meet Zoe, the grandniece of Lord Arnold, a wealthy man who is scared to death by the return of the mightiest of all dragons, the World Eater. Little Zoe soon drags Gwizdo and Lian-Chu into their first actual dragon hunt... and the greatest adventure of their lives.

"Dragon Hunters is basically a connection," Qwak explains. "On one side, you have dragons and the fantastic universe that is associated with them, and on the other side, the problems of making a living as a professional hunter: contracts, deals, payments issues, delays, etc. For a person like Gwizdo, Prince Charming is a hunter's worst enemy, as he does the same job for no money!"

When the movie was put into production, the filmmakers had more than a decade of visual development at their disposal. Yet, for the transition from 2D to 3D to succeed, the design work had to be developed further. "For the general look, I was inspired by German romantics a la Caspar Friedrich, and by orientalist paintings," Ivernel says. "I was also influenced by the work of some great illustrators of the 1970s such as Roger Dean or Moebius. And, of course, by Japanese animation."

Arthur Qwak had other references in mind. "I thought of Disney classics such as Snow White, and of some other movies such as Jaws or Time Bandits. I also looked at Heavy Metal magazine and the works of Moebius, Giger or Corben. We wanted Dragon Hunters to be funny and scary at the same time. When we designed the movie, we tried to visualize it as a 'Tom & Jerry meets Lord of the Rings'!"

Co-director Arthur Qwak wanted Dragon Hunters to be funny and scary at the same time. His influences included everything from Snow White to Jaws and Heavy Metal magazine.

Major Project, Smaller Team
To create the animation and the environments, Qwak and Ivernel turned to Mac Guff Ligne, Paris, a company with a strong background in live-action digital effects (Blueberry) and 3D character animation. However, the team had never produced a full-length 3D-animated movie. "We had created all the character animation for Michel Ocelot's Azur and Asmar," notes Head of 3D Bruno Chauffard. "The animation was produced in 3D, but rendered out with a 2D look. The sets were traditional 2D paintings. This time, we had to create everything, which was a completely different challenge."

At Mac Guff, up to 150 persons worked on the project, but on a daily basis the average was about 90 artists. Animation was produced by a team of 25 animators over a six-month period. The whole structure was significantly smaller than what is typically done in American studios. "Our team was much smaller, and our hardware too," says character and lighting supervisor Nicolas Brack. "Some American studios have a 4,000-processor render farm. We had no more than 650, but in reality the shots were processed on 200 to 300 processors on average."

Adds Chauffard, "Since we didn't have the same kind of technical and human resources as our American colleagues, we compensated with a maximum optimization of the whole production process. We went to great lengths to detect any bug and problem as early as possible. Our goal was to take the right technical decisions in preproduction, avoiding any costly change later on. Once the movie was in actual production, we couldn't afford to change the approach for a shot or an element. Also, we benefited a lot from the fact that the directors knew exactly what they wanted, both from an artistic and a narrative point of view. There were no significant changes during production, which allowed us to be extremely efficient."

Dragon Hunters was mainly realized on proprietary software that Mac Guff has been developing over the years: Symbor for 3D animation, MGLR for rendering, and Trukor for compositing. Maya was also used for some of the 3D work. Given the unusual size of the project, the team had to develop an asset management tool called InK. "This tool allowed us to keep track of the situation of any given shot -- what had been done, what was being done, what still needed to be done," Chauffard says. "Our artists could access any individual element or layer in any shot. It could be geometry, a particular shader, an animation file, etc. InK also allowed two outside contractors to access the same fully updated database."