The Truly Incredible ‘The Remarkable Life of Ibelin’

3D animator and DP Rasmus Tukia talks about Benjamin Ree’s ‘must see’ live-action / animated documentary about the vibrant, expansive, but secret virtual life of a young Norwegian, Mats Steen, who died at age 25 of a degenerative disease, and whose ‘World of Warcraft’ game exploits and incredible legion of friends were only discovered upon his death, debuting today, October 25, on Netflix.

On February 7, 2019, roughly one year before everyone shutdown and moved into the cloud in the wake of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, a story by Vicky Schaubert was published on the BBC’s website that told of a young man whose “secret” life online, once discovered, revealed a stunningly poignant virtual existence that far overshadowed the fragile, solitary world that defined his physical life.  

The young man was Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, who died in 2014 of a degenerative disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) at age 25. Schaubert’s story really began as his family mourned his passing, having raised and cared for him through the painful years of his lonely, isolated life.

But Mats’ parents were completely unaware that their son had been leading an incredibly vibrant digital life that had a profound impact on a large community of fellow gamers. His father, Robert, while accessing his son’s blog, wondering how to break the news of Mats’ passing, included his email address in a post he made. Soon, he discovered the expansive world of deep friendships Mats had created, virtually, while playing World of Warcraft, before he passed away.

“I wrote and I cried,” Mats’ father Robert told Schaubert, “then I hit publish.” One reply came, then another, and another. “An entire society, a tiny nation of people began to take shape,” he added. “And it was on a scale that we had no idea existed. More and more emails arrived that testified about the kind of significance Mats had.”

Schaubert’s piece highlighted that his death was not the end of Mats’ story.  

A particularly emotional tribute came from Mats’s peers in a guild called Starlight, where, taking his name from Orlando Bloom’s character in Ridley Scott’s 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven, he called himself Ibelin, styling himself as a private investigator.

Documentary director Benjamin Ree happened to see the article. Coincidentally, Ree’s parents had been friends with the Steens in the 1980s but moved away and lost contact. Ree was actually only 7 days younger than Mats. He soon contacted Robert, introduced himself, and asked if he could make a documentary about Mats’ story. They connected… Ree soon was digitizing 75 hours of old VHS cassettes found in the Steen’s garage… and was floored when he realized that the baby Mats was playing with in one particular video… was him!

“I laughed to myself and thought, ‘That looks a bit like me as a baby,’” Ree recalls. “Then I saw my father and mother there, with Mats’ family. I was shocked. The first footage I saw was of Mats’ and me together. I’m not a religious person, but I almost became religious at that moment.”

After countless meetings with the Steen family, trying to get their arms around the scope and extent of Mats’ online life, they found Mats and his friends had used programs to transcribe roleplay dialogue and descriptions, stored the information, and published it on forums. This work, together with character diaries and discussions, totaled 42,000 pages.

Ree distilled this down to 4,000 pages, which was further reduced to what we see in his finished film, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, which debuts today, October 25, on Netflix.  The film premiered this past January at Sundance.

A mix of live-action and 3DCG World of Warcraft recreations, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin took 2 ½ years to make; it poignantly and deftly explores and explains the breadth of Mats’ adventurous online life, introducing us to Ibelin, his World of Warcraft persona. Using reconstructed animated moments from Mats’ gameplay, narrated entries from his blog and interviews with people who knew him as Ibelin, Ree paints a picture of a remarkable young man, one that underscores how community and meaningful relationships can transcend the boundaries of the physical world.

And, after a rather nerve-wracking screening for executives at Blizzard Entertainment to ask for the rights to use the game in his film without charge – there was no Plan B… no rights, no movie – Ree was met with some sobs and a big thumbs up.

For the film’s animation, Ree turned to Rasmus Tukia, whose passion for 3D animation evolved from hobbyist to freelance animation specialist for both film and games. He’s also steeped in the World or Warcraft world. Earlier this week, AWN had a chance to discuss his work on this extraordinary story and film.

Enjoy the trailer and then read about how the animation on this amazing film was produced:

Dan Sarto: When did you come onto the project and what was the original creative mandate? What materials, boards, scripts, etc., did you have to start with?

Rasmus Tukia: I came on board when Benjamin got the idea to enhance the documentary further by exploring the game that Mats had spent so much time in by reconstructing some of the key moments Mats had experienced. Originally, he intended to use footage from inside the game, but quickly realized that it would be very limiting since the animations/emotes from inside the game can only take you so far when it comes to conveying emotions to specific situations.

He scoured the internet to find someone who was not only familiar with animation, but also had experience with World of Warcraft. Eventually he found me thanks to my YouTube channel “Pivotal,” which hosts fan-made Warcraft videos made with custom 3D animation. We met over steak dinner in Sweden, and I remember that it didn’t require a lot of convincing for me to join the project.

Coming into this project I had no prior knowledge of the story, but was quickly filled in. I read the original article, Mats' blog, and even got to see a super early draft of the film. Afterwards I got sent a script with some scenes they planned to include, and I was asked to make a test animation to see how it would fit. Funnily enough, the original plan was to only have about 10-15 minutes of total animation in the film, where its sole purpose was to complement the interviews. I remember one scene following an interview segment with Lisette [Fredriksen Lisette Roovers, Mats’ gaming friend whose game persona is Rumour] where Ibelin was to just sit by a lake with Rumour, just staring into the water, and that was it. That serves as an example of how the animation didn't have as big of a role in the film at first.

It quickly changed however once I had made an animatic of the first scene. Something seemed to have clicked with Benjamin as he realized the potential of what the animation could offer for the project. Not only could it complement the interviews, but it could also offer a means to tell the story itself. Therefore, a lot was changed and/or added to the original script over the course of the project to make the animation more of a core part of the film, and this eventually resulted in 40+ minutes of animation in the final product.

DS: What was your process for recreating these Warcraft scenes?

RT: We started working on the animated scenes chronologically in the form of animatics. My colleague Chris set up basic characters and environments for me so I could start animating quickly. Once an animatic was finished I sent it to Benjamin, and he could try it in the edit. As previously mentioned, we revisited what we wanted to include several times as we felt we could tell the story in a better way. Many scenes got up to five different versions of an animatic over time before being considered final. After that we proceeded to the blocking stage using the same process, and eventually splining/polishing with lighting, VFX background characters and more.

Everything animation related that is shown in the film was experienced by Mats and his friends at one point. From locations and who was present, to emotions expressed. We wanted to stay as true and authentic as possible to the source material. That said there were a few times we took some creative liberties for the viewing experience. For example, we have a scene where Rumour and Ibelin are reuniting after her computer had been taken away for some time. We knew that it took place in Elwynn Forest (a location in the game), but we didn’t know exactly where, so we opted for symbolism. We chose to have Ibelin sit by a river with Rumour entering the camera from the other side. The river symbolized them being apart, and by the end of that scene they are standing together on the same side, reunited and hugging. We also knew this was around the time Lisette drew the picture of Ibelin and Rumour hugging for Mats, so we felt it was appropriate for the animation to mimic that image as a transition back to the real-life footage.

DS: What were your main tools?

RT: For this project we used Maya for all things animation and background environments. I was responsible for the animation and camera work, while my other two colleagues, Chris and Derek, set up the character rigs, lighting, background characters, VFX and pipeline scripts. Eventually the pipeline was optimized for a 3-person team.

Thankfully we did not have to create these characters and environments from scratch as that would have made this task quite impossible within the timeframe we had. The environments and characters were taken directly from the game using third-party software called wow.export, which allows anyone to dig inside the game files and export whatever assets they want. I'd like to give a quick shoutout to Kruithne and Marlamin who painstakingly created this software purely out of love for the game and its community.

Without them this endeavor would not be possible.

After the raw exports, the models were enhanced very mildly to make them more suitable for a cinematic experience by using AI to up the texture resolution of the main characters.

Overall, we did not want to alter the models too much however, as it was still supposed to feel authentic to the game.

All VFX was done in Houdini and for quick prevising, I used Adobe Premiere to put the playblast clips together.

DS: What were the main challenges?

RT: The biggest challenge for me was to convey the right emotions for Mats and his friends' avatars. After all, this was not just some fictional characters in a fictional setting. Even though the world is a fictional one, the situations and characters within it are real. So, I took the task of animating them very seriously, and had to study how Mats was as a person before I felt comfortable animating him. Thankfully we had the archive of logs from the game along with his blog and the interviews to help me understand Mats more as a person. And even then, I had to send it to Benjamin for approval as well as go through many, many test screenings with his family and members of the community he was a part of before I got a scene approved. I truly hope that if Mats could see the documentary, I would get his approval as well.

Another big challenge was that since we had this huge archive of Mats' online life, we had to be selective of what we chose to include in the film. It was difficult - how could we possibly condense all that material down to a 105-minute documentary, while still representing Mats with all his nuances? We spent 2 years in the editing room for this reason and the movie was iterated upon so much that it's almost unrecognizable from the first version.

As a result, the animation had to change a lot as well. For example, I remember that the climax was supposed to be a 10-minute animated scene of Ibelin standing trial in his guild, being on the verge of getting kicked out. Over time though, other parts of the film were changed so much that the trial didn't make sense to be the climax anymore. In fact, there is only a sliver of it remaining, which takes up about 20 seconds. Similar situations arose with other scenes as well, but not to the same extent. I'm thankful we worked with animatics for such a long time, making iteration easy. That also kept the time spent animating at a minimum until we knew exactly what we wanted. It only occurred once or twice that I had splined out a scene, only for it to be changed entirely. I guess it is unavoidable, and I'd like to think we worked pretty optimally.

DS: What else would you like to share with our readers?

RT: Even though it is becoming more socially accepted these days to game, I feel there is still plenty of stigma surrounding it. I only wish we can try to see that gaming can be a positive outlet for people. I recognize the negative aspects of it and that it can be addictive, but to be frank, so can almost anything else. It's the circumstances around it that matters more. In reality, gaming draws many parallels with real life as you can learn about leadership, how to socialize, make friends, work as a team, and problem solve among many other positive outcomes. The difference is that you can't see one's face and social status through the screen, only personality. And if personality is the thing you judge someone by, doesn't that make it very real in a sense?

To draw an example from my own life - the common denominator of my YouTube channel, of my friends, of how I met my partner, of my career, and of my main hobby… is gaming. Everything stems from it, yet I have been judged all my life simply for enjoying it. While I do not regret gaming in any way, shape or form, it surely would have been great not always feeling judged for it and I'm very sure I'm not alone in thinking so.

I also want to say it's been one of the great honors of my life to work on this project and I couldn't be prouder of the entire team for the countless hours spent on it. I'd also like to thank Benjamin for not only being a great director, but also a great human being. He handled the project with such care, and working with him did not only make me improve my craft but made me a better person as well.

Dan Sarto's picture

Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.