What happens when the internet’s angriest gamers become the voices of Clash Royale?
Created for the launch of Viking Season, this cinematic turns real gaming outbursts into dialogue for some of the franchise’s most recognizable characters. Frustrated screams and unexpected reactions become part of a chaotic battle, bringing the campaign’s “Turn Rage Into Victory” idea into the Clash universe.
I contributed as a Layout Artist and Character Animator at Gizmo Animation Studios, working on the production for Supercell and Uncommon Creative Studio, co-produced by Colony and directed by Ema Verruno.
Being involved from an early stage gave me the opportunity to contribute ideas while the scenes were still taking shape. As a complete Clash Royale nerd, I particularly enjoyed finding ways to bring familiar gameplay details into the storytelling. Some of those ideas made it all the way from rough layout to the finished film, which was especially rewarding.
My layout work involved staging characters within the 3D environment, choosing camera lenses, and animating cameras to establish each shot's framing and rhythm. Depending on the scene, I also created blocking, including several key poses, to convey the action and clarify how the characters interacted with their surroundings.
One of my proposals was the Rage aura that spreads across the ground as the Lumberjack runs past shouting. It was a nod to the Rage effect he leaves behind when defeated in the game, reinterpreted here as his anger spreading to the characters around him. I sketched the effect using basic geometry during layout, and the idea carried through to the final film.
For animation, we received edited audio and studio references featuring highly expressive performers trained in clowning. Their performances provided a great starting point, but the characters' stylized proportions and personalities sometimes called for different acting choices. I refined the performances based on the director's feedback and my own exploration, using keyframe animation in Maya for all my animation work.
The breakdown below transitions between Maya playblasts and the finished shots, showing my contributions in the context of the final production.
