BRAVEHURTS
Medieval Fantasy Micro Short Series
HERE YE! HERE YE!
Behold! A medieval no man’s land filled with irredeemable morons. Is it a farce? A comedy? Is it a brutal medieval world where nothing is as it seems, where death and destruction lurk around every castle? Why pick and choose? Let's have all of the above. We are here for the loot, the pillaging, the duels, the sieges, star-crossed affairs and the rotten spoils we didn’t know we needed.
WATCH NOW ON YOUTUBE
Discover Bravehurts on our youtube channel. Each bite-sized episode is a farcical, ill-fated and brave gesticulation in the name of glory and infamy. What are you doing reading this? Click on the play button or we’ll have you broken on the rack. It's a good rack.
WHAT IS BRAVEHURTS?
We loved discovering this gem one episode at a time. It’s like a bunch of villages are missing their idiots and they all ended up in one place. We follow a classic cast of medieval misfits on their quests for simple pleasures, glory or loot. But fate has something else awaiting them and each episode is about why none of these imbeciles can have nice things.
CHASING THE DRAGON
Whether you are a Huntsman, a Maiden or a noble band of Knights, each “hero” has their own temptation—their own blind and stupid way of chasing the proverbial dragon. Whether it's a pile of gold, a juicy looking castle or fine women, each character has something they want that blinds them. They ignore all the warnings and throw caution to the wind as their hopes and dreams are dashed on stone cold reality.
STORY BOOK INSPIRATION
Our journey began with inspiration from a familiar, lush and illustrated storybook world. We first envisioned every aspect as a painting and then developed the best tools to recreate the organic texture and of the illustrations in 3D. Our core goal was to preserve the whimsical and loose nature of the storybook illustrations.
CHARACTERS
We think of our Bravehearts characters as brainless chess pieces. Each one has their thing that they do and… that’s about all they do. They are icons that remix classic medieval tropes with modern but irredeemable qualities. The Huntsman is the everyman’s Robinhood, but he’s a total himbo. The Maiden is perfect, but woefully unattainable. Our three knights, Hero, Clink and Stout are incompetent pawns who’ve lost sight of the game entirely. Every bloke is the worst version of themselves.
MAKING THE STORYBOOK 3D
We spent most of our time converting that illustrated storybook aesthetic into a polished 3d world that retained the looseness and whimsy of the illustrations. Surprise! All of our textures are hand painted, creating a brilliant cornucopia of 3D that looks and feels like a painting. This was only possible by having a close synergy between our 2d and 3d teams.
We created each shot like a self-contained diorama where the foreground is a fully realized 3D set with a painted backdrop. We staged only the most essential elements and used a sequence of post-processing effects to get our CG trees and grass to feel more like brushstrokes. Creating only what was essential for the shot, made our process lean and efficient.
Originally envisioned as 2d characters, every knight, huntsman, troll, guard and maiden was made into a fully functional, digital marionette. Extra consideration and design went into understanding how the characters would move in their armor. We wanted them flexible enough to be cartoony and poseable, and rigid enough to be comically stiff and limiting. The character design informed the range and caricature of motion.
THE PARTING SHOT
Each episode has its own parting shot Consider it a customized goodbye where the aftermath of the episode is felt on the polylithic Bravehearts logo. These stones are shot up, roasted over a fire, laden with riches and have ultimately become a part of the experience. We liked these extra vignettes so much we even made a Holiday Yule log for 2023.
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