ALITA

BATTLE ANGEL OF IRON CITY

THE PROJECT

- Before the release of the movie in February 2019, 20th Century Fox had been working on some promotional content for the release of the Blu-ray version later on that year. Some back stories behind the movie and more related to the original manga and anime, would please the original fans and help the new ones informed about the rich world of Alita which Yukito Kishiro, the manga artist, built in his Gunnm manga series.

- Adam Vadnais at Mob Scene, an agency who works on promotional materials for a lot of blockbuster movies, contacted Nuen for a collaborative project. They wanted to created a series of hi-end background paintings, which to be animated into motion-comic style and included in the Blu-ray as special features.

- Nuen has taken care of a total 11 high quality backgrounds, with separated layers, mostly depicted the Iron city at night at many different locations: the street, the bar and the factory interior, the Motorball stadium and establishing views of the surrounded city.

THE OUTCOMES AND IMPACT

- The extra motion-comics helped sell the world of Alita better to new audience, and they did it well!

- It was a hit on home video, topping the Blu-ray charts for two weeks in a row, as of August 2019. As of December 2019, it has grossed at least $50 million in home video sales.

CLIENT’S TESTIMONIAL

“ I worked with Nuen on a few of the “Alita Battle Angel” Motion Comics included as special features on the Blu-ray. I found his work to be incredible, and his turn arounds were quick. The level of polish and detail on the artworks really elevated the final pieces. “

— Jason Jensen, Senior Creative Director at Mob Scene

THE PROCESS

As usual, Nuen used the three-step workflow for this project for time-saving and high quality outcomes.

Each image took around 5 days to develop from sketch to fully illustrated background painting, ready to be animated.

We normally start with some sketches for composition and move directly to 3D after the client approval. The 3D Block out will be built up and we get daily feedback from the client to push it to the final.

Without much materials to base the works on, we had to rely heavily on the trailer screenshots of the movie at the time. We were trying to stick really close to the current direction of the Iron City in the movie while still have some personal touches as a tribute to the original manga.

Click on the thumbnails on the right for the final 3D Blockouts.

The final paint-over phase was done in Photoshop and was a very important one that helped elevating and pushing the final quality of each image. From lighting, color to the smaller details like reflection on the street to sell the unique cyberpunk/antique architecture setting better.

We have received very positive feedback to the final deliveries from the filmmakers themselves and was very glad to be able to contribute to a small portion of the film we love.