Goodbye Kansas Ups the Creep Factor for Bloober’s ‘Cronos: The New Dawn’

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Swedish production house uses Unreal Engine, real actors to bridge the uncanny valley.

Just as spooky season is really ramping up, Stockholm, Sweden’s Goodbye Kansas delivered its horror-inspired cinematic trailer for Bloober’s original survival horror game, Cronos: The New Dawn. The Polish game developer revealed details about the game as well as the above trailer at last week’s Xbox Partner Preview. The game and the trailer were both created using Unreal Engine and its Nanite Virtualized Geometry. Goodbye Kansas also shot actors in its motion-capture studio using real actors and importing their movements and facial expressions into their system.

Here’s a fascinating look behind the scenes at how Goodbye Kansas produced the piece:

Cronos: The New Dawn straddles two worlds: a sci-fi version of 1980s Krakow, Poland, and the apocalyptic future of that city. A character merely known as a Traveller has been sent back in time to rescue people who didn’t survive the cataclysm as well as to find time rifts and fight some form of humanoid monsters. The game is set to release in 2025.

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Credits

Client: Bloober Team

Team: Yuliya Dublevskaya, Dawid Podgorski, Wojciech Piejko, Jacek Zieba, Klaudia Sewera

Production: Goodbye Kansas

‍Director: Andree Wallin

VFX Supervisor: Kristian Zarins

Realtime Supervisor: Tim Hermes

Animation Director: Friedl Jooste

Executive Producer: Jan Cafourek

Producer: Daria Zienowicz

Production Coordinator: Ida Ippolito

Character Modeling/Look Development: Sandra Isaksson, Jonas Skoog

Facial Modeler: Jonas Törnqvist

Environment Artist: Jesper Barhamre, Robert Filipowicz, Lukas McBride, Frans Åkerman

Groom Artist: Sandra Isaksson, Jonas Skoog

Rigging Artist: Peter Jemstedt

Character FX Artist: Navjin Khosravi, Ludvig Eliasson

Facial Rigging: John Augustsson

Previz and Creative Editorial: Peter Blomstrand

Layout: Svetoslav Petkov

Animator: Mikael Ohlson, Friedl Jooste

Facial Animator: Mathew Curran

Body Animator: Thomas Obrecht

FX Artist: Ilya Vorobev

DMP/Concept Artists: Gabriel Björk Stiernström

Lookdev and Lighting Artist: Sean Kalamgi

Compositing Artist: Peter Blomstrand, Daniel Norlund

Realtime TD: Henrik Melsom, Herman Fredlund

VFX/Online Editor: Mattias Silva Carrasco

Pipeline: Herman Fredlund

System Administrator: Armin Cero, Dean Estcourt, Emil Ferdinandsson, Gabi Gharib, Jonatan Larsson, Jonna Lehtonen, Jonne Ahnér, Nick Hall, Nicky Sumsion, Tiffany Johansson

Color Grade: Mattias Silva Carrasco

Head of Capture: Chris Jestico

Motion Capture Supervisor: Samuel Tyskling

Motion Capture Lead: David Grice

Shoot Production Manager: Axel Gärkman

Shoot Coordinator: Kim Seefried

Motion Capture Operator: Ed Reeler

Motion Capture Technician: Oskar Olsson

Database Management: Jonna Lehtonen

Props & Staging: David Sagesen

Director of Photography: Mattias Silva Carrasco

Realtime Supervisor: Tim Hermes