Lil’ Ruby has won the best short animated film at the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, which focuses on productions aimed at young audiences. Lil’ Ruby is jointly produced by Polish production and post-production studio Platige Image and the USA-based The Martin Agency. Along with production, Platige looked at direction and art direction.
The nine-minute-long animation – which blends 2D and 3D animation – has been developed entirely using Unreal Engine 5. According to Platige, the ensuing richness of detail and depth of the animation enabled a more faithful representation of the lead character’s expressive personality, resulting in a stylised production with a distinct, unique visual style.
The Platige Image staff involved in the project included Bartek Kik – director, Hanna Drewek – producer, Marek Gajowski – CG supervisor, Tomasz Karelus – art director and Aurélien Simon – executive producer. “From the outset, the project was a major challenge for us,” CG supervisor Gajowski said. “When work began on the project, there were no available tools that could expedite or make the process easier – everything was developed on the fly, in response to arising issues.”
As per Platige, creating a set of approaches and technological solutions was necessary to combine the classic CGI animation pipeline with Unreal. The process resulted in the development of tools and technologies that not only helped in producing Lil’ Ruby, but also became a staple of the studio’s in-house workflow.
Chicago International Children’s Film Festival attracts filmmakers, animators and artists from around the globe.