● most wanted 2024

The original Most Wanted holds a special place in many hearts, including mine. The team wanted to pursue another passion project, and I wondered what if we re-created the famous 2005 video game in today’s age? This also happened during a time when the studio was deeply inspired by and studying the works of Ash Thorp, so you can probably see where the mood originated.

- Turpal Saytiev

The project started as something fun to do, but it quickly became an internal fight to improve as CG artists. Each shot we selected presented its own challenges, which really pushed us both as a team and individually. We learned so much from this passion project that it now influences our client-facing work. It truly has been a journey that was well worth the investment.

Aside from the film grain we added, if you saw the ProRes version, you might notice that our renders appear noise-free. This wasn't actually the case; we had quite a bit of noise in many areas, but our compositor Mathi found a denoising method that works incredibly well with our Blender pipeline. He called it the "Thanos Denoiser."

Benjamin, our simulation artist, made 36 different versions of just this flaming burnout alone. I believe it really demonstrates how eager each artist was to push themselves until they felt completely satisfied.

Will we do something similar again? I believe so, but it might take a different form. We still plan to pursue passion projects, but this experience has made us value taking on challenges more than just having fun.