REVIEW: ‘Arcane: Bridging the Rift,’ Part 3 – “Killstreaks to Keyframes”

Arcane: Bridging the Rift is a documentary series from Riot Games exploring the creation of their hit Netflix animated series Arcane. With its look at the production’s initial struggles behind it, the series now takes a deep dive into the step-by-step process of making Arcane‘s signature look come to life with the talented creatives at Fortiche in Arcane: Bridging the Rift Part 3.

Animation of any type, be it traditional 2D hand-drawn animation or modern 3D rendering, is a process I will never tire of learning about. Getting a glimpse into how talented artists craft the animated worlds I enjoy so much always feels like pure magic. This is doubly true for a series like Arcane. The way the characters come to life, how every little moment and action feels imbued with life and nuance, getting to see how the animators at Fortiche brought these moments from concept to storyboard, to animatic, and finally fully rendered product creates 30 minutes of television that boggles my mind.

While Arcane: Bridging the Rift Part 3 delivers tons of notable revelations about the creative process behind Arcane, perhaps the most shocking to me was the reveal that no motion capture was used in the creation of Riot Games’s hit series. Motion capture has become so commonplace, and the animation in Arcane looks so smooth and fluid, that I had always assumed that this was how the bulk of the series had been shot. But rather, the creatives at Fortiche utilized lots of self-shot reference videos of themselves doing many of the actions throughout the series to allow them to give the series its life through fine-tuned, painstaking animation.

The step-by-step approach of this episode helps the uninitiated viewer such as myself wrap their head around the monumental task of bringing a series as visually deep and nuanced as Arcane to life. How collaborative such an undertaking is, and how it utilizes the visions of so many to come together is something I feel like I can barely grasp, even with the series’ whole-hearted attempt to bring the process to me in impressive detail.

While the animation is the central focus of Arcane: Bridging the Rift Part 3, the episode also takes some time to look at voice work that also is key to the rich characters that populate Arcane. In particular, the episode looks at how the voice acting brought its most complex character Jinx to life.

Between the wide range of emotions the character delivers over the series’ nine episodes, their age, and the time it took to make the series, the casting for the character was a special kind of struggle. Finding actors to deliver both ages of Jinx in a harmonious, yet chaotic way was a supreme struggle, though the payoff in the final product speaks for itself.

Arcane: Bridging the Rift Part 3 continues to bring all the triumphs, tribulations, and surprises that make all such successful behind-the-scenes peek into the complex medium of animation so wonderful to experience.

Arcane: Bridging the Rift Part 3 is streaming now on YouTube.