For the digital launch of Horizon Zero Dawn, the new game on PlayStation 4, Biborg produced 5 matte painting videos representing the deterioration of 5 capitals over time.

The action role-playing video game, Horizon Zero Dawn tells the story of a warrior in a post-apocalyptic world where nature has regained its rights. Its inhabitants now live a primitive life among tribes since the appearance of machines and mechanical creatures of unknown origin. The world has forgotten its ancient civilization eradicated by the new rulers. How have machines dominated the world? What happened to the previous civilization?

For this campaign launch, Biborg has designed 5 teasing videos where we see major capitals suddenly plunged 1000 years later in this world where nature has taken over our civilization. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Madrid and London, the largest cities in the world are thus transformed under the digital brush of the technical teams of the agency.

A true technical success, the Biborg teams used the technology of matte painting, a process traditionally used in cinema and quite rare in advertising as it was considered time-consuming. Many sets of Star Wars were created in this way and we must admit, the illusion is perfect.

To create an animation, we create hundreds of filters in Photoshop. Different layers of damage are then painted and used for each monument to look as if hundreds of years had passed. The design and animation of the painting is one of the most difficult tasks, It took a lot of patience and thoroughness on the part of our teams during these two months of production. We wanted to respect the universe of Horizon Zero Dawn as much as possible in terms of the environment while showing the gigantism of the machines. We had to be creative in the workflow to be able to ensure the production of static and animated matte paintings with teams in New Zealand, Montpellier, Nantes and Paris.

Find out more on Creapills (FR), L'ADN (FR), J'ai un pote dans la com (FR), Stratégies (FR), LLB (EN), Shots (EN), La Revue Y (FR), Europa Press (ES).