Codehunters

Codehunters is an award-winning 2006 short film directed and written by Ben Hibon, animated by Axis Animation, and music by Joris de Man. It was commissioned by MTV Asia and shown at the MTV Music Awards, it has been seen by over 400 million.

Plot

Synopsis

Codehunters tells the story of four heroes: Shen, Lawan, Zom and Nhi as they join forces to battle corrupt gangs, dirty paycops, rampaging monsters and the tyrannical Khann in the crumbling port city of Lhek. Codehunters is set in the not too distant future and uses a stunning mix of eastern anime & western animation techniques.

Story

The port city of Lhek is on the brink of collapse. A Pacific Rim state in a not too distant Asian future with no borders, no meaningful government and little law and order. Corruption and crime are out of control in the dark alleys of Eda, Lhek's slum district. Most sectors of the city are controlled by the army of dictator Khaan. The most underprivileged parts of the city are infested with dark Demons, ferocious creatures that spread fear and death amongst the city's inhabitants. To venture to those dark places is a dangerous game. Eight decades ago, Khaan's right-hand man, Niran, was said to have found a way of capturing children's darkest dreams and materializing them into reality. It was believed that Demons were created from those dark visions and used to spread fear and terror over Lhek. Since Khaan came into power his supremacy had been challenged by a single dissenter, a man named Krai. This man was a renowned "Coder"; one of the last survivors of a supreme race possessing the ability to manipulate DNA, the code of life. Krai was the only person with the power to challenge Khaan's rule of terror. As his wrath turned against Khaan, Krai became the people’s hero, a symbol of rebellion and freedom. For seven decades, the ruler hunted him down ferociously. Krai was finally captured and executed, his body cut into seven parts. Even since, stories have spread that his remains resisted cremation and that Khaan was forced to keep them hidden. The seven remains were to be scattered across Asia never to be re-assembled. Shen, Lawan, Zom and Nhi are the Codehunters. They are said to be the only ones who have the ability to see the suspended "DNA-strings" (the Dark Code) which control the Demons once they materialize. Only the Hunters with their special abilities have the power to challenge Khaan and Niran in their reign of terror. But without the help of Krai, the source of the Dark Code cannot be destroyed... In recent years many mercenaries and followers of the Code have tried to find and re-assemble the fallen god. But no one has come close to succeeding... until now...

Development

In 2005, Ben Hibon, with Stateless Films and Blinkink, created an animation for MTV Asia's weekly film show called MTV Screen. After a very good response, MTV Asia commissioned his company to produce a short film on the back of it. “As I was creating concepts drawings,” explains Ben Hibon, “MTV Asia was starting to plan their annual Music Awards. They then came up with the idea of ‘launching’ our project by using it to brand the show; posters, banners, trophy design and intro/bumper animations. So the brief changed from ‘short film’ to ‘branding package’ for the MTV Awards show.” It formed into a seven-minute prologue / intro animation to the world of ‘Codehunters’, an ongoing MTV/BLINKINK project launched around the MTV Asia Awards 2006 in Bangkok.This was obviously a great opportunity for the project to be in front of such a big audience. There was going to be about 400 million people watching the show! There was the challenge of making an animation that would have to work as one film, but also broken into nine scenes to be used throughout the show as a prologue animation, setting the tone, pace and style for a bigger story. Blinkink's Ben Hibon's was contacted with directing and Bart Yates producing an animation for MTV Asia to be show at the MTV Music Awards. Scriptwriting and storyboarding happened simultaneously, as the company had a very short lead time for pre-production. “We started the production based on the boards, creating concepts and artworks on the way,” Ben explains. “Production time was tight, so we had to be creative throughout the whole process, both with creation of assets, techniques and solutions. Although the vision of ‘Codehunters’ was very much defined from the start, the process of making it was very organic, which made it fun and exciting for everyone involved with the project.” European TV was full of cheap programs in the early 80s and Ben Hibon was also a big fan of European graphic-novelists like Bilal, Moebius, Mattoti or Liberatore. “I think that my inspiration lies there”, he begins, “in the middle of two totally different narrative worlds; between the more static illustrative style of the west and the fast-moving stylised techniques of the East. ‘Codehunters’ is an accumulation of those ideas, where characters and worlds are not so culturally defined; it exists in between those genres and styles.‘The main visual ideal for this film was to try to make the CG feel textured and warm, just like an inked illustration on paper,’, says Hibon. ‘We tried to create a different look by reproducing the ink lines and the hand-drawn feel directly onto the CG models. I also wanted to approach the direction/animation style differently, by applying 2D techniques to CG; not use motion capture or realistic animation, but work with stylised motions, key frames and parallaxes. I think the end result has got a definite feel; a combination of all those ideas.”The crew were going for a stylised look in the texturing and the rendering, so the use of 3D with a 2D feel created a very original finish. “It was also important for the sets [the desert and the city] to feel vast and open. Converting to 3D allowed us to create such scale, including camera movements and depth,” explained Hibon. “The original 2D drawings for the characters were intricate and very detailed, from shapes to textures. We tried to retain those details in the modeling process, for the characters to stay truthful to their original concepts. Those are things that would have been difficult to achieve in 2D, and almost impossible to that level of detail.”The modeling and the texturing of the characters/elements was the most important and difficult stage in translating the animation. Hibon worked closely with Axis's modeler Sergio Caires, who got the feel for the characters straight away. The texturing/line art style was then meticulously reproduced on each model, matching the original artworks using different drawing/3D packages. “It was a great process to see 2D concepts become ‘real’,” “For the environments, we decided to keep the modeling easy to render, but instead spend a lot of time designing or drawing intricate textures for each specific item, to bring as much detail and richness as possible to the backgrounds and keep that 2D/3D contrast. It was a great process to see the layers of ink, dirt, hand-drawn details and painted textures dress the 3D world and make it come to life.”^[1]

Style

A variety of techniques were used to achieve the appearance of Hibon's 2D drawings. The use of cell-shading, 2D textures to create a drawing appearance, and character outlines to keep true the pencils of the artwork.

Borderlands

Gearbox Software's Borderlands (series) is claimed to be inspired by the film. Kotaku reported on the subject debating how much "inspiration" was actually taken. Reports show Ben Hibon was in talks to work on the project but contact ceased:

"I was contacted by Gearbox prior to the re-design of the game – in 2008. They asked me if I would be interested to direct/design some cut-scenes for them. We exchanged a few emails but the project didn’t materialize in the end. I didn’t think much of it at the time – until I saw the final game in 2009.

To be absolutely clear – I have never created or designed anything for Gearbox or Borderlands. Gearbox saw my work and decided to reproduce it – make it their own – without my help or my consent. The hardest part for me when this happened was understanding why they wouldn't ask me directly. We were already talking about doing some work together – it made no sense."

— Ben Hibon

When asked how he felt about the credit for the new art style going to co-founder and Art Director, Brian Martel, Hibon had this to say:

"I always think of the talented team of artists working at Gearbox – who could have created something original and bespoke instead of copying someone else’s short film… and I feel bad for them."

— Ben Hibon

Credit was never given to Hibon until the plagiarism was pointed out, Randy Pitchford said: "artists and designers at Gearbox were inspired and influenced by it." Earlier versions of the work had no cell-shading whatsoever.

Reception

The film has received positive reception. With praise going towards the artstyle, animation, and music.

References