Axis re-established their long standing relationship with Frontier Developments by working working on the Cambridge based developer's new title Thrillville: Off the Rails. Following the success of theme park game Thrillville, which featured a series of cutscenes created by Axis and was the number one original family game in the USA in 2006, Frontier asked the UK-based studio to bring the main character Uncle Mortimer back for more and produce over six minutes of cutscenes for the new title.
Directed by Dana Dorian, the cutscenes follow Uncle Mortimer as he guides and supports you through the new theme park environments. In a similar vein to the original game there is plenty of slapstick humour, gags and the odd experiment that goes wrong.
'I had been involved in the first Thrillville project but not as director so it was great to get to grips with a character who I felt I already knew well' said Dorian. 'I had the chance to work directly with the team at Frontier and be involved in the development of the scripts and also input into the dialogue record, it’s great to be included in a project that early and at that level.'
The challenge for Axis was providing a balance between the explanations for the next stage of the game play and continuing to entertain and engage the player with a performance that makes them laugh.
'We knew that Frontier loved what we had done with the cutscenes in Thrillville and this time we got to up the ante by bringing in some new characters' said Axis producer Debbie Ross. 'We added a series of robotic characters who appear in the opening cutscene as rollercoaster crash test dummies but then appear every so often throughout the other shots, you have to watch closely to see their hilarious antics' continued Ross.
These secondary performances are what added more charm and additional comedy to the sequences and it is something Dana Dorian and the team of animators are proud of doing so well.
‘It is always great to take a script and develop visual gags around a lot of what is in there and I am delighted with the performances we pulled off for all the characters’ said Dorian.
Frontier Managing Director David Walsh said of the project ‘We've worked with Axis on several projects now and they have added real value to our collaborations, both during the creative process and in the final quality of their output. We look forward to working with them again in future.’
