Rayman Raving Rabbids, Behind the Bunnies: Interview
Here is an interview with producer Nino Sapina, game designer Cyril Gouel, and film director Frederic Dorison.
IGN: How was the video FPS created?
Gouel: By the end of RRR1, we wanted to transpose the graphic rendering from the RRR1 “bunnies can’t” videos (blending real places with 3D bunnies) into a mini-game. We felt that the FPS format would fit this very well.
IGN: What is the main difference between FPS from RRR1 and FPS from RRR2?
Gouel: In RRR1, all the elements of backgrounds were in 3D whereas in RRR2, only the rabbids are made in 3D. The main difference here is the visual look: we shot live action in real cities and then integrated the rabbids. It means all the backgrounds and the human characters are real, even the joggers on the Brooklyn Promenade!
IGN: What was your objective by creating those FPS mini-games?
Sapina: With the first person plunger shooter, we wanted to give a twist and something new visually that fit with the rabbids’ sense of humor. We experimented with the different environments and the idea of bunnies running around the world simply made us laugh.
GN: How did you manage to mix videos of the real world and 3D Rabbids?
Gouel: With the real background, we had to create new level design situations from RRR1, to improve the interactions between the rabbids and reality, to surprise the player. We made a lot of prototypes to validate each step of the production process.
The hard part was to transpose the real world into a video game! Rebuilding the 3D world on the live action video was very difficult, because of the complexity of the real elements. The simple movement of leaves, cars driving or joggers running took a lot of time to develop to ensure that the player could enjoy their experience and feel as though the bunnies’ presence was as natural as possible.
