The quality of the animation in the documentary “The Fantastic Life of Ibelin,” which reflects the life of a terminally ill World of Warcraft player, is so high that it requires Blizzard’s collaboration. Or? Well, the development studio is actually said to have only been informed about the upcoming documentary much later.
What kind of documentation is this? On October 25, 2024, “The Fantastic Life of Ibelin” was released on the streaming platform Netflix. Physically limited by his illness, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the Norwegian boy Mats Steen was unable to participate in life like other boys his age. When he was 25 years old, he died as a result of his illness
The MMORPG World of Warcraft helped the boy participate in social life. The documentary tells his story and is largely based on animations of the WoW characters.
The documentary touched the hearts of many WoW players, and they made an in-game pilgrimage to a memorial to Mats Steen.
You can get a first impression of the emotional documentary with the trailer:
The fantastic life of Ibelin – trailer for the emotional documentary about a story from the WoW community
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High-quality animations even without Blizzard’s cooperation
Polygon magazine conducted research into the background of the Netflix documentary. Director Benjamin Ree and animator Rasmus Tukia told the author that they initially waited three years before telling Blizzard about the documentary.
Shortly before the film was completed, the two turned to the game studio: “We just took the rights and tried to ask for forgiveness afterwards.”
Blizzard wanted to see the film and the filmmakers were excited about whether the WoW developers would give them the rights to the footage. But after the screening, Blizzard gave the filmmakers the green light. Apparently the bosses were very touched by the film.
How are such high-quality animations possible without Blizzard? Animator Rasmus Tukia started playing World of Warcraft at the age of 12 and used the characters to create simple animation videos for YouTube. In 2015, he started working with software the community had developed to move characters from the game into other animation programs.
The quality of his work increased rapidly and he was able to create higher quality animations. Director Benjamin Ree discovered Rasmus Tukia’s YouTube channel and found him the perfect candidate to realize his idea of a documentary about Mats Steen.
Netflix has some content about a variety of video games on their site. One of the most popular Netflix and video game series is Arcane. It tells the story of various characters from League of Legends and a second season is eagerly awaited: Arcane: New trailer for season 2 hints at what many suspected after the end of season 1