Animation Studio

19 March 2026

Capsule Studio on Animating Content like Trailers, Commercial, or VR Experiences

#Interviews #Animation #Video Games #Game Design #Game Development

Capsule Studio talked about their process of creating visual content, sharing their thoughts about the changes in VFX and CGI during the last few years, explaining some of the projects they have worked on, and detailing how they create the animations with quality and realistic characters.

Capsule Studio has been creating high-end VFX and CGI visualization for games, entertainment, and advertising for years. How would you characterize the current state of the CGI and VFX visualization industry? What are the biggest shifts in terms of client expectations, technical capabilities, and market dynamics compared to just 3-5 years ago?

Stéphane: The overall entertainment industry is going through a brutal realignment after the pandemic euphoria. We went from abundance to severe contraction. Our main clients, video game publishers and developers, are experiencing a period of austerity, and inevitably, this is trickling down to all players in the business.

Capsule, and probably most studios in general, must constantly challenge their processes to become more efficient without compromising quality. But this tightening also creates real opportunities. Clients are willing to outsource even more to maintain flexibility. And major accounts that exclusively worked with our most established competitors (out of habit and means) are now looking very favorably at the opportunity to work with a smaller studio capable of delivering the same quality.

Everything is not so dark after all. On the technical side, real-time technologies are attracting a lot of attention. More broadly, GPU rendering engines are becoming increasingly prominent and offer real convenience and time savings while offering the same robustness as traditional CPU render engines. AI is, of course, increasingly entering discussions, and we'll talk more about that in this interview.

The real market mutation, though, is harder for everyone. Among clients and service providers alike, many companies are struggling or have shut down. This impacts the job market. Careers are at risk, particularly for young people entering the business. It's regrettable and frankly sad to see so much talent suffering.

Can you walk us through some of Capsule Studio's recent notable projects in 2025 and what you learned from them? Whether it's cinematic trailers or visualization work, what challenges did these projects present, and how did they push your team's capabilities or influence your business approach?

Stéphane: Most of the projects we produced in 2025 are still under wraps, but I can talk about two particularly interesting ones that illustrate different aspects of what we do at Capsule:

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn (Owlcat Games)

We were lucky to work with the incredibly talented team at Owlcat Games. This project is very special for them in terms of IP and scope, and I can assure you that you won't be disappointed when it is released, though you'll have to be patient a bit longer.

Owlcat came to us early in development. We had a solid idea of gameplay features and narrative framework, and from there it became a three-way collaboration between us, Owlcat, and Alcon (the IP holder) to establish the script. The challenge was finding the right balance between respecting the franchise codes, revealing the first ingredients of the game, all to make players understand that the successor to Mass Effect is on its way.

If I'm not mistaken, this was the first time Owlcat had produced this type of trailer, so the process was somewhat new for them. We'll talk more about this later in this interview, but it's exactly the kind of context where you need to be close to your client. We had weekly calls with their team (shout out to Galina and Stan!) even when there weren't necessarily significant updates to show, simply to keep them informed of progression.

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Call of Cthulhu: Abyss (Nacon/Bigbad Wolf)

This was a new collaboration with Nacon and Bigbad Wolf. We'd already produced the trailer for their previous game, Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, a few years ago. Here also, the objective was to tease the game and reveal its ingredients. On this production, the schedule constraints were relatively tight with less than three months of production all-in (including the holiday season in the middle).

The entire team did formidable work prioritizing tasks and delivering quality within deadlines. Similarly, the client Nacon understood the stakes very well, and once the storyboard was validated, the trailer's content changed very little.

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One interesting thing here: the film's content and timeline constraints led us to organize motion capture in a very different way. Rather than organizing a shoot on a dedicated set, which is a significant task to prepare and then deal with in terms of scheduling and data to treat afterwards, we opted for a very DIY XSens approach.

We improvised each scene with an actor as best we could. The rushes can make you smile, but in the end, that doesn't come across in the final trailer. It's a good example of how Capsule can adapt the means deployed to a project's constraints.

Can you describe how Capsule Studio's production workflow typically handles client reviews and license holder verifications? How many approval stages does a typical high-profile project go through, and how do you manage creative iteration while meeting deadlines and maintaining quality standards?

Stéphane: That's a very interesting question, and one we don't talk about often enough in the industry. Capsule has a production process that's certainly similar to many studios. But I think it helps to understand that we distinguish production into three major zones of influence: the story, the motion, and the picture.

The story, the narration, must be established at the beginning of the project through the script, storyboard, and previsualization. Because after that, changes hurt. The intervention of other departments (and there are many!) will naturally bring its share of discussion, doubt, and changes that we'll need to navigate, but the foundation must be solid.

Because after previsualization, the objective changes: now we don't want to think about what we want to tell, but about how to support the story in the best possible way, make it credible, and visually stunning. How many approval milestones? Generally, on a 4 to 5-month project, we'll have about a dozen major milestones.

In between, there can be other reviews, depending on the client's level of involvement and availability. But workflow is only as good as your ability to make it stick. You can have the most squared-away production workflow possible, but it all depends on your ability to get it adopted by the client. There's a social aspect not to be neglected: how your client works, how to communicate with them.

You need to adapt while making everyone understand the limits that will allow production to proceed correctly and meet its objectives. And no recipe works every time. Each client is totally different. Sometimes we're in direct interface with one or two people who have all the decision-making powers. Sometimes we're facing a cohort of people from different companies who all need to be aligned.

So we make sure to find the best approach for each client, whether in terms of communication mode, the pace of exchanges, or the quantity and level of progress we feel comfortable submitting. The common thread is clarity in exchanges. We spend considerable time preparing each presentation and making it digestible and quickly readable for clients.

Finding the right balance between overview and details. Clarifying what's submitted for validation, what's in progress, what's planned to be done, what the next steps are, and so on. When it goes well, the client doesn't even realize the structuring work behind it. But that's exactly what makes a production run without friction.

How is the current AI-powered visualization tech affecting Capsule Studio's workflow and competitive positioning? Are you incorporating AI tools into your pipeline, and how do you see the balance between AI assistance and human artistry evolving?

Stéphane: This is a subject that would deserve several interviews on its own with people far more competent on the topic than us, but I'll try to keep it short and coherent. If there's one thing I've learned after all these years in the field, it's that we can't do much in the face of technological evolution. Generally, we didn't ask for them in advance.

You can fight against them, but ultimately you'll sooner or later be replaced by people who don't have the same vision as you, or for whom, in their case, this technological evolution will be an opportunity. When ZBrush democratized, I saw a generation of character artists disappear in favor of another. Same for raytracing and lighters, and so on.

Now what's difficult nowadays is distinguishing a genuinely useful technological evolution from a magic tool that's pounded into you all day long on social networks and in marketing campaigns. Many people, intentionally or through inexperience, conflate the hype with the reality of production or consumption. I'm thinking here of NFTs, the metaverse, or more recently, Google Genie.

For my part, I think AI sits between the two. It's certainly a tech that's here to stay, but the way it's marketed, and the benefits attributed to it, are often exaggerated or put the accent only on the most wow, and also socially damaging aspects. It's as if the inventor of the hammer sold it as a really cool tool for hitting people, and it was up to you to realize you could also restrict its use to building something useful with it.

How does AI tech affect our workflow and positioning? Currently, this doesn't affect our production workflow as a studio or our positioning at all. There's a fundamental debate about the use of generative AI that's unresolved with audiences and clients. And legally, in its current state, it's not possible for us to deliver anything we can't guarantee we have the rights to.

Are we incorporating AI tools into our pipeline? Today, AI is in our pipeline in a utilitarian way, not creative. We use it essentially for support and assistance tasks: code, upscaling, administrative work, research, referencing, and so on. And since we're a small team, it already allows us to save time to focus on creation. In this sense, our current use of AI seems rather beneficial.

How do we see the balance between AI assistance and human artistic skill evolving? I do not believe that AI will dominate as a content generation tool that will erase human talents or production processes that exist today. If we're moved by a creative proposal, whatever it may be, it's because we know that behind it there's the work, the risk-taking of one or more human beings.

Therefore, apart from the surprise or fascination of seeing that something was entirely generated by AI, it leaves me absolutely cold. I think most people also have this feeling, which explains the rejection of AI as a creation tool, and that, at a minimum, they want to know when something was made using AI or not. That seems legitimate and a good thing to me.

Now, aside from the content slot machine aspect, AI has high potential for personal assistance and improvements. Like an additional tool in the toolbox of artists, technicians, and producers that could allow them to go further in their craft. The people I see making the best use of it are often people who are already very experienced in their field.

Because they can identify the areas of work where the human mind makes a difference from those that can be delegated. Because, thanks to their experience, they know how to communicate their needs effectively and take a critical view of what AI produces. I think that's the ideal to strive for: viewing AI as a personal assistant that reacts to your needs rather than a holistic solution over which you have to submit.

By the way, it's interesting to note that large companies that have undertaken sudden and widespread shifts to AI work processes generally have mediocre results. It's not simple like having a new, more powerful computer. It's more like having a third hand. And it takes time for everyone to learn how to use it properly and do useful things with it.

There's an ongoing debate about whether CGI production costs are rising or falling as tools improve, but client expectations increase. From Capsule Studio's perspective, what's happening with the economics of high-end CGI production? Are costs per shot/minute increasing, stabilizing, or decreasing, and what factors are driving these trends—hardware, software, talent costs, or client scope creep?

Stéphane: When we were young and watching making-ofs from Pixar or ILM, it seemed eminently complex and out of reach to run this kind of business. In 2016, we set up an animation studio with a starting investment of less than €50K.

Far be it from me to compare us to ILM or Pixar, but, at our own scale, we're capable of producing films that can approach the quality standards of these gigantic studios. And of course, with a production cost that's not comparable. I find that completely crazy.

In general, this business is increasingly accessible, and barriers to entry are diminishing. We may not realize it because most of the time, productivity gains are invested in improving quality and complexity. In fact, it's often a funny reflection we make among old-timers: we have the feeling that execution time is always the same for 20 years. When we were working in 720x480 on small cathode screens, with no render farm and so on. But what we deliver has nothing to do with what we delivered 20 years ago. We're not making a fixed product that's been the same for years, like a Bic pen.

I think that the most complex thing nowadays is being able to make all the people work together toward a common objective, because this business involves many different talents with different constraints. That's one of the main factors that will make the difference between studios. But it's not the only one that defines a project's selling price. As I was saying, we don't make a standardized product for all our clients. Each project is completely different.

Clients also approach certain studios because they're attracted by a certain reputation or specific know-how. These are things that aren't tangible but have a price. I often compare our business to that of an architect. He seeks to understand your project and will adapt his proposal's parameters according to your budget. You can have laminate flooring at €15/m² or solid century-old oak flooring at €200/m². Both are flooring, and both fulfill the basic function. But the final experience is nothing like, and neither is the price.

Our business is about the same thing. Of course, there are limits within which it's complicated to work, but generally, each project stops where the constraints dictate to stop. Otherwise, we can always go further. That's what's cool about our profession, but it's also what makes costs highly elastic!

Digital character creation has advanced tremendously with technologies like MetaHuman, improved facial capture, and real-time rendering. What's Capsule Studio's approach to creating believable digital characters, and what technologies or techniques are you most excited about right now? Are we approaching a point where digital characters can fully replace traditional methods for certain applications?

Mhamed: Capsule Studio's approach to creating credible digital characters relies on a blend of high technicality and a cinematic vision of storytelling. We made a cool behind-the-scenes video a few years ago about our work on the Farming Simulator 22 Trailer. It shows well how we approach the task of character creation.

We don't just model "beautiful" characters. We must anchor their credibility and coherence in a given context. A character must tell a story, and for that, every detail counts: a scar, the wear of a garment, an asymmetry, a micro-expression, a gaze. Throughout the production process, whether we start from a concept or from an actor's scan, the emphasis is on the technical translation of the character and their anatomical realism.

We aim for quality and coherence: a precise sculpt, topology allowing beautiful deformations and richness in blendshapes (anticipating rigging and animation constraints), shaders that react physically to light, grooming going as far as imitating skin peach fuzz, displacement bringing out micro-wrinkles, and, of course, animation capturing subtleties (combining mocap and manual retouching).

It's this mastery at each stage and this attention to "human imperfections" that make our creations alive. In a few weeks, Focus Entertainment & Saber Interactive will release their next game: John Carpenter's Toxic Commando. Capsule created the announcement trailer a few years ago, as well as several cutscenes for the game. This involved significant work on the characters, particularly their faces, most of which are digital doubles of actors.

All this wouldn't be possible without talented artists, but also without tools that allow us to constantly push our limits. The creation ecosystem today is extremely rich and evolves very rapidly, so it's essential to stay up to date. We follow very closely what's being done at Texturing.xyz, Faceform (with their incredible Wrap 4D tool), and of course, Unreal and MetaHuman.

It must be said that these have greatly helped facilitate character creation for video games. We especially monitor the evolution of Unreal Engine's facial performance capture tools. They offer a democratization of existing workflows already well established in the CGI/VFX industry (notably the FACS concept) with obvious gains in accessibility, while remaining complementary to advanced animation and rigging work.

It's also impossible to ignore the rise of artificial intelligence. Beyond legitimate debates around copyright or the standardization of creation, I remain convinced that, well used, it can bring us a lot, particularly for tedious tasks (tracking, scan/photogrammetry, Gaussian Splatting, denoise...).

To answer the last part of your question: will digital characters replace traditional methods? They're already doing so for interactive experiences, video games, or digital doubles. But in my opinion, they won't replace real acting when human performance is central!

The future isn't in replacement, but in hybridization, where human and machine will allow us to push the limits of imagination. Technology saves us time, but credibility, that little extra (the gaze, the intention, the rhythm) always comes from human decisions, from love and passion in the work.

Real-time rendering engines like Unreal Engine and Unity have transformed production pipelines for many studios. How has Capsule Studio adapted to or incorporated real-time workflows? What advantages do they provide, and are there still scenarios where traditional offline rendering is superior or necessary for the quality level you deliver?

Mhamed: When we set up a pipeline, we think about several parameters: cost, robustness, our ability to find human resources who will use it, and efficiency in achieving objectives. In the vast majority of cases, our clients come to us to create trailers and cinematics with high visual quality.

The objective is not to sell the gameplay (other types of trailers are generally made for that in marketing campaigns), but to sell a universe, a promise, an adventure in the most seductive and cinematographic way possible. As such, Capsule has what you might call a "traditional" pipeline that relies on tools that have largely proven themselves (3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder, ZBrush, Houdini, and so on) with pre-calculated rendering at the end of the chain.

For this type of project, and knowing that we have a robust and proven pipeline, there's not much interest in switching to a real-time engine and dealing with issues that are more related to game development.

Stéphane: That said, we follow technological developments in this field very closely because things are moving very fast. You know, all studios are rather agnostic about tools. As long as there are real benefits, it doesn't take long for the entire ecosystem to adapt.

For example, as Mhamed explained earlier, we were heavily inspired by what Unreal has implemented with MetaHumans for our facial rigging, and we now work with it for processing facial capture data.

On the other hand, if the objective is to work with optimization constraints or game resources to have fidelity with gameplay (and thus be genuinely real-time), then obviously this type of pipeline makes sense and is the right tool for the job.

For instance, Capsule collaborated a few years ago with Asobo on A Plague Tale: Innocence, for which we produced 30 minutes of in-game cinematics. And also with Nacon on the game Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong, on which we produced several trailers with Unreal. More recently, we've been collaborating with ZDT Studio on a few cinematics for their first game, releasing in a few months: Darwin's Paradox.

What's Capsule Studio's competitive differentiation—is it technical expertise, creative vision, production efficiency, client relationships, or something else? How do you position the studio to win projects against both established giants and emerging competitors?

Stéphane: What sets Capsule apart isn't any single thing, but rather how we bring everything together. We're a human-scale studio, but one with genuine ambition and a specific philosophy about how creative work should happen. At our core, we're graphic artists. Most of us learned everything on the job, building our skills and knowledge through practice and experimentation.

There wasn't some grand master plan at the beginning. We just loved this craft and kept pushing ourselves to get better at it. But what really differentiates us is that we can handle everything from A to Z. We conceptualize projects from the initial idea, develop the script, create the visual direction, and see it through to final delivery. This end-to-end capability is actually quite rare in our industry.

Many studios excel at specific parts of the process, but we do it all under one roof with the same level of care and expertise. That's a major reason why clients come to us. There's also something about scale that works in our favor. Being smaller than the giants means we can be more agile and more focused. We avoid what's superfluous. What counts before all else is the result. This efficiency-oriented organization allows us to deliver work that rivals much larger studios, but with less overhead and bureaucracy.

When clients work with us, they're working directly with passionate people who care deeply about their craft and the project quality. Real collaboration weaves between all departments, between clients and our team. Everyone here has a genuine influence on the work being produced. It's not about rigid hierarchies or siloed departments. It's a collective that knows how to work together, adapt to different situations, and support each other. This creates an environment where the best ideas can surface regardless of where they come from.

And ultimately, our work speaks for itself. We've proven we can deliver cinematic quality that stands alongside work from the most established players in the industry. But we do it with more flexibility, more creative freedom for our clients, and frankly, better value.

That combination of world-class quality with a human touch and creative partnership is what allows us to win projects even against studios with far more resources. Honestly, even I, being at the heart of it all, having watched this studio grow for almost 10 years now, I'm still impressed every time by what the team is able to deliver relative to its size. That never gets old.

The games industry specifically has seen massive upheaval—layoffs, studio closures, budget cuts—which presumably affects demand for cinematic trailers and promotional CGI work. How has this market turbulence impacted Capsule Studio's business? Are you diversifying into other industries, or do you see opportunities emerging from the current market conditions?

Stéphane: We're very vigilant about our operating costs, and we've ensured not to slip on our projects' profitability. And we didn't make excessive investments during the boom years. So we'll weather the storm. Capsule is resolutely focused on the gaming market, and certainly, this focus may have been a weakness during these difficult years. But it's hard to be good and present everywhere on our scale.

You need to know what you want. Also, things need to be put in perspective. What we're experiencing in gaming is a cyclical correction, not a market disappearance. Gaming remains a $197B industry in growth and remains the best place for Capsule. We have genuine added value, a creative freedom that can be very great, permanent challenges, and clients with whom it's fascinating to work.

Looking ahead to 2026 and the next 3-5 years, maybe, what's your vision for Capsule Studio and the broader VFX/CGI visualization industry? How do you intend to navigate the unknown?

Stéphane: One of the problems we have today across all entertainment is content quantity. It's also one of the causes of recent complications. Too much content, not enough available brain time. I think there's a striking statistic about player concentration: Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft collectively account for nearly one-quarter of all playtime across major platforms.

This concentration of engagement on just a few titles shows how saturated the market has become. On our side, the market could polarize in a U shape. At one end, you'll have cheap, mass-produced content that will be "good enough" for many clients, with crushed rates. At the other end, you'll have premium studios that bring together original creative vision and state-of-the-art execution.

Clients who want to stand out in an ocean of "good enough" content will come here. If you're in the middle, you'll get crushed between the low-cost bottom and the premium top. Capsule's objective is to aim for the top of the basket! We're continuing to invest in what we do best: high-end work that brings genuine creative value to our clients. That's our core strength and it's what sets us apart. But we're not standing still. The democratization of tools, the shifts in how games are marketed and consumed, all of these changes create new spaces for innovation.

For a studio like ours that's built on creativity and adaptability, that's exciting. And let's be honest about what drives us. This isn't just business. Everyone at Capsule is here because they're passionate about this craft. We love pushing the boundaries of what's possible, love the challenge of bringing ideas to life, and love collaborating with brilliant people to create something that makes players stop and feel something.

That passion is what carried us through until now, and it's what will carry us forward. Long-term, we're also interested in developing our own original animated content. Capsule's value lies not only in our production capacity but also in our ability to conceptualize projects from A to Z. Leveraging that to create our own IP would allow us to diversify revenue streams without abandoning what we know how to do.

And we're in a favorable position here in France, where substantial subsidies are supporting this kind of initiative. It's a natural evolution for studios like ours. Producing your own content is certainly more difficult than providing services, but it's an opportunity we're genuinely excited to explore. So yes, there's uncertainty ahead. But it also means possibility. And for a team that's proven it can adapt, innovate, and deliver world-class work even in challenging conditions? We're ready for whatever comes next!