Desta

Moth was approached by Ustwo Games to create a launch trailer and in-game cutscenes for their new turn-based strategy game, Desta: The Memories Between.

Ustwo wanted wanted the trailer to reflect the game's dream space setting with surrealism, action, and intrigue within a dynamic and twisting world. Moth cleverly mixed in-game symbolism, an unexpected but vibrant colour palette, and an infectious score by Mansur Brown to create a frenetic, kaleidoscopic music video-esque trailer

Throughout the game, Desta’s (they/them) antagonists aren’t really enemies, they’re broken relationships. To bring these characters back on their side, they need to successfully win them over by playing dodgeball. Moth needed the trailer to give insight into the mechanics of the game without becoming too needlessly detailed.

Moth opted to show Desta being challenged by three increasingly difficult challenges. For the second ’enemy’, The Shield Bearer, we wanted to highlight the teamwork between Desta and their friend, James. Within the game, characters have special abilities and Desta must work with these friends to navigate their way around obstacles within each level and establish the best way to hit the opposing characters.

Impact within the game is conveyed with a prismatic effect. Moth felt the notion of crystals, shards and shattering would work as a convenient device to travel between the worlds.

It was important for Ustwo that the environments felt distinctly English. Moth's solution was to keep the backgrounds limited but feature key props such as traffic signs, lights, and buildings to scatter throughout the designs.Moth worked alongside design talents, Joe Dennis and Manddy Wyckens to create some striking color concept frames and refine the in-game characters for the trailer.

Moth felt a traditional 2D pipeline would be most appropriate considering the flat rendering of scenes and characters. Characters were animated in TV Paint and Adobe Animate while compositing was handled all within Adobe After Effects.

For the limbo sequence, after Desta has been hit by a ball but before they’re taken back to reality, we introduced cel-shaded 3D islands to add some extra depth to the camera twist.