Fortiche Production SAS is a French

animation studio An animation studio is a company producing animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales or rentals o ...

headquartered in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. Its biggest project to date is the television series ''

Arcane Arcane may refer to: Books and comics * Anton Arcane, a DC Comics character * Arcane Jill Watson, a character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' * Arcane literature, such as in Cthulhu Mythos Gaming * Arcane magic (''Dungeons & Drago ...

''.

Development

Fortiche was founded in 2009 and initially created commercials for

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlant ...

Honda is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a producti ...

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

and MTV. From the start, a combination of 2D and 3D animation has defined the studio's style, the "Touche Fortiche". They moved on to creating music videos, created for

Freak Kitchen Freak Kitchen is an experimental rock band from Gothenburg, Sweden, formed in 1992. History Freak Kitchen's style of music is influenced by many genres besides traditional heavy metal, ranging from jazz to pop. The band described their third ...

, Gorillaz and LIMOUSINE. These projects caught the attention of video game studios such as

Ubisoft Ubisoft Entertainment SA (; ; formerly Ubi Soft Entertainment SA) is a French video game publisher headquartered in Saint-Mandé with development studios across the world. Its video game franchises include '' Assassin's Creed'', ''Far Cry'', ...

, Volition Studios, Carbine Studios and Riot Games. For the latter, Fortiche produced game trailers in the form of

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

s along with music videos, most notably

Pop/Stars "Pop/Stars" (stylized in all caps) is a song by virtual K-pop girl group K/DA. It was released as a single on November 2, 2018, as promotion for the 2018 League of Legends World Championship. The single became popular with one of the fastest vi ...

. They eventually moved on to the production of the series ''

Rabbids Invasion ''Rabbids Invasion'' (french: Les Lapins Crétins : Invasion) is a French computer-animated television series based on Ubisoft's '' Raving Rabbids'' video game series. It is a co-production of Ubisoft Motion Pictures, TeamTO and CNC. The show w ...

'', which it co-produced from 2013 to 2019 for

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

and

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...

in partnership with Ubisoft. In 2015, the French channel

France 2 France 2 () is a French public national television channel. It is part of the state-owned France Télévisions group, along with France 3, France 4 and France 5. France Télévisions also participates in Arte and Euronews. Since 3:20 CET on 7 A ...

broadcast the 55-minute historical documentary film ''Le dernier Gaulois'' about the

Gallic Wars The Gallic Wars were waged between 58 and 50 BC by the Roman general Julius Caesar against the peoples of Gaul (present-day France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland). Gallic, Germanic, and British tribes fought to defend their homel ...

animated by Fortiche. Motion Capture technology was used for this. At the 2017 industry fair ''Cartoon Movie'' in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefect ...

, the studio pitched the feature film project ''Miss Saturne'' with a pilot short film.

''Arcane''

In November 2021, Fortiche, in collaboration with Riot Games, released the series ''

'' set in the ''

League of Legends ''League of Legends'' (''LoL''), commonly referred to as ''League'', is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by '' Defense of the Ancients'', a custom map for ''Warcraft III'', ...

''-universe on the streaming platforms

and in China on

Tencent Video Tencent Video (, also called WeTV outside of China) is a Chinese video streaming website owned by Tencent. The website was launched in April 2011, and is one of China's largest online video platforms. As of March 2022, Tencent Video has over 1.2 ...

. It was the world's most-watched series on Netflix for two weeks in November 2021 and was extremely well received by critics. During the six year creation of ''Arcane'', staff numbers grew from around 15 to around 300. The studio expanded in 2020 with branches in Montpellier and

Las Palmas Las Palmas (, ; ), officially Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, is a Spanish city and capital of Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands, on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital (jointly with Santa Cruz de Tenerife), the most populous city in the auto ...

. The studio's revenue rose to 16.4 million for 2021. ''

Le Figaro ''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of r ...

'' reported that the budget of ''Arcane'' was 60–80 million. In November 2021 Riot-Games-CEO Nicolo Laurent announced via Twitter that a second season has been commissioned from Fortiche. On March 14, 2022, Riot Games announced a new equity investment in Fortiche Production. Under the terms of the investment, which closed earlier this year, Riot now holds a significant non-controlling stake in Fortiche. Brian Wright (Chief Content Officer at Riot) and Brendan Mulligan (Director of Corporate Development at Riot) have also joined Fortiche's board of directors.

References

External links

*
Arcane: Bridging the Rift , League of Legends
- Five part "behind the scenes" video series documenting Fortiche's involvement
''Videos in chronological order''
on the Website of Catsuka (Cartoon-news) {{In lang, fr French animation studios Companies based in Paris French companies established in 2009