Goodbye Kansas Studios Newsletter - Q2 2024

It’s been a busy second quarter of travelling on the road and celebrating released projects - read more below!

We were thrilled to release our highly anticipated HELLDIVERS 2 Breakdown in April and were blown away by the positive feedback we received. The team produced the cinematic introduction for HELLDIVERS 2 with Arrowhead Studios, and it’s our best-performing breakdown yet, with over 125,000 views on YouTube. Check it out here.

In 2019, our team produced a cinematic trailer for the fifth major instalment of the Lineage series, Lineage W—an online multiplayer role-playing game developed and published by NCSoft that was released in March 2024 on Android, iOS, and PC in the USA and UK. Therefore, it was a full-circle moment for our team to finally show some of the fantastic work they put into this project through a project breakdown.

Who hasn’t seen Shõgun yet…? We struggle to find somebody who has yet to watch this fantastic series, which has received fantastic reviews from critics and viewers all over the globe. We jumped at the chance to work on this show, released in February 2024, and recently released our VFX breakdown to showcase our team’s phenomenal work! 

Goodbye Kansas get to work on phenomenal projects, and Doctor Who was no exception! This ongoing prestigious show is well-loved by so many; it was an honour to be a part of the new series by creating prehistoric and spaceship environments, holograms, and even talking babies… Catch our VFX breakdown here.

We’ve had a very busy quarter on the road! 

Goodbye Kansas Asia is underway, and we were delighted to be networking partners alongside NY VFXWAALA for Animation Xpress’s 4th annual VAM Summit, held in Mumbai, India, on May 2nd and 3rd, 2024. Managing Director Chris Jestico and Head of Technology Erik Johansson-Evegård presented individual talks about Goodbye Kansas, our technology, and our expansion in India. It was great to meet so many talented people in the industry and share our team’s work with them, too. 

In April, our Executive Producers, Anton Söderhäll and Jörgen Lilja, flew to Croatia to attend Reboot Develop 2024. They had a great time meeting old and new connections worldwide and speaking to current and new prospective clients. Reboot Develop Blue is Europe's boutique game developer and games industry conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It features more than 155+ speakers over three days in eight parallel tracks/stages with B2B and indie expo areas. 

Head of Shots 3D, Alexis Andersson, kicked off the day at FMX—Film & Media Exchange 2024, also in April, as part of the Chaos MeetUp. Alexis discussed Goodbye Kansas Studio’s multishot pipeline and how tools such as Solaris and V-Ray allow artists to focus more on creative decisions and reduce the time spent on shot handling, enabling faster completion of more extensive projects without compromising quality. 

At the beginning of June, Director Emnet Mulugeta and Creative Director Gustaf Holmsten presented at Game Access in the Czech Republic with “Beyond The Screen: A dive into the creative process of game cinematic trailers”. They spoke about the creative processes behind Goodbye Kansas' crafting of two highly successful Cinematics: Skull & Bones and Hell Divers 2.

At the end of June, Our Art Director Mikael Widegren and Environment Artist Fabian Zackrisson flew to Skellefteå in northern Sweden to attend the annual graduates ceremony, give presentations on Goodbye Kansas, and an introductory workshop in Houdini! It was great to meet new aspiring artists and answer any questions they had about what it’s like to work in the VFX and post-production industry. 

Goodbye Kansas are super happy to have continued with our DEIA initiative and received two more guest speakers that joined our GBK global weekly meetings to discuss sex and gender as well as Neurodiversity. Sui discussed why creating a safe, inclusive working environment for individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community is important, and Sumbu shared her mental health journey to discovering she was neurodiverse and her learnings so far as a psychology student.

Our UK-based team gathered for a party in the London office to celebrate phase one of the new refurbishment. An improved working space has been created for the team, designed to boost productivity and enhance well-being. We’ve implemented a fresh break-out area to relax and a reception space to welcome our clients whilst renovating our extra meeting room for better focus and privacy! 

Lastly, our Swedish team have been able to start enjoying both floors in the Stockholm office! Our ongoing refurbishments have been taking place in the last year and we are thrilled that it has come to completion! Our updated layout improves accessibility and engagement for our talented teams at GBK while ensuring a secure and controlled environment for all your motion and performance capture needs within our fantastic studio.🚀

Want to see more of our previous work? Visit our website here.

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