Avatars of the world, unite!

How we got to produce avatars of historical figures for an – animated! – poster of a Swiss movie on the history of immigrant working class

Final rendering of the alternative “communist five”.

Hacking communist imagery
“The Miraculous Transformation of the Working Class Into Foreigners” is a 2024 Swiss documentary directed by Samir. The film examines the history of post-war labor migration to Switzerland, specifically focusing on the shift where “worker” became synonymous with “foreigner”. The movie, written and directed by Swiss filmmaker Samir, was produced by Dschoint Ventschr, wo happen to be our studio neighbors.

While the movie’s autobiographical storyline is narrated completely using Unreal’s MetaHuman avatars, Samir wanted to have a different take on the poster. Keeping the MetaHuman aesthetic to foreshadow the animated part of the movie, he decided to produce a critical take on the well-known “communist five” portrait which typically shows Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.

A typical rendition of the “communist five”.

The idea was to replace the communist icons with thinkers who were resolutely against totalitarian or Stalinist interpretations of left-wing ideas: Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian anarchist; Antonio Gramsci, the founder of the Italian communist party; Buenaventura Durruti, a Spanish revolutionary, Angela Davis, a US-American philosopher and key figure of the Black Power movement; and Emma Goldman, a US-American anarchist, feminist and pacifist.

But with that not enough! The figures should not be represented as themselves, but rather as typical workers: Bakunin as a watchmaker, Gramsci as a draftsman, Durruti as a metalworker, Davis as a 1960s nurse and Goldman as a present-day cleaner.

We were given the opportunity and very interesting challenge to design the 3D visual for this movie poster. Supporting the innovative (or slightly utopian) character of the MetaHuman avatars, the poster should not be static! Displayed on current digital billboards, the title typography was animated, and Emma Goldman would give passers-by a cheeky wink.

Getting to know the avatars

We were able to test new software to create the 3D characters. Meta Human is a tool which allows to define the main facial structure of a character.

When starting with a basic character preset, we tried to come as close to our ideals as possible.

MetaHuman in action

Plain 3D heads

The 3D models were then imported into another 3D program where they were given hair, textures, and clothes.

Hair is added

They were to wear specific clothes and accessoires which shows that they are part of the working class.

Mikhail Bakunin

Antonio Gramsci

Buenaventura Durruti

Angela Davis

Emma Goldmann

Animation process

Finally the characters are being animated. Since they are quite hyper-realistic but also doll-like, we had to find a middle way of animating facial expression.

Final rendering of all of our characters

Avatars of the world, unite!

How we got to produce avatars of historical figures for an – animated! – poster of a Swiss movie on the history of immigrant working class

Getting to know the avatars

The fun-and-creep part about this project