A young girl has to face her destiny in a dark world. The path leads her to her ultimate destination.
Ara’s Tale is a perfect example of something created through passion of learning and exploration. Some expert CG animators might go in and pick at the little flaws right away, but considering that creator Martin Lubich had no professional experience nor training in CG animation, I think he did a pretty damn fantastic job on his first film!
The film took Martin over 3 years to complete, starting in 2009, he who only started digging into computer graphics in 2007.
A lot of naivety and stubbornness helped to bring this project to a successful end. A personal goal for me was – besides actually creating the movie – to learn what it takes to bring a movie into existence.
The story follows the journey of Ara, a mysterious young woman, as she travels deep into a gigantic network of caves in search of the last remaining living dragon. It is a path of destiny for Ara, which eventually leads to her destination.
I wanted to tell a simple and visually beautiful story, set into a fantastic environment and woven into it a bit of melancholy.
The beautiful thing about Martin Lubich’s project, besides the stunning look of his film, is that he created the film as an open source project, where he has made available all his production files and assets. You can also read the film’s production blog as well as Mari’s Case Study.
