Manairons: How an Indie Game Team Brought a Catalan Legend to Life with Character Creator

Gerard Martínez – 3D Character Artist & Lighting Lead at Jandusoft

I’m Gerard Martínez, a 3D artist from Barcelona specializing in cartoon-style characters. I am also a 3D instructor and teacher. I have the privilege of combining two of my greatest passions: 3D art and teaching.

This story is co-produced with 3CAT.

A Magical Story About Work, Tradition, and Freedom

Some stories are born from an idea. Others, from necessity.

Manairons, our video game, was born from both.

From day one, we knew we wanted to make something different: a game with soul that felt handmade and cultural, yet carried a powerful visual identity. But there was one small problem: time. Our schedule was tight, and our team was small.

If we wanted to build a world as alive as Vilamont, the small Pyrenean village where the story unfolds, we needed tools that could help us stay creative without slowing down production.

That is where Character Creator changed everything.

The Origin of Manairons

The story of Manairons is inspired by Catalan folklore and the tiny magical creatures known as “manairons,” said to accomplish any task in mere seconds.

In our game, the town’s mayor, Llorenç, discovers a magical container that holds a colony of these beings. Little by little, the village becomes trapped in an endless cycle of work. At first, the manairons seem like a blessing. Factories never stop, production grows, and Vilamont begins to thrive.

But as their magic spreads, the villagers lose their trades, their sense of purpose, and eventually, their freedom.

The player takes on the role of Nai, a manairó who decides to rebel against Llorenç’s orders and free the town from their absolute control.

At its core, Manairons is a story about balance: between progress and essence, technology and humanity, control and freedom.

A Vision with Soul

From the very beginning, we knew that Manairons had to move players emotionally before even explaining itself. We did not want players to understand the world through words, but to feel it at first sight.

That vision was made possible thanks to Ivet Macías, our Art Director, Producer, and 3D Artist, who became the visual heart of the project. Under her guidance, the art direction was built around three pillars: atmosphere, narrative tone, and emotion.

Working alongside her was Eliant Elias, our Concept Artist, whose sensitivity transformed abstract ideas into soulful images. Exaggerated silhouettes, faces that were both tender and unsettling, and colors that breathe nostalgia and mystery defined Manairons’ visual identity.

Together, they achieved a balance between the familiar and the uncanny, creating a world that feels close yet slightly off, inviting players to look twice.

Handcrafted and Painterly

Visually, Manairons merges a handcrafted aesthetic with painterly detail. Every texture looks as if it has been brushed by hand, and every light carries emotion. We wanted the player to feel as if they were walking inside a painting.

We took inspiration from Lost in Random, Little Nightmares, and Arcane, yet the final result became deeply personal, rooted in Catalan culture and in our own artistic language. Even though the tone is dark, the game ultimately tells a story of hope.

The Challenge: A Coherent, Fast, and Flexible Pipeline

The character pipeline was one of the most demanding yet rewarding parts of production. Only two people, Ivet and I, handled the entire process of modeling, rigging, and texturing. That meant we needed a workflow that was solid, fast, and predictable.

We started from a Character Creator 4 base mesh, one of the software’s biggest advantages.

Its templates come production-ready with optimized topology, clean UVs, and functional rigging right out of the box. That alone saved us weeks of work, which was invaluable in a project with such a limited schedule.

From there, the Ultimate Morph Pack became our key tool. With its extensive library of sliders, we could define proportions, musculature, and facial features without breaking rig compatibility. The result was a strong, expressive silhouette perfectly adapted to our stylized look.

Bernat Batum: A Character with a Heart (and a Story)

One of the clearest examples of this workflow is Bernat Batum, one of the game’s main bosses. From the start, we wanted him to convey humanity, even within his mechanical stiffness, which came from the manairons’ magic.

I began with a Character Creator 4 base and then sent the model to ZBrush via GoZ to sculpt finer details. Ivet supervised the overall balance to ensure every element stayed true to the project’s visual direction: a stylized and expressive cartoon style.

Once the sculpt was complete, we brought it back into Character Creator 4 with full compatibility, without losing weights or UVs. That seamless integration allowed us to iterate quickly, test materials, and maintain artistic consistency throughout the process.

The Painterly Touch of Eliant Elias

During texturing, collaboration was key. I handled the base materials in Substance Painter, focusing on general tones and physical properties. Then, Eliant added his painterly touch, with brushstrokes, stains, and small imperfections that gave each surface a handcrafted soul.

Thanks to Character Creator 4, we could re-import and preview textures with precision before integrating them into Unreal Engine, ensuring visual accuracy at every stage.

Cartoon Rigging and Animation in Blender

All rigging and animation were done in Blender. Even though Character Creator 4’s rig is robust, we decided to design our own to achieve a more cartoon-like movement, with elastic poses, broader expressions, and a more narrative body language.

This gave the characters life and reinforced the visual tone of the game: dark but full of humanity.

Once animation was complete, the characters were integrated into Unreal Engine 5, where I worked on lighting to highlight textures and maintain the balance between the magical and the handcrafted.

A Pipeline that Empowers Creativity

The combined workflow of Character Creator 4, ZBrush, Blender, Substance, and Unreal Engine gave us two things every artist values: coherence and creative freedom.

We reduced iteration time by more than 40% while maintaining full control over every artistic detail. For a small and focused team, that kind of efficiency makes all the difference.

Working with Character Creator 4 taught us that efficiency can also be creative.
It was not just about speed, but about building a stable, predictable workflow that encouraged experimentation without technical risks.

That reliability gave us the freedom to test new ideas while maintaining rig and texture compatibility. It allowed us to focus on what truly matters: the art, the emotion, and the soul of the characters.

A Philosophy of Creation

Through Manairons, we learned something that is now part of our creative DNA. When a tool offers both technical stability and artistic freedom, the result is not just efficiency but the space to create with purpose.

Character Creator 4 was not just another piece of software in our pipeline. It became the bridge between our artistic vision and technical execution. It allowed us to tell our story with sensitivity and detail.

A Glimpse at Character Creator 5

After wrapping up character production, I had the chance to test Character Creator 5, and the experience was incredible. Seeing how much the tool had evolved after spending so many months working with CC4 was truly surprising.

The first thing you notice is the fluidity of the system. Everything feels lighter, faster, and even more integrated with Unreal. The new facial rig immediately stood out to me: it is more expressive, more natural, and opens up exciting possibilities for storytelling and animation.

From an artistic standpoint, maintaining visual consistency across projects is now easier.
You can organize libraries, adapt characters to different art styles, and still keep production-level quality.

In short, Character Creator 5 strengthens exactly what artists value most: speed, stability, and creative freedom.

Where Tradition Meets Technology

Thanks to Character Creator 4, Manairons was able to preserve its handcrafted essence without sacrificing efficiency. It became the tool that united tradition and technology, combining the sensitivity of handmade art with the power of a modern production pipeline.

For us, it was never just about building characters. It was about giving life to stories that move people, that speak of culture, identity, and the joy of creating.

Conclusion

If you are a creator or developer searching for that balance between control and freedom, between time and detail, then Character Creator 4, and now Character Creator 5, are the allies that truly make a difference.

They helped us bring a Catalan legend to life, a world filled with light, texture, and soul.

Thank you, Reallusion, for giving us the opportunity to create with heart.

Watch the trailer of Manairons

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