Michel Ancel is a French video game designer. He is best known for creating the Rayman franchise, for which he was the lead designer for the first two games, and Rayman Origins and its sequel Rayman Legends. He is also known for the cult hit video game Beyond Good & Evil and for King Kong, based on Peter Jackson's film King Kong, which was critically acclaimed. In 2017 he began work on Beyond Good and Evil 2.
Career
Ancel's first demo, Mechanic Warriors, was developed for software house Lankhor. Ancel joined Ubisoft as a graphic artist after meeting the game author Nicolas Choukroun in Montpellier at the age of 17. He made the graphics of Nicolas' games such as The Intruder, Pick'n Pile before doing his first game as both programmer and graphic artist Brain Blaster published by Ubi Soft in 1990. In 1992, he began to work on Rayman, his directorial debut. It was released in 1995 for PlayStation, Atari Jaguar and Sega Saturn. Ancel was heavily involved in the development of ', but had only an advisory role on '. Although he praised its development team, he claims he would have "made the game differently". In 2003, he created Beyond Good & Evil, which garnered critical acclaim and a cult following, but was a commercial failure. However, film director Peter Jackson's admiration of the game — and his frustration with EA's handling of The Lord of the Rings license — led to Ancel being given direction of the King Kong video game adaptation. In spite of Ubisoft's reluctance to produce a sequel Beyond Good and Evil 2, Ancel has expressed a clear wish to produce one in the future., which was officially announced at Ubidays 2008 event on May 28, 2008. On December 18, 2008, at the VGL event in Paris. On April 5, 2006, Ubisoft announced Ancel was leading the development of the fourth game in the Rayman series, Rayman Raving Rabbids, for Wii. The game began production in early 2005 and was released on November 15, 2006 for the launch of the Wii. However, Ancel was absent from the project after its E3 announcement, and he has made no public appearances regarding the game after the development team switched focus from a free-roaming platformer to the final minigames format shortly after E3. In the final game Ancel was credited with storyboarding and character design, while design credits were shared between other people. In 2010, Ubisoft announced Rayman Origins, first an episodic video game designed by Michel Ancel and developed by a small team of five people, but it was announced that it transformed into a full game. The title uses the UBIart Framework developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and Ancel. UBIart is a developer platform that allows artists and animators to easily create content and use it in an interactive environment. The engine is optimized for high-definition resolutions and is capable of running games at 60 frames per second in 1920x1080 resolution. UBIart tools were supposed to be released as open-source software in 2011 but this did not happen. In 2014, Ancel announced he had formed an independent games studio called Wild Sheep. He would continue to contribute to the development of projects at Ubisoft, including "an extremely ambitious new title that is very close to his and the team's heart." Wild Sheep are currently developing an open world pre-historic survival game called WiLD.
Ancel aims for a high degree of freedom in his games. He is critical of games that claim to offer freedom, but present limits or invisible boundaries where players do not expect them.
Games
Intruder** - Graphics
Brain Blasters – Programmer, Graphic artist, Music and Sound
Ancel worked on, but did not design, Tonic Trouble, which features limbless characters in the same mould as Rayman. He shares credit on his Rayman games with Frédéric Houde, while Jacques Exertier contributed many of the cinematic and story elements of Beyond Good & Evil and Peter Jackson's King Kong.
