How the Vikings were created

I’m currently playing through the five new levels in our first content patch—things are coming together nicely, and I hope you'll enjoy them! We had a great production meeting today about how to deliver Trolls updates throughout 2025. More on that content in a few days.

Today, I wanted to take a detour and share a little mini-update around a “speed painting” by Mikael Noguchi, our amazing Art Director on Trolls vs Vikings. Just for fun—so you can see how he created the new Vikings using Procreate, and maybe get to know Mikael and our art philosophy a bit better.

Some background: Mikael was part of the original Trolls vs Vikings team, and nearly all the art you see in Reborn comes from his imagination, refined together with the team. Mikael has drawn all his life, earning a solid reputation as a street artist, and he has an almost obsessive joy in creating.

Case in point: anytime a meeting ends, there will be drawings. Often many. Two weeks ago, I left a contract with signatures on my desk near the office couch. The next day, it had doodles all over it—he just saw paper he could draw on. Fair game, right?

Mikael began his game career over 30 years ago at Funcom, before co-founding Innerloop (Project IGI) and Artplant (Battlestar Galactica Online, Game of Thrones Online). Some of you may remember classics like Project IGI, Joint Strike Fighter, Anarchy Online, The Longest Journey, Fatal Fury, Samurai Shodown, and many more where Mikael’s art played a key role. For the past 13 years, we’ve been lucky to work together at Megapop.

While Mikael is our go-to AD for 2D games like Trolls, we’re often hired to do creative work for others too. You’ll find Mikael’s and Megapop’s art across other games, newspapers, books, magazines, murals, portraits (he was just on a big Norwegian TV show for this), TV shows, and commercials. We’ve worked with pop artists like Alan Walker, A Tribe Called Quest, girl in red—even Justin Bieber. In fact, that’s part of Mikael’s work this week, and we can’t wait to show it off. It’s a privilege to help others create.

When it comes to the art in Trolls, it’s built around Mikael’s distinct comic-book style. We aimed for something vibrant, timeless, and fun—art that isn’t tied to a specific era but has a strong visual identity. Something that could “live forever.” At the same time, we wanted to bring myths and folklore into the game in a way that felt authentic, while giving our Trolls real heart and personality.

And of course—we wanted it to be fun to look at and play.

People often praise the game’s vibe and charm, though some wish we’d gone for a darker look. Maybe we should have, maybe not. For all the coziness, there’s plenty of brutal action too :D

When creating new art for a 2D-style game like Trolls, we usually have gameplay already locked in, and then go straight into production. For Reborn, I really wanted to redo the old Viking models and reanimate them (wrote about this in a previous update), and Mikael agreed. The original Vikings were among the first things he created at Megapop back in 2012, so it was time for an upgrade.

Since Reborn is a reimagining rather than a brand-new game, we aimed to “make it fit” within the existing structure—sizes, areas, and technical constraints. We were adding a ton of new content, so we had to pick our development battles wisely. Rescaling everything would’ve meant a massive effort in recalibrating hitboxes, positions, animations—you name it.

So, Mikael started with the old Viking model and drew “on shape” using Procreate—his go-to tool for sketching and concept work. Staying creative within those constraints was key.

As we explored directions—colors, beards, weapons, animations, how they look when hit or dying—Mikael quickly developed a strong vision for how the Viking would feel in-game.

It only took about a day to land on something we liked (see the video!), followed by a few more days of testing and iteration. We compared it to the old version, checked how it looked on backgrounds, stacked multiples together to see how they blended, tested silhouettes—basically: “How does this unit feel when played?”

Once the visual was approved, Mikael “chopped” the Viking into parts—arms, legs, head, alternate heads for damage states, etc.—so our animator Aslak could start bringing it to life. That kicked off another process of micro-adjustments—maybe a beard needed shifting, or a cloth piece moved differently in animation. Test, test, test—and then voila, it’s in-game.

This is a very non-technical explanation (happy to go deeper if you’d like!), but the essence is: we build fast, visually, and hands-on. For Trolls—and for Mikael—that works beautifully. Hope you agree!

That’s it for today. Tonight, I’m diving back into testing the next Trolls update. Give us a couple of weeks and we’ll have it in your hands—plus a few extra changes.

As always, hit us up with any questions or thoughts!

All the best,

Jørgen, Game Director Trolls vs Vikings Reborn