Bronze Age: a three-part documentary series Pixeldust developed and produced for CuriosityStream, with animation and VFX that brought ancient art and cities back to life.
The Bronze Age gave rise to the first great cities, vast trading empires and military might, and then, just as dramatically, it collapsed. Bronze Age, a three-part series developed and produced by Pixeldust for CuriosityStream, takes viewers through the rise and fall of the era’s greatest cultures.
Pixeldust’s animation and VFX package brought ancient art and cities back to life, and the series earned a nomination for Graphic Arts at the 59th Capital Emmy Awards.
Bringing ancient cities back to life
The only remains of the Bronze Age are ruins and preserved art, so Pixeldust got creative and built the show’s graphics from the era’s own paintings, engravings and relics. Still art from vases and temple walls comes to life on screen, like a school of dolphins leaping out of an ancient fresco or farmers working the fields.
The same approach explained how these civilizations were organized, from the ruling class to the class structure beneath it, using the period’s own imagery so every explanation feels rooted in the world it describes.
The Bronze Age was an era of vast trading empires. Animated maps trace the routes that connected them across land and sea, showing how goods, ideas and power moved between the great cultures of the time.
Pixeldust digitally reconstructed the ancient cities of Thebes, Mycenae, Karnak and Uruk, a massive undertaking guided by historic illustrations and ancient city layouts. The team paid close attention to the architectural materials of the era and the finish of every prop, so viewers can fly over these cities as they might have looked thousands of years ago.
The artists engineered an intuitive system for populating the cities with houses of different sizes, people and animals, which made even the widest shots come alive. Massive 3D set extensions recreated the surrounding landscape as a seamless backdrop for the temple scenes. The photoreal look came from rendering with Arnold inside Maya, with a final compositing pass in Nuke.
The series asks how these urban societies, trading empires and military powers came about, and why they ended. Through art, maps and rebuilt cities, Pixeldust portrayed the culture, architecture and major events of the Bronze Age authentically, immersing viewers in communities that disappeared thousands of years ago.
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