One of the easiest ways to make anything look “retro” these days is to give something a pixelated 8- or 16-bit look to make it look like a classic video game. But this X-Men fan series manages to twist that pixelated look by applied it to fully 3D models—and look surprisingly slick in the process.
X-Men: Danger Room Protocols, created by Canadian YouTuber and animator Joel Furtado, promises to be an 18-episode web series that borrows the visual aesthetic of the classic ‘90s X-Men: The Animated Series as it imagines the X-Men in various scenarios created by Professor X’s Danger Room, a holographic training simulator.
There’s an emphasis on the “promises” there, because while Furtado hopes to begin airing the series on his YouTube channel on January 19th, there is a chance that Marvel and Fox could come knocking for his use of copyrighted characters. Furtado’s hoping that, as a simple fan webseries not made for commercial purposes, he skirts their ire and Danger Room Protocols goes ahead—and frankly, we’re hoping so too, just so we can get even more shorts that look as interesting as the above introduction video does.