Spotlight
March 6, 2026
Max & the Midknights: Nickelodeon creates a stop-motion animation look with UE5
Max & the Midknights is an epic CG-animated comedy adventure about a young girl who dreams of becoming a knight and embarks on a quest to save her kingdom from King Gastley.
Adapted from Lincoln Peirce’s books, the Nickelodeon series pushes beyond traditional TV animation in both scope and production method. The show’s groundbreaking use of Unreal Engine reshaped everything—from worldbuilding to cinematography, lighting, and effects.
Adapted from Lincoln Peirce’s books, the Nickelodeon series pushes beyond traditional TV animation in both scope and production method. The show’s groundbreaking use of Unreal Engine reshaped everything—from worldbuilding to cinematography, lighting, and effects.
A feature-quality TV series
Max & the Midknights uses a feature-inspired, three-act structure across 20 serialized episodes to capture Max’s hero’s journey.“Max & the Midknights is a huge story,” explains Sharon Flynn, Co-Showrunner and Co-Executive Producer of the show at Nickelodeon. “Even from the script and story stage, we were aiming bigger than TV—we were aiming for that feature scope.”
David Skelly, Co-Showrunner and Executive Producer wanted the world itself to feel massive, lived-in, and interconnected. Rather than a series of siloed, smaller sets, Skelly dreamed of connecting the whole world together so all the sets would function together in real space.
“I wanted to bring a camera from a table inside a house, through the window, down the street, out the front gates of this medieval town, into the hills in the distance—and never cut,” says Skelly. “And that’s what we did.”
Sets were designed to feel real, textured, and storied—everything you see in every shot is tied to a fictional history. “From a filmmaking standpoint, I wanted to make sure that when you entered into the adventure, it felt like a real place,” explains Skelly.
That sense of a living, breathing world is not typical in TV animation. Every prop, home, and costume needed a purpose and history. “It wasn’t just a medieval house,” says Skelly. “It was Kevyn’s house—someone lived there.”
Sets were designed to feel real, textured, and storied—everything you see in every shot is tied to a fictional history. “From a filmmaking standpoint, I wanted to make sure that when you entered into the adventure, it felt like a real place,” explains Skelly.
That sense of a living, breathing world is not typical in TV animation. Every prop, home, and costume needed a purpose and history. “It wasn’t just a medieval house,” says Skelly. “It was Kevyn’s house—someone lived there.”
Turning the traditional animation process on its head
Courtesy of Nickelodeon Animation Studio
Traditional animation begins with storyboarding before layout can begin. “We subverted the normal CG animation production pipeline in that we didn’t start with storyboards,” says Skelly.
Instead, the Max & the Midknights team first built the entire CG world (based on final scripts), then stepped inside it with virtual cameras to shoot coverage like a live-action production.
Directors could explore sets, block scenes, and shoot multiple angles—something normally too time-consuming or expensive in animation.
After cutting footage into a preliminary edit, storyboard artists added character performance on top of the already locked compositions.
This brought a new level of economy to the process: boards were drawn only for shots known to work visually.
“What makes this process special from a storyboarding standpoint is that it’s efficient,” says Skelly. “There’s virtually no waste, because we know what our angles are going to be, we know what the character blocking is.”
Instead, the Max & the Midknights team first built the entire CG world (based on final scripts), then stepped inside it with virtual cameras to shoot coverage like a live-action production.
Directors could explore sets, block scenes, and shoot multiple angles—something normally too time-consuming or expensive in animation.
After cutting footage into a preliminary edit, storyboard artists added character performance on top of the already locked compositions.
This brought a new level of economy to the process: boards were drawn only for shots known to work visually.
“What makes this process special from a storyboarding standpoint is that it’s efficient,” says Skelly. “There’s virtually no waste, because we know what our angles are going to be, we know what the character blocking is.”
Courtesy of Nickelodeon Animation Studio
The visual style of the show is just as innovative as the way it was produced. The team wanted to stand out from the usual 3D animation look, and drew inspiration from stop-motion animation.
That resulted in employing techniques such as “animating on twos”—holding a pose for two frames before moving to the next pose; creating a hand-made aesthetic for the world, as if it were built from plasticine or foam latex; and using oversized textures to imply that these are miniature models on a stop-motion set.
Max herself is designed like a 10-inch stop-motion puppet, and all props are sized so nothing appears smaller than what could be built by hand.
The team even came up with imaginative ways to create hand-crafted VFX. These included smoke simulated from cotton-like string geometry in Houdini; fire that cycles through modeled flame shapes using replacement-piece geometry; and water that combines layered textures, normal-mapped geometry, and stylized foam simulation.
That resulted in employing techniques such as “animating on twos”—holding a pose for two frames before moving to the next pose; creating a hand-made aesthetic for the world, as if it were built from plasticine or foam latex; and using oversized textures to imply that these are miniature models on a stop-motion set.
Max herself is designed like a 10-inch stop-motion puppet, and all props are sized so nothing appears smaller than what could be built by hand.
The team even came up with imaginative ways to create hand-crafted VFX. These included smoke simulated from cotton-like string geometry in Houdini; fire that cycles through modeled flame shapes using replacement-piece geometry; and water that combines layered textures, normal-mapped geometry, and stylized foam simulation.
Merging live-action techniques with animation
Courtesy of Nickelodeon Animation Studio
The team brought on directors from a wide range of backgrounds, including those with experience in live-action, feature animation, and puppetry.
Although real-time technology was new to them, they quickly adapted to this way of working.
“It took just two weeks until one of our directors reached out to me and said ‘I never want to make anything another way again!’,” says Chris Perry, Supervising Director/Producer of Max & the Midknights.
The directors used Cine Cameras with lenses that accurately replicate those in real-world cameras, complete with reactive handheld movement to simulate a human operator.
They could improvise and discover shots serendipitously—rare in traditional animation—thanks to real-time feedback.
“With Unreal Engine, we were able to put a camera into our CG space, move the camera in a way that felt responsive to the action, and discover something while we were shooting—which is impossible to do in a normal production pipeline,” says Skelly.
At the start of the project, Skelly told his team he wanted every frame to feel like a Vermeer painting—rich, luminous colors, and dramatic, atmospheric lighting.
“They laughed,” recalls Skelly. “And then they realized I was serious. Unreal Engine was how we got there. The lighting we achieved in Max & the Midknights would have been impossible without using Unreal.”
Unreal Engine’s real-time lighting enabled the team to adjust key lights, bounce, and bloom on the fly, instead of waiting days for renders, while custom rigged lighting systems and shaders gave characters realistic rim lighting and let them sit convincingly in their environments.
“It changed the game,” says Skelly.
Although real-time technology was new to them, they quickly adapted to this way of working.
“It took just two weeks until one of our directors reached out to me and said ‘I never want to make anything another way again!’,” says Chris Perry, Supervising Director/Producer of Max & the Midknights.
The directors used Cine Cameras with lenses that accurately replicate those in real-world cameras, complete with reactive handheld movement to simulate a human operator.
They could improvise and discover shots serendipitously—rare in traditional animation—thanks to real-time feedback.
“With Unreal Engine, we were able to put a camera into our CG space, move the camera in a way that felt responsive to the action, and discover something while we were shooting—which is impossible to do in a normal production pipeline,” says Skelly.
At the start of the project, Skelly told his team he wanted every frame to feel like a Vermeer painting—rich, luminous colors, and dramatic, atmospheric lighting.
“They laughed,” recalls Skelly. “And then they realized I was serious. Unreal Engine was how we got there. The lighting we achieved in Max & the Midknights would have been impossible without using Unreal.”
Unreal Engine’s real-time lighting enabled the team to adjust key lights, bounce, and bloom on the fly, instead of waiting days for renders, while custom rigged lighting systems and shaders gave characters realistic rim lighting and let them sit convincingly in their environments.
“It changed the game,” says Skelly.
Modular towns and zombies
Courtesy of Nickelodeon Animation Studio
To build a world that felt genuinely lived in, the team created environments that were fully modular—walls, roofs, props, and houses could be swapped and instanced like game assets to create a vast, diverse city.
The result was the huge world that Skelly had been looking for, but an environment of that scale presents a challenge when it comes to rendering speed.
To address this, the team was able to load up the entire world in Unreal Engine and then toggle off sections they didn’t need for filming that day, whether it was a specific section of the neighborhood or an area of a house.
That modular way of thinking extended to the zombie foes who attack Max and her friends as she undertakes her quest. By dividing zombie body parts into heads, torsos, arms, and legs and loading them into a rig, the team could create an endless combination of different undead characters for the heroes to defeat.
The result was the huge world that Skelly had been looking for, but an environment of that scale presents a challenge when it comes to rendering speed.
To address this, the team was able to load up the entire world in Unreal Engine and then toggle off sections they didn’t need for filming that day, whether it was a specific section of the neighborhood or an area of a house.
That modular way of thinking extended to the zombie foes who attack Max and her friends as she undertakes her quest. By dividing zombie body parts into heads, torsos, arms, and legs and loading them into a rig, the team could create an endless combination of different undead characters for the heroes to defeat.
Courtesy of Nickelodeon Animation Studio
"The cycle animation we created for the FBX rigs could be randomized,” explains Sica von Medicus, CG Supervisor on Max & the Midknights. “We could adjust it in Sequencer and build these expansive and immersive crowds of growling zombies. This process really gave the feeling that there was a true horde of zombies chasing the kids.”
“We put every episode into the same Unreal project,” says Perry. “We had an entire season in one Unreal project that was being worked on by up to 10 different artists at the same time, and it worked brilliantly.
“I could hop in there and open up episode two, look at a shot, fix it, go to episode 20, pick up a shot, fix it—and that kind of flexibility was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.”
By merging live-action methodology with real-time tools, the team created a tactile, cinematic world rarely seen in television animation.
“We couldn’t have made Max & the Midknights without Unreal Engine,” says Skelly. “Not this version of this show. This is the most extraordinary, satisfying, fun project I've ever been a part of. I’m so proud of this team—we made this show the way we wanted to, because of Unreal Engine.”
Reinventing the animation pipeline with Unreal Engine
Max & the Midknights stands apart not only for its story and visual identity but for its reinvention of the animation pipeline.“We put every episode into the same Unreal project,” says Perry. “We had an entire season in one Unreal project that was being worked on by up to 10 different artists at the same time, and it worked brilliantly.
“I could hop in there and open up episode two, look at a shot, fix it, go to episode 20, pick up a shot, fix it—and that kind of flexibility was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.”
By merging live-action methodology with real-time tools, the team created a tactile, cinematic world rarely seen in television animation.
“We couldn’t have made Max & the Midknights without Unreal Engine,” says Skelly. “Not this version of this show. This is the most extraordinary, satisfying, fun project I've ever been a part of. I’m so proud of this team—we made this show the way we wanted to, because of Unreal Engine.”