[The Last Express is the brainchild of Jordan Mechner]

To replicate the era accurately, it was essential to find an authentic train car from the period. The problem was that the teak car pictured here ceased to be in production just prior to World War I, as after that time all cars were made of steel. And those cars that managed to survive World War I were then subject to the bombings of World War II.

Through a network of train buffs, however, the production team at Smoking Car Productions was able to track down a sleeping car. A man in France gave the team the name of a man in Italy who knew of a car in Athens, Greece. It had lain there abandoned for some 50 years. And now, through the magic of 3D modeling, it is about to be brought back to life...

The corridor plays an important part in the game, since so much traffic flows through it during play. In one of the more innovative sequences in the game, characters pass by you and seem to look you in the eye as they pass. This was accomplished by shooting actors against a blue screen, one that had been set up so as to match the camera angles of the filmed walk with the angle of the 3D computer-rendered corridor.

As you can see in these two images, the accuracy and level of detail is extraordinary. By referring to hundreds of photos taken of the actual train car, the principal 3D artist, Donald Grahame, was able to faithfully recreate the interior,"down to the last screw." In Grahame's words, "If you want to see how the Orient Express looked in 1914 at the height of its period, when it became the cultural icon that it is today, you can look at our game and say, 'That's a pretty good guess.'" Once the wire-frame of the 3D model is constructed, textures are mapped onto all surfaces adding "flesh" to the digital "skeleton."

The Art Nouveau style of the period, lent itself well to creating a rich, detailed, and beautiful environment for the game. To create the animated look of the characters, actors were shot in live-action against a blue screen. An automated process known as "Grabface" was used to transform the thousands of frames of filmed footage into black-and-white ink drawings which were in turn recolored—effectively turning the actor into a human cartoon—and composited to the 3D train environment. By going with animated characters as opposed to digital video, the creators of The Last Express are able to create a more cohesive and immersive environment. As one producer put it, "With digital video, people so often get distracted by the actors' performances, focusing on that instead of the story.

To create the seamless experience of "being" on the train, actors are shot against a blue screen with stand-in props that are then replaced by their digital counterparts. Actors were cast with strong, distinctive features that would look good if they were turned into cartoons.

Special treatment of hair and make up enabled the creators to fashion a distinctive look for the characters. Actors needed to be filmed from as many as eight different angles in order to have enough footage to accommodate the myriad possibilities of gameplay.

Action sequences were accomplished in much the same way. For greater accuracy, video compositing tools were on set to establish marks for the actors to work.