Michel Ancel

Lore & Background

Born in Monaco in 1972, Michel Ancel spent his early years traveling all around the world due to his father's military career. It was in Tunisia where he first discovered a video game console. Since then, Ancel had been drafting game concepts while learning to program in his computer. At the age of 16, he dropped out of high-school in order to pursue his career as a graphic designer for Lankhor.

Ancel's first demo, Mechanic Warriors, was developed for software house Lankhor. He joined UbiSoft as a graphic artist after meeting the game author Nicolas Choukroun in Montpellier at the age of 17. He designed the graphics of Choukroun's games such as The Intruder and Pick'n Pile before doing his first game as both programmer and graphic artist. Brain Blaster was released by Ubi Soft in 1990.

In 1992, he began to work on Rayman, his debut as lead designer in a game. During development, Ancel moved to Carnon and Ubi Soft opened a studio there; it was named Ubi Pictures, where Ancel would reside for his tenure at Ubisoft. Rayman was released in 1995 for PlayStation, Atari Jaguar and Sega Saturn. While Ancel was heavily involved in the development of Rayman 2: The Great Escape, his directorial debut, he would only have an advisory role on Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc.

In 2003, he created Beyond Good & Evil, which garnered critical acclaim and a cult following, but was a commercial failure. Film director Peter Jackson's admiration of the game led to Ancel being given direction of the King Kong video game adaptation. On 5 April 2006, Ubisoft announced that Ancel was leading the development of the fourth game in the Rayman series, eventually known as Rayman Raving Rabbids, for Wii. The game began production in early 2005 and was released on 15 November 2006 for the launch of the Wii.

However, Ancel was absent from the project after its E3 announcement, and made no public appearances regarding the game after the development team switched focus from a free-roaming platformer to the final party game format shortly after E3. In the final game, Ancel was credited with storyboarding and character design, while the directorial credits were shared amongst Patrick Bodard, Jacques Exertier, Yoan Fanise and Florent Sacré.

Reader's Guide

Michel Ancel is best known for creating the Rayman franchise and directing Beyond Good & Evil and King Kong. He was lead designer on Rayman (1995), director on Rayman 2: The Great Escape, and had an advisory role on Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. He led the early development of Rayman Raving Rabbids but was absent after E3. He designed Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends. He founded Wild Sheep studio and worked on Wild, which was eventually cancelled. He left the industry in 2020 but returned as a consultant on a new Rayman project in 2024.

Did You Know?

• Michel Ancel was knighted by the French Minister of Culture and Communication on 13 March 2006, along with Shigeru Miyamoto and Frédérick Raynal.
• He is ranked 24th out of 100 in IGN's Top 100 Game Creators.
• The UbiArt Framework, used in Rayman Origins, was developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and Ancel.