Puma 'Until Then'
How hard it was to choreograph 22 players not knowing where the camera would be was the biggest challenge, for this we had to resort to motion builder gurus to help us put it all together as the director wanted.
Jan 14, 2008
2 min read
Director: Nicolai Fuglsig
Agency: Robert/Boisen Likeminded
Production: Nobody CPH
Client: Puma
Probably the project that will test any character artist, pipeline, and render farm, at least in 2008.
How hard it was to choreograph 22 players not knowing where the camera would be was the biggest challenge, for this we had to resort to motion builder gurus to help us put it all together as the director wanted, then everything was reanimated on top to make sure we could do the things these super-players were able to do but the space was affected by how long and powerful these legs were so the process was tough and very destructive in the sense that our motion capture was completely different from the final product given those constraints.
Also, the ball animation was a defining factor, as the contact with the legs was so complex.
For the mega-stadium, we used Massive crowds and needed to fit 600.000+ agents to fill the huge design that was meant to be the biggest stadium on the planet.
All sorts of effects and camera tricks were used to get you inside the game, and although the speed was diabolic we managed to hit the sports quite well, I think.
And although I assume very few people will understand the size of the challenge fully, the fact that it does not really look like a video game and the fact that they don’t look like people with prosthetics walking like horses was a huge tour de force.
