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Fancy footwork: artists kick things up a notch in a TV commercial featuring two intricately animated mechanical crabs.(Broadcast)(Embassy Visual Effects, Vancouver Canada)
Two mechanical crustaceans--as well as the digital artists Who created them-recently proved their mettle on an unusual field of play.
In a 30-second nationwide TV commercial, two robotic street crabs--both sporting Nike's new hard-surface soccer boot--demonstrated some fancy footwork while engaging in a rough-and-tumble game of football, as soccer is often called. While this match was entirely Virtual, the challenge that it presented to the artists at The Embassy Visual Effects boutique in Vancouver, Canada, was entirely real.
Delivered in less than a month, the commercial features a blend of live action and computer-generated imagery, including detailed character animation. dynamics, and photorealistic rendering. The spot, directed by The Embassy's Neill Blomkamp, was originally intended to feature a beach setting. However, after conferring with Nike's international ad agency, the group opted for a South American urban set instead, despite the fact that the live-action back plate was filmed in Alameda, California.
The spot opens with a shot of an abandoned warehouse lot littered with debris. On the dusty, barren ground, a manhole cover slides open, and out crawls a giant robotic crab. with each of its six legs clad in the new soccer boot. Soon another crab arrives, this one dribbling a large soccer ball. The two face off, aggressively kicking the ball back and forth, using an old bookcase as a makeshift goal, After one of them scores, the camera pulls back, and the term "NIKELAB.COM" appears.
Guerrilla Style
Surprisingly, very, little work had to be done to prepare the live-action set. According to The Embassy president Winston Helgason. the desolate location was suggested by someone at the studio who had discovered it while working on a film project nearby. After rearranging a small amount of debris. Blomkamp spent two days shooting the background plates 'guerrilla style" using a Canon GL2 DV for a handheld camera look.
"I wanted you to feel like you were right there watching these things play soccer, and have it be totally convincing," explains Blomkamp "And nothing does that better than filming it like a tourist holding a con sumer-level DV camera."
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