Summary
Joining forces once again with Deutsch LA and Imperial Woodpecker's Simon McQuoid, The Mill brings more of Playstation's heroes to life in 'The All Star'
This time last year, along with the team at Deutsch LA and
director Simon McQuoid at Imperial Woodpecker, The Mill paid homage
to a collection of Playstation's iconic characters in 'Michael'.
Now, following on from this, The Mill has brought even more heroes
onto the TV screen, and this time they're going into battle.
Playstation 'The All Star' is an action packed two minutes that
launches the release of Playstation's latest game 'All Stars:
Battle Royale'. With VFX by The Mill, the team set about deep
research and fine detail to transfer the in-game world onto the
screen.
"Throughout the spot, if you watch out for them, there's a huge
amount of 'easter eggs' hidden in this world." Says The Mill VFX
producer Adam Reeb. "These are little clues hinting to different
video games and video game characters dotted everywhere. There are
weapons on walls and footprints on floors that you barley notice
unless you're really looking. In the hallway we put in 2 CG doors,
comped in a CG sword and added the cane that you might notice
hanging from the fence in the back."
"In the Aftermath sequence," says Mill VFX supervisor Tim Davies,
"we subtly integrated various elements into the scenes, adding in
dripping flames, floating embers and heat haze."
As for the hero, "We worked closely with the game developers when
it came to re-proportioning Kratos' body" says Tim. "In every shot,
we scaled him up as much as 100-125%, to get across his magnitude.
We rotoed him and exaggerated his proportions, his killer abs and
man pecks! We also created the lightning effects that Cole used as
his weapon of choice and created the fire trails, smoke trail and
heat distortion that were coming off the back of Sackboy's jet
pack. Sackboy was for the most part shot practically. We had to
remove his rigs, manipulate his face, and in the landing shot we
merged a game animation and made it flow seamlessly into a
practical puppet shot of him landing."
"On the 3D side of things" says The Mill 3D Lead John Leonti,
"we replaced all the weapons held by Kratos to give them more
detail than could be achieved by the practical props. We also
generated the sword that he throws around on a chain from scratch.
His wings were generated using our proprietary software 'Fevva',
which allowed us to play around with their look and scale very
quickly, to get a look that everyone loved. The key challenge to
these spots is always to bring a games character into the real
world in a believable way, while keeping the notoriously detail
oriented gaming fans happy."
A battle of the Titans like this also needed a grand setting,
explains Adam. "We replaced all skies in battle sequence to achieve
the perfect mood. And the explosion sequence also had to be epic.
We were given the interactive lighting on the building as assets
and everything else we built fully at The Mill."
This is the next instalment of The Mill's collaboration with
Deutsch LA and Imperial Woodpecker: let the 'Battle Royale'
commence.
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