We were approached by EA to make a 3D billboard for the release of ‘Wild Hearts’ in Shinjuku square in Tokyo. The billboard features one of the game’s characters Ookami. We see Ookami walk down the hillside, transforming the landscape into winter and growling at the people standing below.
Our VFX team in London initially started building the environment with the help of our Bangalore Studio based on references created by the concept artists. This allowed them to block out the animation to get the timing and pacing of Ookami right. Once they were happy with the general animation, the rest of the team was able to work on the transition from spring to winter, as well as multiple layers of FX, such as snow, wind, leaves, ground interaction and fur. Once rendered, the 2D team combined all these elements to make sure all the transitions and interactions formed a coherent image.”
There were several challenges. The first was the transition from spring to winter. It needed to be localised to Ookami, but also happen gradually and cover the whole scene. This required many iterations to make all the elements blend nicely. The second was animation. It's quite unusual for a single shot to be 30 seconds long in the world of advertising. This made it a mammoth task for the animation team, who had to make it work in the perspective defined by the camera. Lastly; the interaction. Ookami is big and had to poke his head through the wooden frame. This meant the inevitable ground interactions, as well as wind, snow and fur simulations. To ensure we didn't break the illusion, Ookami had to stay within the borders of the frame at all times.
Callum Austin, 3D Artist