For client Hasbro, Gravity has produced a stunning, action-packed, 30-second animated spot which brings the “Battleship Live” board game to life. Gravity produced the spot through agency UPROAR! Zviah Eldar, Gravity CEO/Chief Creative Director, and Bob Samuel, Gravity’s CMO/Executive Producer, made the announcement. The Battleship LIVE spot was part of a larger package that Gravity produced for Hasbro and UPROAR!, which also included spots promoting “Monopoly LIVE” and other products.
 

In the Battleship LIVE spot, we see a fast paced aerial view of a fleet of battleships as they come under attack by a squadron of fighter jets. Seamen onboard the ships retaliate to the attack by firing missiles against the invading air force. Explosions abound as an enormous tower suddenly emerges from the sea, shooting red lasers at the enemy aircraft.
 

Said Samuel, “Almost everyone here grew up playing the classic ‘Battleship’ game, and now, many of us play it with our kids! So the opportunity to work on this spot was exciting right from the start. The fact that this assignment allowed Gravity to create some really kick-ass photoreal military animation was more than enough for us to embrace this terrific project.”
 

Gravity’s Creative Directors Harry Dorrington and Yuval Levy led the team. Dorrington, also Director of the spot, said, “Our goal with this spot was to provide a visceral, highly realistic piece of animation that would serve as a ‘call to action’ so that viewers will visit the website to learn more about the modernized version of this classic game. Viewers will be intrigued and excited by this new twist on the traditional Battleship – which is now electronic and features a massive control tower. We depicted one naval force challenging another in this piece, keeping the fun of the traditional game intact, while notching up the excitement to a new dynamic level. We initially provided our clients with start frames and treatments to help bring this spot to life, and we ultimately delivered a feature film-style reference to the animated battleships, jet fighters, and turbulent seascape within the narrative.”
 

Says Levy, “We wanted to make a strong visual connection for the viewer here, between the classic Battleship board game and today’s modern era videogame play. To do so, we took a videogame cinematic style approach, depicting to our viewers that playing this famous game is still as exciting as it’s always been, but now that it’s been updated and modernized with an electronic tower, the imagination of the player is now even more heightened than in the past. Perhaps our biggest challenge in the spot was to create the CG water and water simulations, presenting the clash of these two massive naval forces in a hyper realistic way. To us, this spot is comparable to a movie trailer for an imaginary film – it presents the buildup to a dramatic war, with the viewer wanting to see how the action will ultimately play itself out in the end.”
 

UPROAR! Chief Creative Officer Erik Nelson said, “We enlisted the help of Gravity to deliver triple AAA video game quality animation for the newest innovation from Hasbro – the LIVE game tower. This new way to play face to face has been built into two of Hasbro’s biggest brands, Monopoly and Battleship. Our challenge was to get kids, tweens and teens to choose this new evolution of board gaming over the vast array of digital gaming options. To make the challenge even more difficult, we were burdened with a lean budget and a tight timeline. The concept was to bring the fantasy of each gaming experience (Monopoly & Battleship) to life in CG, and then introduce the new, all-powerful LIVE Tower to disrupt the action. The result would show the dynamic new gameplay the LIVE Tower adds to each game.”
 

“Harry, Yuval, Russ and the entire team at Gravity delivered in spades,” Nelson continues. “The end product was truly beautiful animation with a very unique look. Our goal of appealing to our target by playing in the visual world of video games lent an authenticity to Monopoly and “Battleship Live” that I believe is sure to drive sales. We are looking forward to the holiday shopping season to see how LIVE performs at retail. Win or lose, UPROAR! will most definitely be working with Gravity again in the near future.”
 

Adds UPROAR! Creative Director Dan Lombardi, “When we approached Gravity’s Bob Samuel about its this live gaming project, we had three issues…1) Timing, 2) Budget and 3 Quality for the Timing and Budget. The Gravity team took on the challenge and never looked back. UPROAR!’s goal was to create a new vision for classic board games like ‘Battleship’ and ‘Monopoly,’ and show how these games are evolving for the next generation of board gamers. Gravity brought an energy and enthusiasm to the project that matched our own.”
 

He adds, “From the first pitch materials to the final cut, Gravity went above and beyond, and never failed to impress. Plenty of obstacles were thrown in their path, yet the Gravity team kept its focus on moving forward and turning out the best commercials possible. When the project started out behind schedule, Gravity forged ahead and continued to churn out top quality animation. Without their commitment and focus on the big picture we would have never been able to have the success we’ve had.”
 

“Harry, Yuval, Bob and the Gravity team brought a ‘can do’ attitude to the project, and a sense of optimism that kept it moving ahead, on time, and on budget. And the results are stunning. We couldn’t be happier with the final output,” Lombardi concludes.
Watch the Battleship LIVE spot on motion.tv.
 

Credits
 

Client: Hasbro
 

Agency: UPROAR! Dallas & New York
Erik Nelson, Chief Creative Officer
Dan Lombardi, Creative Director
Mark Mazut, Creative Director
Mindy Miller Berg, Amy Shore, Agency Producers
 

Production, Visual Effects & Editorial Company: Gravity, New York
Zviah Eldar, CEO/Chief Creative Officer
Harry Dorrington, Director/Creative Director
Yuval Levy, Creative Director
Russ Dube, Producer
Karen Bianca Bisignano, Head of Production
Bob Samuel, Executive Producer
 

Music & Sound Design: Amber Music
Sound Design: Andy Brannan
Composer: Eugene Cho
Music Supervision: Mike Perri
Executive Music Producer: Michelle Curran
 

About Gravity
 

Gravity is an international visual effects, design and brand communications company with proven expertise in three integrated divisions: Features & Television, Commercials, and Digital. With 250 talented professionals across offices in New York, Los Angeles, Connecticut and Tel Aviv, the company is a widely renowned generator of high-end visual effects, creative content, motion graphics design, animation, branding, and digital strategy.
 

The company’s clients include Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., DreamWorks, Sony Pictures Entertainment, HBO, Paramount Pictures, The Weinstein Company, Dimension Films, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Mercedes Benz, Verizon, Pantene, MGA Entertainment, Carlsberg, Kmart, and Braun. Gravity’s recent feature film credits include “Tower Heist,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love”, “The Adjustment Bureau”, “Arthur”, “The Other Guys”, “Salt”, “The Reader”, and “Ghost Town.” The company’s television credits include HBO’s “Bored to Death”, “The Sopranos”, and “Sex and The City.”
 

Gravity has offices in New York and Santa Monica.

HOLLYWOOD, CA — Looking to imbue the just-released trailer for Call of Juarez: The Cartel — the next chapter in their popular western themed shooter franchise (due out this summer) — with a modern look and a powerful ‘Hollywood blockbuster’ feel, game developer Ubisoft again tapped the multi-disciplined creative design/visual effects studio yU+co to execute the project’s complex motion capture, design, 3D animation and visual effects.  The trailer is currently airing only online and can be seen at the official Call of Juarez website, as well as select others.

yU+co responded with a :90 creative and technical tour d’ force that perfectly melds the game’s old-west roots into a new contemporary storyline centering on a band of hard-nosed DEA agents matching wits, fists and guns with a drug dealing Mexican cartel.

”Ubisoft came to us with the over-arching concept of dust as both a unifying visual device throughout the trailer, taking viewers from scene-to-scene, but also a symbolic one that refers to the drug trafficking that fuels the Call of Juarez: The Cartel storyline,” Garson Yu, yU+co’s Creative Director, says. ”It was a great idea that inspired our creative execution, and challenged us to build on it and come up with more and more clever, yet subtle, visual metaphors for dust.”

New Motion Capture Techniques

For Sharon Ortiz, Ubisoft’s Senior Creative Writer, developing a concept that would introduce it to gaming audiences would be tricky.

”The Call of Juarez franchise has traditionally been set in the wild west and this new iteration would be the brand’s first set in modern times,” Ortiz said. ”Because of that we needed a concept that introduced the game’s storyline and characters in a unique way that befitted the iconic western — and naturally we wanted that epic Hollywood blockbuster feel. Ubisoft has worked with yU+co quite a few times over the past several years. We knew they would be an ideal partner on Call of Juarez: The Cartel. Collectively they have a great creative eye and an unflagging commitment to detail that would ensure a visually-stunning, high quality trailer.”

To achieve the bold look Ubisoft demanded, and make the extremely ambitious six-week production schedule, yU+co employed a new state-of-the-art system of motion facial capture called MotionScan. Created by the Sydney, Australia-based company Depth Analysis, MotionScan enables a high-res 3D recreation of a person’s face — not just capturing bits and pieces of facial animation, but their entire head, right down to the hairstyle and texture.

After extensive casting, yU+co shot the actors in two separate set-ups. In the first, the cast acted the scenes from the neck up only using the MotionScan technology. In a separate take yU+co captured the body movements and physical action using a more traditional motion capture set up. From there, both sets of data were composited using Adobe After Effects, and comped into the complex 3D animation they created using Maya. A radical way of combining technologies to be sure, but necessary to create the photo-real look the client wanted in a short time frame.

”Our biggest concern was whether we could achieve the visual effects, at a high level of execution, on time,” Brian Tippie, Ubisoft’s Art Director adds. ”yU+co was an integral part in coming up with a solution that would enable us to deliver this project on time. Their recommendation to use facial scanning became the only way to execute this project and have it be more than just another game trailer. They brought the characters to life.”

Memorable Sequence

Perhaps the most memorable sequence in the trailer features a long, continuous take set during a high-speed car chase on the Los Angeles freeway. The camera, in Tarantino-esque slow motion, follows the path of bullet as it’s fired from the shotgun of the main DEA agent, through the rear windshield of the cartel’s SUV and into the back of the driver, resulting in a spectacular crash and ball of fire, containing both real and 3D elements.

”To make this project come together meant partnering with Ubisoft in a way you don’t often see between client and creative studio,” Carol Wong, yU+co Executive Producer, says. ”They showed a lot of trust in us, especially given the new technology we were using. Together, we were extremely focused on making this trailer as powerful and effective as we could. You can see that in the final piece, which creatively stands head and shoulders above most videogame trailers out there.”

In other yU+co news, the company is currently working on main title sequences from two of this summer’s blockbuster releases – ”Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” (Disney), due out May 20; and Warner Bros. ”Green Lantern” slated to open June 17.

About yU+co:

Recognized as an industry leader in visual design and motion graphics with offices in Hollywood, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, yU+co. (www.yuco.com) specializes in main and end titles for film and television, visual effects, TV show opens and network graphics packages, theatrical logos, game cinematics and commercials. For more information, contact Director of Business Development Dianna Costello (323-606-5050, moc.ocuynull@annaid).

Web Resources:

Click here to watch Call of Juarez trailer

Click here for more info about yU+co:

Click here for more info about Call of Juarez: The Cartel

Creative Credits:

Client: Ubisoft

Project: “Call of Juarez: The Cartel” trailer (:90)

Production/Design/Animation: yU+co, Hollywood, CA

Creative Director: Garson Yu

Animation Director: Richard Taylor

CG Supervisor: Andrew Honacker

Executive Producer: Carol Wong

Producer: Sarah Coatts

Associate Producer: Ryan Wilk

Project Coordinator/Asset Manager: Jacob Medendorp

Rigging TD: Amy Hay, Joe Spadaro, Juan Carlos

Lighter: Andy Lewis, Jeremy Lei, Luis Cayo

Hair/Cloth TD: Vincent Delay

Hair TD: Chris Christman

Character Animator: Hunter Brown

Compositor/Designer: Gary Garza

Compositor: Stevan Del George, Joel Ashman, Rick Makoul

Character Modeler/Texture Artist: Samuel Perez, Leo An

FX TD: John Roumieh, Karen Smith

Editor: Jason Sikora

VFX Editor: Mike Parks

Motion Capture: Just Cause Productions, Marina Del Rey, CA

Reuben Langdon

Facial MotionScan: Depth Analysis, Sydney Aus. & Culver City, CA

Oliver Bao

The creative production company, The Core’s stylized visual effects chops are on full display in a series of humorous spots for the latest Lego Star Wars III video game creation from Lucas Arts. Working with Los Angeles-based agency Goodness Mfg, Director Chris Hoffman incorporated his signature tongue-in-check visual style into this epic campaign set atop a mesmerizing golden sunset hillside.

Known for his mastery of color, Hoffman worked with a tight knit Core team of eight VFX artists over six weeks to complete the project. ”I am lucky in that each of The Core’s artists are cherry picked for their exemplary talents,” Hoffman says, ”and as a result, we worked as a small, intimate team that was very efficient.”

The spots – entitled ”Charge,” ”Trooper” and ”Door” – show off not only a panache visual effects style with rich vivid colors, but also manage to capture the little Lego character’s emotional charge and ultimately the humorous gag that ends the spots.

”We had a great time working with the team at Goodness,” Hoffman adds. ”They brought some solid, funny creative ideas for these spots and gave us the creative freedom to run with the structure of the spots. They’re an ideal agency to work with.”

After only two and half years, The Core continues its remarkable creative surge, firmly gaining ground in the industry and reputation. The Core has racked up an impressive list of clients, and swooped up a collection of awards. Executive Producer Chad Feeback makes no secret of his goals for the studio.

”We have made a lot headway in a short amount of time,” Feeback says. ”We have some of the best talent in the industry at The Core, and we place great importance on healthy client relations, which is why so many of our clients keep coming back to us.”

See the video on motion.tv

About The Core:

The Core specializes in commercials, network branding/promotion and multi-media content, utilizing all aspects of production at its disposal, including live action, VFX, animation, stop animation and editorial. More of The Core’s work can been seen on their studio website.

Creative Credits:

Client: Lucas Arts
Project: Star Wars Lego III video game campaign

Agency: Goodness Mfg, Los Angeles, CA

Production/Design: The Core, Los Angeles, CA
Director: Chris Hoffman
Executive Producer: Chad Feeback