Probably the project from hell for every single CG artist, cloth, motion capture, facial scanning, skin, famous and recognizable characters, grass, effects to stop a train, crowds of impossible scale, crazy mechanical legs attached to humans, one single full game with 22 players plus extras and to make it worse, one single camera move set in the future.
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 in 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 fully the size of the challenge, the fact that it does not really look like a video game and the fact that they don’t look like people with prostetics walking like horses was a huge tour de force.
Credits
Director: Nicolai Fuglsig Agency: Robert/Boisen Likeminded Production: Nobody CPH Task: VFX Supervisor, Lead Animator
