Project

SKII - Badminton — Animated Film19-02

BEAUTY IS #NOCOMPETITION.
A JAPANESE OLYMPIC SHORT FILM.

Info

“VS MACHINES”is a tribute film to Japan’s first ever Olympic badminton doubles Gold medalists Ayaka Takahashi and Misaki Matsutomo. Directed by Alan Williams in collaboration with WPP, the film explores a futuristic dystopia where competition is the main reason for existence. Learn more about SKII Beauty Is #NoCompetition Campaign.
“Our main creative challenge was to take the all-too-common reality of toxic expectations faced by all women – not just Takahashi and Matsutomo – and repackage it in a way that made the viewer see it with new eyes and truly feel it. Through the poetic language of human-turned-robots and a towering kaiju, I feel our team did just that. I couldn’t be more excited to share this with the world.” – Alan Williams, Director.

Role

DESIGN
R&D
Motion
MOTIO

Client

↓ CUTDOWN

Here is a cutdown of some of the shots I was involved in.

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director: alan williams producers: christine hernandez, jon hassell, aleen kim, jared libitsky writers: leo savage, alan williams lead design & art direction: russ gautier cg technical direction: russ gautier, meng-yang lu lead animator : james gardner cg character design : kelton cram animators & compositors : james gardner, jake ferguson, henry chang, blaise hossain matt shadis, jesse bafia, daniel onassis character animation : evan mayfield, matt parent designer & animator: sekani solomon, henry chang edited by jeremiah shuff, lexi gunvaldson vfx animation: russ gautier storyboards: tyler gibb researcher & translator : sakuya mio production coordinator: tucker reese executive producer: jon hassell executive creative director: peter frankfurt

BEHIND
THE
SCENES™
A Collection of project
insights.

Imagining the machine vision / recreating TAKAHASHI & MATSUTOMO in cg

The challenges that were given to me were to re-imagine the visual language of the machine vision and character creation. Including design/development of how the machine would perceive the player, the animation of badminton, and creating assets for our main characters including their CG model, hair, wardrobe, and cloth simulation.

↓ TECHNICAL BREAKDOWN

↓ SHUTTLECOCK EFFECTS

The shuttlecock animations were used in shots where the players were trained by the machine. It was meant to express the precision of the badminton training machine and the near-perfect reaction of the players.