Blaklader - Striker
A shoe starring in 80 movies!
Blåläder came to us with a clear picture of what they wanted: an animated commercial to launch a new protective shoe for Blåläders retailers around the world. Where the shoe and its triple density sole had the main role and that told the story behind the sole. In addition, they wanted to lift the power, comfort and stability of the shoe in a stylish and entertaining way.
A fun mission with few challenges: a schedule that was quite tight, many language versions and platform formats.
Client: BlaKlader
Art Director Client: Anton Hannedahl
Production company: Studio Konkret
Producer & Director: Linus Rosenqvist
3D Art Director: Viktor Jämterud
Art Direction 2D: Andreas Nilsson
Modelling: Viktor Jämterud, Eric Turner, Linnea Rahn Melin
3d Animation: Viktor Jämterud
Graphics & Onlie: Olle Bergmark
Compositing: Olle Bergmark
Grade: Linus Rosenqvist
Sound & Music: Noah Hägglund
Storyboard and the process
The creative process was based on our client's reference images and their wishes that there should be elements in the film that represent what happens in reality when a safety shoe is made. Among other things, they wanted the robot arm in the animated film to carry attributes from the robots used in real life. Of course we thought, who doesn't like robotic stuff and automation?
Visualized comfort and function
There is so much we as an animation studio can do in 3D and with motion design that gives the viewer an instant understanding of our customers' products, in this case a shoe with triple density sole. During the storyboard process, we worked to find a balance between reality and aesthetics and to add that little extra that captivates the viewer.
Character development
One challenge was to make the film's main character, the protective shoe, look good. We also needed to illustrate that the triple density sole consists of three different parts. In animation, there is a lot of contrast between sharp and soft areas and it is a bit tricky to achieve because it needs to be built up by different layers.
Choice of technology
The team modeled different parts that we then built together. We created a 3D model in Blender and Houdini. Then we built an automated workflow that made it faster and easier for us to test, modify and improve the model without having to redo everything from scratch.
More than 80 versions
We produced a main version, a so-called TVC, in 20 seconds, a shorter version of 15 seconds and two mini-films of 5 seconds for various social media in both portrait and landscape formats. So far it was like in most of our productions. But Blålæder needed many different language versions: some with speakers, others with text and also films with subtitles for the speaker's voice. In total, there were over 80 different versions for different countries and viewing platforms.
To meet this, we needed to work smart and find ways to export the film in different formats where the language, graphics and text were right in each version. The solution to that became a set-up where we handled rendering in a similar way that we handle a live-action recording. A long raw file with all the data was procedurally created in Solaris and rendered out. This gave us a square movie that we could then manage with an automated procedural solution in After Effects where with just one touch we could change to another format or language.
Results
A fun project for everyone involved. The customer was satisfied and received an animated commercial produced in just two months in all the different formats they wanted for the launch. In addition to the production itself, we as an animation studio found a method to export a film in different formats that we will most certainly be able to reuse. A win-win quite simply.
.png)
