Hectic Electric takes the dark war FPS theme to an unexpected extreme
for a TV spot.
CGSociety :: Production Focus
4 November 2008, by Paul Hellard
This spot was created to illustrate the wide range of games available at the client's warehouse. So many to choose from. Just make sure you choose the right one.
The story is based on a storyboard and reference pics from the agency, Minivegas took it from there, they wrote a treatment and start working on the concept design and animatic. In the mean time we started preparing at HecticElectric. Maarten Boon, the CG Supervisor at Hectic Electric in Amsterdam takes up the story.
"The goal was to make two believable characters. They both had to be mean, but then one had to transform from a badass killer to a sweet and clumsy 'Singstar'. Because this commercial was so short, it was very important the characters could be recognizable and that you wouldn't mix up the two," Boon says. "That's why we made them differently styled and size. The viewer still had to believe they both existed in the same world."
The CG style had to convince the audience that they are watching a game. But the Hectic Electric crew were free to play around with the quality level to make it look like a new, upcoming game. They used displacement maps and full SSS instead of normal maps. They tried a lot of camera views because in games they are always very typical and not made to tell a story in 25 seconds.
