Nike Mercurial Zoom

Nike Mercurial Zoom.

I was approached to create 6 animated sequences for an advertising campaign for a brand new Nike football boot. Such an amazing opportunity and was quite a technically challenging brief to execute within the deadline.

All these edits were to be delivered in 4:5 and 19:6 format.

July -August 2022

Production Company: AKQA

I was responsible for;

Animating,

Lighting,

Compositing,

Rotoscoping,

Editing.

Marcus Rashford.

This took me 11 hours to finish. There were two options for the Rashford edit. One plated approach (This one) and one composite approach where the boot was behind him throughout the sequence. I worked and finished both but Nike chose this plated version. I’ll include the composite version later on.

I like how quick paced this one is and it feels like the boot is driving a lot of the camera motion.

Jamal Musiala.

This edit took me 12 hours. I really like the interaction with the cones on this one. I created some 3D cone geometry so the shadow of the boot interacts with it to add to the realism.

Again, the connection the boot makes for the fly by on the camera feels really solid and believable that it knocked the camera over.

Selena Cerci.

This took me 12 hours. This edit was one of my favourites because of the playful interaction with the boot and the player. The fly off on the boot and the shadowing made it feel quite believable.

Musiala & Cerci.

This one took 16 hours and was by far the most challenging. There were a lot of timings I needed to get right on this so the animation had to be specific lengths. The motion around the pole was difficult to execute but the end result worked well.

Ansu Fati.

The first 4 edits were completed in 3 weeks in June. Then there would be a 3 week break and the other 2 edits (Fati & Bonmati) were to be completed in 8 days in August. Initially I found it difficult to get back into the mindset and rhythm of the project but was able to pick it up again. This took 13 hours.

This edit was interesting as it involved 2 different pieces of footage, one where Fati hits the cross bar, another when he scores top corner. I had to cleverly edit and rotoscope the two clips together to look like the shot is taken twice. One the second kick however, we used the CG boot to take it instead of showing Fati kicking it.

Anita Bonmati.

This one took 16 hours. I found this edit to be quite challenging compared to the others. It involved a lot of animation and a long time before the boot needed to hit the timing of Bonmati turning to look.