March 25th, 2009
There's nothing quite like the excitement of a deciding game just about to begin, especially once you have your money on one of the teams. It's not the biggest secret that we're not exactly hockey people here at Piñata but we were more than happy to take up the challenge when Creative Director Mikko Torvinen of TBWA\PHS contacted us with the idea for this new print ad for Veikkaus.
In a loose way the picture continues the series started with Veikkaus Rollercoaster about six months ago. First up Tuomas Korpi started sketching the overall composition and all the elements to be fitted in the picture: the players, sharks, lights and an imaginary combination of a shark pool and a hockey rink. The concept sketch not only acted as a base for the artistic and technical decisions between 3D, painting and photography but was also used to test all the different ad formats needed.
Colour Sketch
Turkka Kylliäinen built a very quick and dirty 3D model of the arena to get a sense of proportion and perspective as well as to test various camera positions and settungs for the image. Mikko Vormala then drafted the players positions on the ice to act as a reference for the shoot.
Even though the players themselves occupy a very small part of the picture we decided to arrange a photo shoot to get them just right. "We had an elevator arranged at a practice hockey rink in Paloheinä.", says Mikko Vormala. "Luckily our model had skates on. The heavy elevator was such a bitch to move around on the freshly conditioned ice."
Photographer Mikko Harma set the position of the elevator on the basis of the initial 3D model and the sketches and shot the players in their correct positions. At the same time Mikko Vormala was busy in the locker room with his laptop roughly testing the shot players onto the CGI arena. "We got the required photographs quite easily and the shoot went very smoothly altogether.", says Mikko.
Once back at Piñata studio again, we continued building the arena geometry. Mikko collected reference material, drew sketches and structure blueprints for Turkka who was responsible for building the model in 3D. We shot the spectators on the foreground and again quickly tried the composition out with the CGI arena. Once we got the composition right and Turkka had finished his modeling work it was time for Rami and Tuomas to light things up and do the finishing touches on the picture.
While Rami was designing the materials and lighting for the arena Mikko continued with painting additional details such as billboards, screen graphics and all sorts of haberdashery in the audience. "It was difficult for me to come up with fake advertisements for the arena.", says Mikko. "Henri Tani helped me out a great deal creating some cool and believeable ads for the rink."
"The overall complexity of the picture was a special concern for me right from the start.", says Tuomas Korpi. "I just decided not to worry too much about it until we had all the elements available for compositing. I started by working on the whole image area making very simple and clear changes. It was important to get the big picture working before even thinking about the details."
Getting the proportions between the rink, the pool and the sharks right proved to a bit of a workout while the part with spectators and the light show came out quite easy. "Our thorough pre-production was a huge help and a lot of my compositing work was simply connecting different pieces of the puzzle together.", says Tuomas. "After sketching the best part for me is always fiddling around with the small details. This time we had enough time to do that as well."
Credits
Client: VeikkausAgency: TBWA\PHS
Creatives: Mikko Torvinen, Erkko Mannila, Tommy Mäkinen
Art Buyer/Producer: Kirsi Pärni
Account Director: Teppo Juuvinmaa
Account Manager: Maija Nikkonen-Hilli
Photographer: Mikko Harma / Kustom