Five short films for Nike Football to mark the Kylian Mbappé Mercurial boot launch spliced with VFX and 3D animation to showcase reality-bending speed.
Unreal speed with the Kylian Mbappé Mercurial
For this project, we created a series of five films directed by Zac Ella highlighting Mbappé’s incredible speed and the enhancements that the new Nike Zoom Mercurial boot offers up. Our team of VFX and animation artists made fun, surreal spots that each accentuate speed and blend live action with 2D and 3D animations.
For the first film – the product reveal – as well as the hero film, we see Mbappé burst and transition into a 2D cel animated version of himself for max effect. This stylised, high energy animation is a nod to the hand-drawn design of the boots and the way it draws inspiration from the world of Anime – and the French player’s favourite manga series, Whistle!
For the second film, the set up reveals Mbappé doing keepie uppies with a tennis ball that, in Post, we swapped out for a Rubik’s Cube using CG animation and had him complete it in record matching time!
The whole series goes big on high speed action and we created the additional bumper using a 3D scan of the boot and adding in a 2D cel animation to tie everything together.
