SailGP

There’s a new team in town, it’s fast and, most of all, fan-owned. SailGP, the global sports league, is joining the NEAR community that created the opportunity for a fan-owned team to exist and to take part in the sailing championship with the team to be handled by the fans through blockchain.

Sounds odd? Well, we prepared 3 explainer videos to help you figure the rules of participation out and to invite the fans over. Dive into this retro pixel world with us and brace yourself: you’re about to surf super high waves.

Initial exploration

We started by creating an unreal world, where anything can happen thanks to the fans’ actions.
Here you can find the first frames we designed to cover some topics like team work, the user active participation and the sea, that comes to life with dizzying stunts.
At first we really needed to understand how to picture the power-up style and the energy flows created by Near’s technology.

Inside the platform

The video was of course an explainer, so it required both a frantic and a relaxed pace at the same time.
It was very important for us to make the app very clear and easy to use. We created a hub where you can customize the team with just one click. Your own living room can turn into a real ship, where you are the star.

An incredible energy

Sport is movement, energy, passion. During the composition phase we tried to convey speed and movement with different camera rotations.

It was also crucial to describe what happened on the fan’s screen when their team was sailing and to engage them during the race.

We brought the sailing and the blockchain worlds together using a palette that recalled the cyber-sea.
The main characters of the video are catamarans, along with the fans who are in fact active players. We worked on the retro/nostalgic pixel style from the get-go and we appreciated it was a client’s choice.

Animation

Dynamic scenes require incredible frames. Even if you maybe couldn’t tell, the 2D project was created with frame-by-frame animation, later post produced in pixel art.
The catamarans and the characters came to life in a natural way, so they could move and express themselves freely.

We then created different scenes using 3D softwares, so we could handle tons of shots optimally.As you can see, we first designed a rough version of the movements during the animatic phase and then completed them in 2D and 3D.

Character and style development

The characters aren’t athletes or supermen, they’re real people. We explored different styles in order to create a nice play of light and shadow in the whole video.

Fun fact: we had to study how the sportswear look like, including the shape of the helmet, and how athletes interact and sit on the watercraft.

Credits

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Riccardo Albertini

ART DIRECTOR

Filippo Martinelli

Storyboard

Lorenzo Florissi, Eleonora Giuffrida

Illustration

Lorenzo Florissi, Federica Amico

2D ANIMATION AND 2DFX

Laura Tomelleri, Riccardo Pagano, Pedram Taghavi, Inaki Amurrio, Fabrizio Strusciolo, Giacomo Carruolo, Antonio Palladino, Gaston Herrera, Eleonora Giuffrida

Filippo Martinelli, Riccardo Albertini

Compositing

Andrea Nobis, Filippo Martinelli, Riccardo Albertini

Production Company

Nomint - Marilena Vatseri, Christos Lefakis