100% Pure Kiwi Ingenuity at The Rugby World Cup
When a large inflatable Rugby Ball turned up in front of France’s iconic Eiffel Tower during the Rugby Word Cup, people all over the world were thinking – how did Tourism NZ do that!? The answer was to combine the talents of a bunch of ingenious and talented Kiwi creatives – engineers, designers, artists, musicians, film makers and animators.
The idea of the Giant Ball was to create an exhibition that transported visitors from the middle of Paris to New Zealand, home of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, giving them a taste of what NZ has to offer outside of the famous Rugby Tournament.
As one of the contributors, Damon Smith from ARL was challenged with creating an animation of a rugby balls journey through space after leaving the powerful boot of Kiwi Rugby legend Dan Carter and traveling underwater alongside whales and dolphins. The shots involved the creation of earth, clouds, lens flares, satellites, and water textures but the real challenge lay in that the animation was to be projected onto the inside walls of the rugby ball. Every frame required complex rendering, using five cameras pointing in multiple directions which had to match up pixel to pixel to give seamless borders.
The collaborative end result was a stunning tribute to our country and gave the RWC spectators something Kiwi to talk about once the AB’s were sent home…
See the official opening at:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=w2UDw_WHpPk
The public opening:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AjcmxbWWEIA
or check out the official ‘making of’ here: http://www.tourismnewzealand.com/tourism_info/media-resources/video-news-releases/video-news-releases_home.cfm#