Press release from Gravity:

New York, NY – Gravity was tapped by Microsoft Advertising and Y&R New York to create and produce the CG-animated “Samurai,” an original, two-minute web video promoting Microsoft.

The Gravity-produced content piece, which has just launched on the Internet, was commissioned by Microsoft Advertising to appeal to CMOs and media buying agencies, so that they will consider using the innovative advertising tools available from Microsoft. These tools, including the MSN portal, Windows Mobile, Skype and Xbox, can be utilized as media outlets to reach millions of Internet users.

Y&R’s team, headed by ECD Kerry Keenan and HODP Nathy Aviram took the project in an unexpected direction to evolve a potentially dry informational piece into an entertaining ride.  They came up with a quirky and humorous script set as a video game in Samurai-era Japan.

Gravity’s Director/CD Yuval Levy worked with his team to come up with the visual style, character development and design, story action, choreography, art direction.  Gravity had two of its offices, New York and Tel Aviv, engaged in the piece to address the 10 - week production schedule.

Levy stated, “It’s a bit of ‘Crouching Tiger’ meets ‘Kurosawa’ meets ‘God of War.’ We couldn’t believe the script and how it blended these disparate ideas together.  It was fresh from the first read to the last render.”

“We needed to establish this ancient Samurai world quickly,” said Levy. “We used iconic Japanese animation and prints with a palette of pinks and reds to create an environment and story the audience could quickly pick up.  We relied heavily on anime-style design and of course, did a lot of research in video games, action and martial arts films.” 

Levy also expressed his appreciation to the Y&R team supporting him to explore ways to address some of the dichotomies in the script.  “The dragon needed to be threatening, but not enough to be scary.  We enveloped him in cherry blossom flowers by using two simulations of hair and particles in Maya. The cheery blossoms ended up influencing the entire palette of pastels.”

“The character design exploration was prepared as sketches. We got archive portraits of actual Japanese martial arts fighters as our base. We did the final modeling of the characters in Z Brush.  Our digital matte paintings were influenced by Japanese landscape prints,” Levy concluded.

As the piece begins, we see an elaborate scroll slowly opening to reveal an ancient map of Japan, as we hear the VO announcer speaking in Japanese. The English subtext reads, “War has broken out in the region. The pollen dragon dynasty has launched an offensive and the brave Samurai take refuge in the surrounding forests.” We next see in full animation a number of dragons flying over a Japanese town, when one of them confronts a Master Samurai warrior and his student. The dragon spits a huge spew of pollen from his mouth, as the Master warrior begins to sneeze and hides behind his shield. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop, the Master warrior ultimately slays the beast, after his student warrior falls to the ground.