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Zoic Propels Players into the Action for Kinect Sports Rivals

Visual effects house Zoic Studios transports sports enthusiasts straight into the action in the 30-second Kinect Sports Rivals spot “You” for Microsoft out of Antfarm.

Los Angeles -- Culver City-based visual effects house Zoic Studios transports sports enthusiasts straight into the action in the 30-second Kinect Sports Rivals spot “You” for Microsoft out of Antfarm.

In the spot, two live action competitors are facing off against their avatar counterparts, when the wall of reality is smashed and the spot launches into thrilling gameplay. The recently released game is the next generation of the popular Xbox franchise, Kinect Sports and includes Bowling, Soccer, Tennis, Target Shooting, Wake Racing and Climbing and allows players to scan themselves using the Kinect system and create their own custom avatar. Zoic handled the effects and color correction for the live action intro section of the spot as well as the 90-second trailer.

Zoic Creative Director Levi Ahmu led a team to craft an environment that would feel like an infinite void that was both sophisticated and robust. After fine-tuning the spatial renderings, the team went to work to match the movements of the character models (taken from in-game renderings) through motion capture with those of the actors. All of the rending was completed in VRay with animation and motion capture done in Maya, compositing done in Nuke and the human/avatar transitional moment created in Cinema4D. 

Source: Zoic Studios

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.