Great Guns & Artbox Animate Nike <em>Hypershield</em>

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Great Guns [1] director Jonty Toosey joined forces with digital agency AKQA in Shanghai and animation company Artbox [2] to shoot a stunning new spot and unique interactive experience for Nike’s new HYPERSHIELD clothing and footwear line.

The thought of running outside in the winter months when it’s dark, cold and miserable could deter even the most dedicated of joggers. Based on this insight Nike launched the HYPERWARM and HYPERSHIELD collection, a set of warm inner wear, shielding jackets and shoes that keep runners dry and protected. The idea behind the campaign was ‘win against the elements’. The AKQA brief was a brilliant animatic, throwing live action and 2D animation together. The gauntlet was thrown and the Great Guns team fearlessly took up the challenge.

Toosey filmed the runners in a giant green screen studio in Shanghai, and then worked with Artbox in Amsterdam to place them in a dark 2D world. There they battled it out in an epic urban battle against the menacing elements of winter, in the form of the most evil winter monsters imaginable. Technicolour Shanghai provided the terrific post muscle to see the job through, and Massive Music scored and fused a grinding rock techno dubstep track to drive the film.

The campaign bridged real life running and social networking by connecting NIKE+ with Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site. Runners wear a NIKE+ running device, which is available on most smart-phones: the NIKE+ app records their results and submits their score instantly to Weibo. By sharing your run with NIKE+, using a specific hash-tag on Weibo, the application knew when you had gone running, and checked live weather reports to tell you which elements you had defeated. Runners who completed 10km in more than 3 different weather conditions were entered into a draw to win a full set of Nike HYPERWARM and HYPERSHIELD kit. The winter monsters also have their own profile pages on Weibo, and runners can interact and challenge them on the site.

The biggest battle to overcome was time and time zones. “We needed to work simultaneously with the creating of drawings, filming, postproduction and music to ensure we would deliver on time. Dogged determination, inspiration, adrenaline, spirit, raw talent and a brilliant disregard for sleep allowed the team to see the project through to delivery,” commented Toosey.

The result is epic, taking the audience on an awesome outer-worldly hardcore urban battle against winter.

Source: Great Guns