The Mill kicks off Sky Sports coverage of the Barclays Premier League

17th August 2009 - The Mill kicked off Sky Sports coverage of the new Barclays Premier League season this Saturday (August 15th) with a stunning new stylised animated intro sequence featuring some of the game’s biggest stars.

The Mill’s CG team worked very closely with the Sky Director Justin Bates, to help bring the sequence to life. Using motion capture of real footballers a team of motion builder editors were able to create an almost one take effect as they manipulated one football move into another. Using the edit the crowd team were then able to start building the stadiums and crowd utilising The Mill’s unique Massive crowd pipeline and stadium asset library to generate backgrounds of incredibly accurate detail.

One of the most challenging aspects of the spot was the modelling and texturing of the individual players themselves. Tom Bussell, VFX Supervisor and Lead animator says "Ideally when you're creating famous people it's best if you can laser scan them, however that isn’t often possible, so on this occasion our team of character modellers painstakingly built them from photographic reference, and in all honesty this went right to the wire as many of the players have matured or changed their
hair from when the photos were taken.”

With the edit being finessed, the characters’ modelling and stadiums on-going, the lighting and render team worked up look palates for the four seasons in the sequence. The Mill’s VFX Art Director Jimmy Kiddell created some style frames for the team to use as guides to the lighting of the sequence. Jimmy says, "It's imperative on a project like this to set a look and style for the cgi. Creating mood with lighting and atmospherics can really make the whole piece look far more cinematic.” Tom believes the Nuke compositing team of Darren Christie and Mike Outlaw did a fantastic job too compositing nearly 120 layers of cgi passes that made up the final picture, further enhancing the lighting and atmospheric layers of the sequence.

The final composite was then digitally graded in The Mill's Baselight by Mick Vincent to add the finishing touches to the final film.

This season Sky Sports will show 92 live Barclays Premier League games, with every match available in high definition on Sky Sports HD. Live Sky Sports matches include the big head-to-heads and major derbies, with all twenty clubs shown live within the first two months of the season.

Agency: - BSkyB / Creative: - Justin Bates / Director: - Justin Bates / Producer: - Nick Canham - Sarah Cloutier / Special thanks to: - Paul Fuller - Creative Director - Sky Sports - Mark Hyde - Creative Design Director - Sky Creative / Post Production: - The Mill / Producer: - Lucy Reid / VFX Supervisor/Lead CGI: - Tom Bussell / Animation Technical Director: - Douglas Lassance / Animation Team: - Justin Bates - Jordi Bares - Jesus Parra - Gemma Aliaga - Florian Mounie - Jonathan Vuilleman - Alex Hammond - Per Bergstein - Eva-Maria Keuhlmann - Edward Hicks - Tom Blake - Andy Nicholas - David Knight - Ed Shires - Rick Thiele - Sergio Xisto - James Rumbal / Motion Builder Editors: - Thomas Champon - Sverker Nordqvist / Animation TD R&D: - James Rogers - Art Direction: - Jimmy Kiddell - Ian Wharton / Matte Painting: - Can Yigit Sanalan / Nuke Compositors: - Darren Christie - Mike Outlaw / Colourist: - Mick Vincent / Final Cut Pro: - Daniel Budin / After effects: - Dominic Burgess / Kit: - Motion Builder - ZBrush - XSI - Maya - Massive - Cinema 4D - Nuke - Baselight - Final Cut Pro / Music: - "Club Foot" by Kasabian / Sound Design: - Mike Lloyd

Site by Engage.