Separating your new sneaker from the legions of competitors is the name of the game for sports brands, so to launch the new Echo for Under Armour, Builders Club stirred up a new mix of “structure, layering, transparency, motion, and light”.

From the team at Builders Club: “This latest product launch signals a new era for Under Armour as a cutting-edge, creative sports brand. With dynamic product shots and unique morphing animations, this film showcases their commitment to innovation.

“The client provided us with a really open, balanced, and playful brief, including a set of jumping off points in the form of words that related to product features: layering, transparency structure, etc.
 

“We loved the fact that this was a bit of a visual departure for the brand, and it was a pleasure to explore and create this new visual language centered around such an interesting shoe.”

 
“We took these and did some creative thinking – structure, for example, could be interpreted as a mobile sculpture exploring the various elements and composition of the product. It could also refer back to kinesiology tape which was used as a key inspiration for how the shoe actually supports your ankle.

“We loved the fact that this was a bit of a visual departure for the brand, and it was a pleasure to explore and create this new visual language centered around such an interesting shoe.

“The main technical challenge concerned the 3D modeling of the shoe, and pushing the limits of the textures and geometry for the size of the stills deliverables (20k pixels). We received a really clean base model from the client, but we had to find innovative solves for the various intricate layers, interactions between those layers, and three dimensional patterns that make the shoe so beautiful in real life.

“This all had to be balanced with a usable model – going too high with the polygon count would mean our animation software would have a hard time moving and distorting all of the information frame by frame.”
 
 

 
Client: Under Armour

Production: Builders Club
Director: Builders Club

Retouch: INK

Music/Sound Design: Group Project