Title | SK-II OLYMPICS CAMPAIGN – “VS MACHINES” |
Brand | P&G |
Product / Service | SK-II |
Category | B04. Animation |
Entrant | WPP BLACK OPS Singapore, SINGAPORE |
Idea Creation | WPP BLACK OPS Singapore, SINGAPORE |
Media Placement | WPP BLACK OPS Singapore, SINGAPORE |
Production | IMAGINARY FORCES Los Angeles, USA |
Post Production | IMAGINARY FORCES Los Angeles, USA |
Post Production 2 | ECLECTIC SOUNDS London, UNITED KINGDOM |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Leo Savage | WPP Black Ops | Executive Creative Director |
Danni Mohammed | WPP | Executive Creative Strategy Director & MD |
Siddika Dehlvi | WPP Black Ops | Executive Creative Business Director |
San Takashima | WPP Black Ops | Executive Producer |
Nihar Das | WPP Black Ops | WPP Black Ops Lead |
Nathan Wilson | WPP Black Ops | Global Integration Lead |
Stuart Harkness | WPP Black Ops | Creative Consultant |
Sudhir Pasumarty | WPP Black Ops | Creative Director |
Ashley Chen | WPP Black Ops | Creative Director |
Katie Mulligan | WPP Black Ops | Creative Strategist |
Hiroko Matsuo | WPP Black Ops | Strategy Director |
Ken Mitani | WPP Black Ops | Creative Director |
Yukika Anan | WPP Black Ops | Copywriter |
Yoichai Inamura | WPP | Senior Art Director |
Amanda Ang | WPP | Designer |
Miwako Yasukouchi | WPP | Senior Producer |
Lorysa Rossnagel | WPP | Project Director |
Sue-Ann De Cruz | WPP Black Ops | Account Director |
Eulisa Tan | WPP | Account Manager |
Iris Gu | WPP Black Ops | Account Executive |
Sho Ikegami | WPP | Account Executive |
Archana Ram | WPP | Media Strategy Director |
Alan Williams | Imaginary Forces | Director |
Christine Hernandez | Imaginary Forces | Executive Producer |
Simon Elms | Eclectic Sounds | Executive Music & Sound Producer |
Daryl Bryan Lim | Hogarth Singapore | Producer |
Matt Holyoak | Matt Holyoak | Photographer |
SK-II reacted to a landmark moment in Japanese sporting history – the retirement of their only gold medal-winning badminton duo, Ayaka Takahashi and Misaki Matsutomo – with an early release of “VS MACHINES” as a tribute to the pair; the first of six animated films. Directed by Emmy-nominated director Alan Williams, VS Machines focuses on the pressure to be a constantly performing machine; a mindset that eventually makes you more robot than human. With a well documented-struggle and slump in form after the 2016 Olympics, the film explores a futuristic dystopia, set in a training facility where competition is the main reason for existence, where humans become machines in their quest for perfection. In this world, cyborg-versions of Takahashi and Matsutomo are programmed with machine-like mindsets and are pitted against each other to achieve cold, joyless perfection.
For SK-II's sponsorship of the 2020 Olympic Games, we developed a provocative platform, Beauty Is #NoCompetition, in which SK-II’s partnership with six female Olympic athletes could be leveraged. We told the stories of these athletes through animation, in homage to the anime of SK-II’s native country, Japan. Each episode has a different enemy within beauty that stops our protagonists from feeling beautiful in some way. The ‘enemy’ takes the form of a kaiju, a Japanese monster. Ayaka Takahashi and Misaki Matsutomo’s struggle to find purpose after clinching a gold medal played into a pressure to constantly obtain perfection that felt familiar for women in Japan. When they retired as a duo, against the backdrop of Covid-19 and the postponement of the Games, we reacted to this moment with the early release of VS Machines. The film felt appropriate to reframe and dedicate as a tribute to the gold medalists.
To make the 5-minute film, WPP collaborated closely with award-winning production partner, Imaginary Forces, who developed high-craft 3D animation with a team of 17 specialised artists, animators, camera crew and motion capture specialists. The team was led by Emmy-nominated director Alan Williams. The film took 4,600 hours of design and animation to complete and the polygon count for each players ‘Robot’ was 5,472,640 which represents the density of detail rendered in each CG model.
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