As the theme for the Sony Ericsson Content Awards 2008 is "You + Us = amazing mobile content", Sony Ericsson Developer World teamed up with one of last year's winners to create an online awards show with a difference. Metronize and Bruket 3D Animations won the Themes & Graphics category with their fictional band "The Geeks" and accepted the challenge of creating a 3D animated awards show within the competition's short timeframe.
This is how we did it.
The idea
The Sony Ericsson Developer World team had the vision of a hosting a glamorous awards show with all the elements of a "traditional" ceremony but using the Content Awards web site as the virtual venue. And as we are celebrating mobile content made by third-party developers, working with our partners came naturally to us – which is how Metronize and Burket 3D Animation joined the project.
"Most of Sony Ericsson's mobile content is developed by external companies and our partnerships are crucial for success. It was a great experience to create the Sony Ericsson Content Awards ceremony with some of our developers who are equally passionate about what they do and our brand," said Eva-Lotta Gothe, Project Manager for the Sony Ericsson Content Awards and External Communications Specialist for Sony Ericsson Developer World.
The Geeks
"The Geeks" are a fictional rock band animation created by Stockholm-based companies Metronize and Bruket 3D Animation. Originally intended as a video for the music industry, a meeting with Sony Ericsson in 2005 resulted in the perfect performance venue for "The Geeks" – mobile phones.
Since becoming a Sony Ericsson partner, their mini-movies, themes, wallpapers, graphics and ringtones have generated 15 million downloads from Sony Ericsson's Fun & Downloads website and won them the 2007 Themes & Graphics category in the Sony Ericsson Content Awards.
The band now has a huge following with a fan-base on MySpace and Facebook, with more mobile content planned for Sony Ericsson sales channels.
The team
Metronize and Bruket 3D Animation are two separate companies who collaborate on many motion graphics, internet, advertising and television projects in addition to "The Geeks".
Tony Malm is the owner of Metronize and the team's Project Manager, with a background as a music producer, he contributes the soundtrack and music elements.
"Working with Sony Ericsson has opened up many business opportunities for us and given us the scope to expand our ideas for 'The Geeks'. Collaborating on the Content Awards animated award show was a fun and rewarding project," said Tony Malm.
From Bruket 3D Animation:
Anders Danielsson is the CEO and 3D artist specializing in lighting and rendering.
Mille Trygg-Wiberg is a 3D artist and animator.
Carl-Gustav Backström is a 3D artist and concept artist.
The challenge
Irrespective of the medium, an awards show needs to have some basic components – a host, winners, acceptance speeches and entertainment value. The Sony Ericsson Content Awards is no different but had the added challenge of making a 3D animated ceremony in the limited time between category nominee selection, judging and announcing the winners on February 9, 2009.
3D graphics rendering is a slow process so the show storyboard was scoped out ahead of time enabling the Bruket team to create a new animated character – the Sony Ericsson ceremony host. She was to introduce the show and team up with Chip, the lead singer of "The Geeks" to reveal the winners.
"Having worked with 'The Geeks' for so long, it was fun to create the Sony Ericsson ceremony host female character and include her with our existing characters," comments Anders Danielsson.
Once the competition judging was complete in mid-December 2008, the team had just two weeks in January 2009 to turn the storyboard and script into the final 3D animated movie.
The amount of factual dialog that is needed for an award ceremony was a challenge for the animators, needing to synchronize both soundtrack and voice over with character movements.
They kept to this tight deadline, incorporating video acceptance speeches from the winners at the last minute and rendering a huge number of 3D graphics, to create the Flash movie now hosted on www.sonyericsson.com/contentawards and YouTube.
The software
The line drawings were turned into 3D animations using a tool called Autodesk® Maya® and the Flash video (.flv) files were created.
Anders Danielsson and Mille Trygg-Wiberg then used Adobe® After Effects® to combine layers and generally polish the animation sequences. Sony Ericsson's web design agency then placed the award show videos in the web page frames, and after our usual extensive quality assurance process, the award ceremony went live on February 9, 2009.
These are the steps the team use when creating "The Geeks" mobile content. Instead of hosting the .flv files in web pages, Bruket use a video compression software called Sorensen Squeeze to make 3GP files – a format designed to decrease storage and bandwidth requirements suitable for mobile phones – which are then made available for Sony Ericsson phones.
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