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Completed 2022
Digital Out of Home
Agency: Singleframe
A series of epic LOTR: The Rings of Power key art scenes brought to life with eye-catching animation.
Subtle and immersive, I animated several key art scenes from static assets to create windows into the living, breathing realm of Middle Earth.
Due to the nature of the Digital Out of Home format, I had to build in huge flexibility into the projects so that the pieces could be adapted for their variously sized eventual screens.
When creating DOOHs (Digital Out of Homes for those of you that often find yourselves having to pretend you know what you’re doing), there’s a fine balance between creating not enough animation that it ends up just looking like a static poster, and too much animation that it distracts viewers – who may be bombing along a road at the time – causing them to swerve off the road and smack into an unfortunately placed chemical waste plant that was just mistakenly delivered 500 tonnes of gunpowder, resulting in an awe-inspiring explosion that spits out endless torrents of black smoke that quickly encircle the planet and plunge it into an eighty year winter that causes all but the most resilient of civilisations to collapse into obscurity, forcing the survivors to adopt totalitarian systems to ensure their continued survival, with the one law they all have in common being that never again will we permit someone to create another DOOH.
Looking out the window as I write this, it looks like we avoided the worst-case scenario – for now…
Parallax movement – the movement of various planes each at different Z distances – creates a huge amount of visual interest to the human eye. I used this technique extensively in creating these DOOHs; it’s that subtle movement that really creates a sense of realism and captures your attention.
Finding interesting ways to bring the static keyart Photoshop files was great fun in this project. From convincingly replacing the static flames with moving fire footage, to realistically animating the subtle movement of waves across the boats scene – these items were all about layering in detail to give a sense that the world of The Rings of Power is one of great expanse and depth.
Digital Out of Homes rarely end up displaying on the exact same screen size across locations. And this campaign for The Rings of Power stretched across the whole of Europe; from buses to train stations to airports. Therefore it was key that I built these scenes with flexibility in mind to ensure that they were able to look their best, no matter the screen.
