Tendril: Together with Blacklist and a crew of otherworldly talents from around the world, we created the teaser, launch film, and global Nike in-store installations. We built an A-list team for the project that included one of our award-winning HIGH5ER studios, Frame, to co-direct. What was totally unique about the project for us was the global collaboration. Blacklist is in NY, Tendril in Toronto, Frame in Denmark, Nike in Portland, and there was a slew of freelance gurus dotted all over the world. In total we had Canada, US, Brazil, Germany, Slovenia, Denmark and the UK all on this project. This made it an explosion of deadly talents. We all worked together hooked up by a massive 2TB Dropbox account.
 
The HIGH5ERS experiment of extending the collaborative spirit beyond the walls of the studio to join forces on special projects allows everyone to learn and grow while making amazing work. It also fosters new creative friendships, allows for faraway travel, and pushes everyone to make the best work possible together. 

Process

One of the biggest challenges wasn't that production was a global initiative; the challenge was mostly in creating the environment where the action takes place. Armed with photo references from Nike of Pariah Canyon in the United States (a place of insanely gorgeous flowing layers of rocks) we created an entire planet in 3D. This was no small feat–we did it by researching, experimenting, going back to drawing board some more, and then by exporting data back and forth between World Machine and C4D.
 
Likewise, in the brand teaser film, the giant galaxy required a tonne of problem-solving. Its swirling tornado of particles took quite a bit of testing to get right. There was no way to generate it procedurally and still have the level of control we wanted. In the end, we came up with a complex recipe that combined a traditionally modelled base geometry with procedural noises and World Machine height maps that were fed through a layer shader and distorted with additional noises. 
 
Besides the amazing team who we had the pleasure of collaborating with, shout-outs to Google Hangouts, Sheets, Slack, Dropbox, continental airline travel, coffee, and beer for helping make this other-worldly experience a pain-free collaboration.