PROJECT DURATION: 16 DAYS (While working full time)

A trailer for the UK's biggest in-person Super Smash Bros tournament in history.

Following the previous graphic design lead's leave, I took up his position in creating the branding of Regen 2024. After a few team meetings, I spearheaded the idea that we should theme the event around famous films, using characters from the game to recreate movies' posters. This fusion would allow for a promotional campaign on a scale and level of detail never seen before by a Super Smash Bros tournament while providing fantastic opportunities for merchandise as well.

To make the trailer as standout as possible, I chose to breathe life into the recreated posters by learning Blender and the basics of 3D animation so I could manipulate the game's characters in ways never seen before by the game's community. Further, I chose to have as many of the scenes transition into each other in a fluid fashion to create a through line of information, execution and design, improving the cohesion of the trailer's concept.

I was very particular in my choice of posters (and scenes from films) to recreate for the trailer, with many of them originating from recognisable, popular movies (such as the Marvel intro, La La Land and A Clockwork Orange) so that the vast majority of viewers would understand the concept of the trailer and branding of the event as soon as possible. At the same time, I also included a few nicher references, such as Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 so that online communities would discuss all the references they 'got' and which ones they didn't recognise. The reception to this idea proved my concept as in many of the trailer's comment and reply sections, there are numerous responses listing the movies they recognised and asking about the ones they didn't; this would further promote the trailer in online algorithms and led to further commercial success.

Regen 2024's trailer was revealed and published to huge success, with a 300% increase in likes and shares from Regen 2023's trailer on its original post (upwards of 1500 likes and 700 retweets) as well as a further 1000 likes and 300 retweets on a version that compared the trailer to its references as they occurred. Some responses to the trailer called it "possibly the best Smash trailer of all time" and "the best trailer I've ever seen for an Ultimate tournament".

Link to original Twitter post: https://x.com/TeamRegenGG/status/1779619609823367223