PROJECT DURATION: 10 DAYS

A trailer for a commercial in-person video game tournament, taking place in Milan, Italy

The only prompt given by the commissioner was for the trailer to be 'hype' and 'fun'; the entire style and design of the trailer was developed by myself and sought to combine Western 2000s pop art with East Asian choreography to elicit an exciting and energetic atmosphere through the fusion of striking visuals. The style of the trailer has since been adapted by the tournament organisers for the theming of the rest of the event.

Due to the commissioner necessitating a quick turnaround, I chose to save time by involving few transitions between scenes, focusing rather on making each scene's design as striking as possible. This stylistic choice was aided by my choice in song, which utilises strong guitar hits at the start of each bar, which created a diegetic synergy between audio and visuals.

Following the first half of the trailer, once the invited players begin to be revealed, I chose to incorporate a heavy usage of 3D animation; I personally created every animation seen in the trailer and used miscellaneous dances and poses as reference to create a party-like atmosphere where the featured game's characters are grounded in reality. The concept of this stylistic choice was to emphasise the connection between players and their favourite characters; by presenting them in a way that gamers have never seen before (dancing, rather than fighting) it individualised the event's trailer from all other events.

I also created the animation for the event series' logo, featured in the trailer at both 0:03 and 0:43. The animation references the name of the event 'No Tech Zone', which itself includes lingo recognisable from within the gaming community. A 'tech' in the featured game is a way of breaking your character's fall after they're hit by an attack; to miss a tech (commonly known as a 'no tech') results in your character bouncing off the ground, hence why once the character is meant to bounce off the ground, he instead squashes and stretches into the series' logo to create a continuity between name, game and animation.

The trailer was incredibly well received online, considering the original potential reach of the commissioners' online presence. The event runners' X (formerly Twitter) page rose from 300 to 525 followers following the trailer being published, with the trailer itself receiving over 1000 likes on its original post. Additional quote tweets to the original post that promoted only the dancing portion of the trailer and the original animation references put alongside the dancing section each attained 1500 likes and 3500 likes respectively, further promoting the event. A significant number of quote tweets to the original post and the trailer's follow up promotions comment on the 'amazing' style of the trailer and say that it "might be my favorite fighting game/smash related trailer ever".

Link to original Twitter post: https://x.com/NoTechZoneSSB/status/1866512199180484951