Richard Jones: BMW advertising work

BMW ultimate track application

Hello again. I said I'd upload some of my work in advertising so here's the first batch. This project was for BMW and as one of the Olympic partners they wanted to promote their new 3 series with an iPhone and Android app. with an Olympic "theme" The application was unlike most usual driving games, you're encouraged to set a good time on a track, which you draw with your finger across the screen, while driving smoothly and economically.

The setting for the game was to be an Olympic style stadium, unfortunately the actual stadium would be far to small to drive a real car around at high speed so we had to design something much larger and not a complete replica of the original, rather take influence from it. My task was to design the stadium and the route which the BMW 3 series would take to get there in the video sequence at the beginning of the game.

My first job, not knowing London very well, was to look at the maps and see what the area looks like so I can get my bearings and look at any geographical elements which could be included.

You can see I've plotted the camera points along the track to achieve the best shots, there is also the river which was a fortunate aspect in the environment as a car could cross a bridge rather than just drive along a straight road. I thought it would also be nice to have a few curves in the road leading to the stadium to show the car nicely from different perspectives so plotted this using the line vector tool.

The Story board

Please click image to view larger.

My storyboard rough

I drew the storyboard and blocked in the colour paying close attention to the strict guidelines set by BMW's advertising department. I took influence from pervious televised commercials for lighting.

Please click image to view larger

Animators first draft

The guys I worked for over at Hurricane Media worked their magic and translated my storyboard into a rough version, to get camera positioning and basic environment worked out.

The Stadium and associated props

The next job was to work out what the stadium was going to look like. We dabbled with a few designs, we had to take influence from but not directly copy the current stadium. So I made a reference folder of lighting, colour pallets and geometric architecture, here's a few examples.

Some of my work on the setting and structural features of the stadium.

Rough drawing of the basic structure of the Stadium and the surrounding park.

Working on the texture of the Stadium.

The Art Directors liked the idea of a honeycomb covering to the building and the line art at the top was sent to me to so I could see what I could do to bring it to life.

Version 2

A revised version, this time with a plastic covering and the metal frame work exposed.

I worked on an entrance for the Stadium, along the lines of suspended sails on a metal framework but these were eventually rejected in favor of something more structural.

Also using BMW's colours usually seen on their M sport badges

Now the exterior of the building had been signed off the process of texturing and animating the introduction video could be started, here is the end result:

Please click image to view larger.

I am really pleased, there are many elements including the camera locations and direction of travel which are consistent with my map and my original storyboard, the lighting is very similar too. It's an amazing feeling seeing your sketches come to life in a 3D world!

The next task for me was to design some sort of start and finish line. The agency wanted some consistency to the whole look of the environment and olympic Stadium so I had a play with a few ideas and designed these: