“You Bred Raptors?”

― Dr Ian Malcolm: Jurassic Park

Either because of how I had worked previously with the Raptors Branding material or simply due to how nice the people over at Niceshoes Toronto are, I was asked to help with the Toronto Raptors 2019 Stadium Animation project. I was initially tasked with creating a high fidelity flag simulation asset that could be modified and used throughout the graphics packages that would then be displayed on any of the 100’s of differing screens plastered across the Air Canada centre.

The flag simulations themselves consisted of a series of high frame rate (120fps) high resolution cloth simulations within Marvelous Designer. Having recently used Marvelous Designer for some rather unconventional uses (specifically hard surface package design for a digital photo shoot project)  I found that MD does a excellent job of keeping flat uv’s across complex folded geometry, which would be useful here in allowing flag graphics to be switched out for asset re-usability. In addition MD proved to be a excellent choice to add detail such as flag bunching, complex stitching and seam-work to the flag, as well as it’s a fun program to use generally.

After the simulation was completed I utilized some poligon fabric sculpting brushes and some scans of real world flag folds combined in Substance painter to generate some highly detailed texture maps to add that final level of realism to the flag.

In addition to actually working on some of the actual in game assets, as well as a large scale world map for the exterior ACC screens, I built out some concepts and explorations towards alternate uses for the flag assets and visual branding elements.

Truth be told I couldn’t resist playing around with the Raptors branding elements, as they are so highly graphical and energetic. These are products of my own tinkering after the fact, and do not reflect the current direction of, or the direction that was being explored at NS at the time

Below are Some unused visual styles and concepts

And here are some stills of the flag graphic on the big screens.

Client - The Toronto Raptors

Creative Direction - Stefan Woronko

3D simulation  - Lee James Ormerod

Texture artist - Lee James Ormerod

Agency - Niceshoes (Toronto)

Producer -  Harv Glazer, Nancy Giandomenico

Special thanks to Niceshoes, The Toronto Raptors