The Mill Crafts 3D Anamorphic Billboards for ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’

Transformers has enlisted the animation talents of The Mill to deliver a number of 2D and 3D billboards to promote the latest film in the franchise, ‘Transformers: Rise of the Beasts’. 

The project adds to The Mill’s growing portfolio of billboard work, having recently designed a number for Apple’s ‘Prehistoric Planet’, as well as HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ in iconic locations including New York’s Times Square, London’s Piccadilly Circus and Melbourne’s Bourke Street.

Framed by a luscious jungle environment, the series of billboards see key characters from the Transformers franchise come to the fore with a bang. Swinging out from the screens, they look out to passers-by, poised to jump down onto the streets below.

The Mill received the broad brief to find ways to present the main Transformers characters on as many 3D anamorphic billboards around the world as possible. Studying the film’s key sequences, the team settled on the core narratives to pitch back to Paramount, set in a Peruvian jungle environment to match the movie. The campaign was then directed in-house by executive creative director Carsten Keller, animation director Marion Strunck, and head of CG Fabian Franck. Supported by The Mill’s wider team, they designed everything from the animation to the set builds.

With only a short run time, The Mill needed to create striking effects within 10 to 20 seconds that capture the attention of passers-by. To do so, the team ensured each character has an impressive introduction and appears to be crawling out of the building, blurring the boundaries between the digital and real world. The 3D effects are bolstered by storytelling elements which tie the visuals to the movie itself, satisfying audiences who want to see their favourite characters act as they would on the cinema screen.

One of the main challenges The Mill faced was ensuring the same idea could be transplanted onto the varied formats and ratios of billboards around the world, with widths ranging from 10 to 80m and each screen having a different specific vantage point from which the 3D effect is seen. Having worked on several global billboard projects prior, The Mill was able to draw from their preexisting processes and tools created to locate these sweet spot viewing angles easily. This also streamlined the workflow between animators and generalists, allowing them to constantly test the performances and deliver the final six in just six weeks.

The 3D anamorphic billboards are located in Hong Kong, Seoul, Taiwan, Toronto, and Tokyo, and will run from a week prior to the movie release to several weeks after. In addition, The Mill team has designed a non-anamorphic billboard able to be shown on any screen of any size, currently being shown at more than 40 sites worldwide.

Carsten Keller, creative director at The Mill, comments: “Working under the Technicolour Creative Services umbrella allowed us to collaborate closely with our colleagues at MPC and learn about the specific character moves and styles they used in the movie. It was a great opportunity to support one another and speak to the animation supervisors and directors, exchanging ideas that we could implement to excite audiences and stay true to the films.”