Case Study
Diadem | Axis Tennis Racket
Animated Product Launch Video
Tron, Air Foils & Tennis
For Diadem's new racket, the Axis, they envisioned a glowy, neon, Tron inspired video. So I rewatched the original and the new Disney one for some inspiration. I came out of my Tron marathon with notes on light cycle paths and moody, reflective neon courts. They had also explained to me that the racket has a unique feature that acts as an air foil to create lift. So I thought some cool neon gradient wind-tunnel air streams would really help sell that feature.
MOODBOARD
Using Pinterest and Midjourney, I pulled up some nice moody product photography looks with neon highlights mixed in. Pinterest had some great references of cars in a dark moody environment with neon-lit air streams going over them. Midjourney spit out some cool ideas with a tennis ball sitting on a reflective surface with neon lights in the background.
STORYBOARDS
Diadem wanted to express 3 features of the racket in the video; the air foil feature that creates lift, and that lift adds more spin to the ball, and the location of the most dense part of the strings is moved up. I thought the light cycle effect from the Tron movies would be cool to show the tennis ball having a spin effect. The air foil tunnel with neon air streams would be a great way to show the lift feature of the racket.
Animatic
It is important to pace out the video using an animatic. I found a great song that had that cyber-punk, Tron feel to it.
STYLE FRAMES
Diadem had the CAD models for the Racket so it was easy to clean up their geometry a little and create hyper-realistic materials for it. I built out a Tron style arena for the environment with a reflective court outlined with neon lines. The wind-tunnel effect was created using a plugin called Turbulence FD.
