Transforming ideas

It's been a while since we've seen this kind of Badlander*.

The original is a web movie - an animation made by some talented freelancers who wouldn't mind some work thrown their way.. The non-original is made by Nike... Have a look to see what you think about this.

The Nike film can be viewed here Nike air Transformer and on Nike's own website Nikelab - whilst the transforming Volkswagen can be seen on Michael Smiths portfolio website where he also shows how he made this transforming beetle.

The guy in the white T-shirt walking through the beetle version is actually Michael - but the guy in the white T-shirt walking through the Nike ad is not. We haven't been able to find out who is the animator/post house behind the Nike transformer..

We do know though, that the beetle has been passed around the web since this summer when it cropped up on well-hit weblogs such as Metafilter, and also passed around Wieden and Kennedy in a pile of "inspiration links".

It is just a damn shame they didn't hire Michael and Thuan to do their ad.

what do you all think of this Badlander?

* another Badlander sprung from the web is inspired by web movies...?

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Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
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Dabitch's picture

To add to the mix: this Citroen campaign that Claymore found. (warning site crashes firefox). It's been done guys! Lets hope someone hired Michael this time. ;)

troymcclure's picture

Is it me or does the Transformer Volkswagen bear an uncanny resemblance to the BMW Mini "Men of Steel" robot?

Dabitch's picture

Nope, not just you, Claymore mentioned it as well. Got an image by the way? (You can post it, or email it to me and I will).

I like the way that Citroen transformer does the sun-highlight in window, just like Mikes beetle does. ;)

Andreas-Udd's picture

Wow! It's like Badlanders never die - this post is from 2002!
I thought of the BMW mini thing as well.

Dabitch's picture

Hey hey hey! That's right !Badlanders never die! ;)

Btw, I found this mention at e-consultancy (*shudders at horribly dated name*) :

Unfortunately Citroen will get little viral traffic from the video, since the link is almost hidden on the home page and - at least on my broadband connection - the video played at what seemed like a frame a minute. Nor is the video at a separate link. Oh dear.
Neo's picture

While we are on the subject of that Citroen transformer version.. Does anyone know who made the sountrack to that?

By the way, did you see the real mini transformer robot?

Dabitch's picture

The music is by Les Rythmes Digitales.

Thanks for the link, I had forgotten about that. :)

Dabitch's picture