Nickelodeon Image Spot

This is a 1-minute signature commercial that kicks off a new season for Nick — a network extravaganza integrating all the characters, all the shows, the branding, etc. The key challenge here was that Nick has shows with cartoons and shows with humans, and they wanted to portray themselves as a single place where all of these things coexist authentically.

One of the things we played with the in the rebrand is the ambiguity of the picture space. Is it 2D or 3D? We tried treating the live talent as if they were 2D cartoons that could be folded up or reconfigured. Then we thought: how do we reverse this? Can we take 2D images and bring them into a 3D space?

We came up with the idea of using projection mapping for this spot. Projection mapping is a way of using a real projector in a real space to project synthetic objects on top of real ones. The above test shows a room in our studio (on the right) and a photo of the actual set (on the left).

We had VJ software on set to control all 6 projectors on the fly, changing the environment in real time. The set also had a turntable and multiple treadmills that could be swapped out so that the talent could move in these environment.