Atomic Golf

cosmic video animation!

When creating a place, just like a brand, everything has to be built, and it’s a fantastic adventure!

Atomic Golf-Las Vegas, a giant space dedicated to indoor golf, is based on the concept of enjoying the game with family and friends. ⛳️🏌️🚀

At the time of the briefing, the site was still a pile of concrete and everything had to be done…a blank page!

The key words? Attractive, fun, intriguing, captivating, colourful, bright

🎥 The brief? Dress up the whole site with videos

THE EARLY STAGES

3 main locations:

The Stripe – the front of the building with its laaaarge stepped screen and return facing the car park – and the Pylon – a huge mast rising 12 metres with 3 screens, each 4 metres wide. This is the place to captivate and engage the public by arousing curiosity and interest, the first contact with Atomic Golf – you’ve got to hit it hard!

The Astrocade – the heart of Atomic Golf, where the public can watch sports competitions on a giant screen, enjoy a drink and have fun while waiting to play. The 2 main screens and the wrapping around the columns and the noses of the slabs help to create a vibrant, colourful atmosphere in keeping with the energy of the venue.

The Cosmic Lounge, a space to relax and share delicious cocktails, captivates the public with a breathtaking graphic universe: the walls, ceilings and floors are animated for a immersive visual journey.

The challenge was manifold:

A wide variety of concepts for each space, and a lot of XXL screens with videos lasting 3 to 10 minutes – The total duration of the videos we delivered on all screens combined was 410 minutes (i.e. almost 7 hours!).

Our creative recommendation was to maintain graphic consistency throughout the site in order to define a real visual signature, unique to Atomic Golf, by creating animated wallpapers and telling a story based on the identity of this venue.

We started the project proposing 4 moodboards which, once validated, enabled us to develop different visual concepts

• The poetry of kinetic movement
• From atom to cosmos, from micro to macro
• Celestial choreography and the mysteries of the cosmos
• The geometry of the golf ball in the cosmos

The second step of this atomic saga was to create different graphic universes and propose ideas to animate.

CONCEPTS & TESTS

For each of the 3 spaces, we developped 25 different ideas for graphics, movements and 3D volumes to present our client with a book of ideas. 

One space = one atmosphere

For the Exterior, we wanted to invite the public in with the promise of a joyous cosmic and atomic journey.

This is where the ‘Atomic Golf’ brand comes into its own, and we have to give it pride of place while respecting its codes.

Inside the Astrocade, the journey begins with a visual immersion into the heart of space. We wanted to offer some fun, surprising and colourful sensations! The audience is surrounded by the screens, the movement and the colours.

After a round of golf, the Cosmic Lounge is the place to meet up with friends for a drink, where the atmosphere should be calmer, the animations slower, more hypnotic and soothing.

We proposed representations of space with stars, particles, planets (or golf balls), digital universes inspired by the retro neon universe, but also more organic and joyful concepts.

Once the initial selection had been made by the client, our team of video and 3D animators were able to start testing, so that the client could see the concepts come to life.

This was an opportunity for us to validate the technical feasibility of the graphic proposals and make the necessary adjustments to ensure that the creations were as close as possible to our client’s wishes.

From an organizational point of view, it was vital at this stage to be able to put the different technical skills of our team of animators to work on this colossal production. And of course, while responding to our client’s graphic choices, we had to be able to divide up the work between everyone so that we could keep to the schedule and deliver this long timeline in a fairly short space of time (5 months).

The adventure was just beginning!

Once our animation tests had been validated, we took into account the technical constraints involved in deploying the chosen videos on all the site’s screens, with all the adjustments that came with it!

Because of the size of the screens, calculating the video for the required lengths added a new complexity: calculation times.

Calculating 5400 images for a 3-minute video takes an average of 20 hours, provided that the scene is perfectly optimized!

Imagine the time required for 410 minutes!

In the interests of visual consistency, we had to incorporate the possibility of adapting each of the ideas to one or more spaces, while taking into account the shape of the screens, because they’re not all 16:9!

There are very long, thin strips, column cladding, staircases and even a complete T-shaped floor.

An initial trip to the Atomic Golf site in Las Vegas was necessary to test the screens, consider all the parameters and visualize our creations on a large screen, because it doesn’t feel the same behind a computer… the smallest detail takes on proportions we hadn’t imagined… what seemed fast to us becomes slow, 3mm becomes 10cm…

During our visit, each video was carefully adjusted, calibrated, chromed and, in some cases, recalculated to achieve the perfect result!

It was also an opportunity for the team to measure the size the site, but also to come up with new creative ideas inspired by the murals created in the various areas…

It was a great team adventure that filled us with energy, put stars in our eyes and gave “La Gniak” a new lease of life on this long-term project!