LET’S DRINK THE POOL
CLIENT: Team Fete
ROLES: Videographer, Concepting, Design, Rigging + 3D Animation, Copywriting, Sound Designer
A trailer for a commercial in-person video game tournament, taking place in London, England.
In talking with the commissioner, I proposed we style the trailer to be alike footage from someone recording their friends with a Sony Handycam. The music was chosen and mixed by the commissioner.
The Handycam style gave the trailer a unique feel compared to its contemporaries while also making the characters of Super Smash Bros Melee (2001) feel more personally relatable to audiences, who usually only see them presented in action-based scenarios.
PROJECT DATE: March 2025
PROJECT DURATION: 13 Days
ADDITIONAL CREDITS:
Logo + Player Logos - Tom C. (@MonkeyOclock)
Song Mixing - Max Melton
Original Character Models - Nintendo
SOFTWARE USED:
Blender (Rigging + 3D Animation, Cloth Simulations, 3D Environmental Design, Motion Tracking)
After Effects (Motion Graphics/Design, Colour Correction, Typography, Concepting)
Final Cut Pro X (Storyboarding, Video Editing)
Logic Pro X (Sound Design, Foley)
STYLE FRAMES
ENHANCING 24 YEAR OLD MODELS
Let’s Drink The Pool is a tournament for Super Smash Bros Melee (2001); compared to modern 3D media, Melee’s character models are very rudimentary - their meshes contain no variation in their material properties and their armature rigs are unsuited for efficient, modern 3D animation.
Once the storyboard was complete, I began by fixing up the models for eight of the game’s most commonly played characters (which would also be featured in the trailer) to improve the render quality and animation workflow of this commission,.
Enhancements to the models included: updated material properties, new animation rigs rebuilt from scratch (which include inverse kinematics), cloth simulations built into suitable meshes and re-illustrated eye textures for improved animation fidelity.
This effort would also be able to be taken forward for any Melee related work in the future.
A raw import of Melee’s ‘Marth’ mesh into Blender
My enhancement of Melee’s ‘Marth’ mesh
Five of the completed model enhancements rendered with lighting in Blender’s ‘Cycles’ engine.
Peach’s new eyes’ sclera and iris+pupil
(Magenta added for demonstrative clarity)
Top layers of Peach’s recreated eye textures
Each recreated eye texture component assembled together
Peach’s eyelids and iris/pupil can now be animated independently of each other via vector mapping and clamp nodes
A display of the cloth simulation added to Peach’s dress to both improve realism and to severely reduce time spent animating
A display of the inverse kinematics added to each model, speeding up animation workflows drastically.
Teasers
Three short teasers were released across the 72 hour period before Let’s Drink The Pool’s announcement and trailer in order to generate anticipation and momentum.
Each utilised footage from the ‘player reveals’ section of the trailer while substituting musical backing for foley work with diegetic, realistic sound.
I had faith this choice would resonate heavily for target audiences as the realistic soundscape would force them to ‘believe’ the featured characters were real, thus making the viewer reflect on why they the characters were at a pool. This, ideally, would lead to audiences’ curiosity towards what would be revealed.
The teasers ultimately succeeded in generating momentum ahead of the trailer’s release, with ‘Icies Teaser’ receiving nearly 400 likes when posted to Twitter.
reception
Considering the smaller overall reach of Super Smash Bros Melee (2001)'s community compared to more modern games, the trailer performed incredibly well, receiving 700 likes within the first 2 days of being published.
In addition to this, the announcement that I had made the trailer, featuring a short section from it without text, garnered a further 850 likes and many more eyes on the original trailer.
Within 3 days of the trailer going live, the tournament hit 1/3 of its 312 attendee entry cap.
Link to original Twitter post: https://x.com/FeteSmash/status/1902787463199986003