Nike approached us to help them design, build and animate some fun, colorful characters that would represent each area of their powerful apparel brands. These selection of characters were used to promote Nike products and apparel through their apps, website and stores.

Our team had a lot of fun creating and animating these characters over the past few years and looking forward to pushing their stories more in years to come.

Nike 2020-2021

The EKINs

Dre (ACG)

Bean (Jordan)

Birdie (Jordan)

Dash (Running)

Dico (Football)

Kicks (Football)

Laces (MTZ)

Flip (Nike SB)

Scoot (Lifestyle)

Popper (Lifestyle)

Sawa (Football)

Zen (Maternity)

Tank (Training)

Trax (Sportswear)

EKINs in motion

World of EKINs

In-Store EKINs

Gift Cards

Digital EKINs

Behind The Scenes

We created these characters using both Cinema4D and Maya.

Modelling was done with Cinema, and rigging and animation done in Maya. It was then back to Cinema to do the final lighting and rendering. This process was used because we like to lean on the strengths of our team’s knowledge of each software to get the most out of our character’s performance and final look.

Here’s what our 3D files look like inside, we pose our rigged characters using controllers that drive each bone.

It’s tedious but we love doing it!

Credits

Client: Nike Brand Marketing EMEA

Lead Producer: Sean MacWilliams

Creative Director: Colin Ozawa

Animation Director: Kane Pickerill

Animators: Martyn Smith, Al O’Sanlou

3D Modeling: Randy Cano, Mitsi Studios

2D Animation: Down the Street

Rigging: Rig-It