Beats Pills Realtime Animation System
Realtime/Game Engine, Content Production
2013
The Product
Beats by Dre is a brand built around leveraging in-the-moment social conversations. As creating instant, engaging media with a suite of 3D characters can be a challenge, they inspired us to build a system that could be used for quick content generation for social media, events and beyond, leveraging their beloved “Pill” characters.
This was one of our earliest inspirations to begin adopting engine technology at Framestore. Leveraging Unity, we built a realtime puppeteering system that would allow full live control of the five Pill characters, to aid in delivering near-instantaneous relevant social content. Using game controllers and microphones- we put the control in the hands of the creatives (or comedians!) - to organically drive the characters animation and vocal performance.
This system was not only used by the team at Framestore to generate content across a variety of live events, but was also eventually licensed and installed within the worldwide Beats offices to generate a host of international content using these characters over the course of several years.
2013 VMAs
As part of the 2013 VMAs, Framestore were part of a well-orchestrated stunt involving Miley Cyrus’ infamous “twerking” moment. Knowing this moment might happen, we were tasked with using our puppeteering system to give Beats maximum exposure and ensure the brand could engage in an authentic way with their audience throughout the night’s events.
With a team of famous comedians and comediennes in our office and a few strategically placed paparazzi at the event, we created a pipeline to churn out hilarious video clips and images across social media channels to respond to every notable moment on the red carpet and at the event. When the Miley moment happened, Framestore’s hilariously timely TV ad and social content won over the internet.
