Picture Perfect Soccer France is rich with famous artists both past and present. Imaginary Forces used this rich artistic history as an inspiration for their ident clips they created for the Euro Cup 2016 using Cinema 4D.

As the Euro Cup 2016 in France was approaching, ESPN was also preparing its broadcast of this monumental event. Naturally, they would also need a unique ident design for such an important event. The job was given to the experienced team at Imaginary Forces, who used the host country's rich artistic history for inspiration. Voluminous brush strokes, pencil sketches, cartography and technical elements in the style of the industrial revolution were used as references for the more than 200 animations required for the project.

"Our digital artwork was based on real-world surfaces that we created by generously applying acrylic paint applied with a palette knife. These colored stripes were then digitized and a special rig was created in Cinema 4D which in turn controlled a series of Deformers using a specially created slider. This way we were able to transform the color swatches into strokes that moved along a spline. We developed this setup at the very beginning of the project, which meant that we could apply it to many different motifs such as the Eiffel Tower, which was made up of a series of brush strokes."

"We used Cinema 4D's Sketch and Toon feature for the teams' coats of arms," explains Jeremy. "Sketch and Toon produces a certain restlessness in the animations it generates, which lends them a slight flickering effect. To counter this, we developed a special technique that involved pre-rendering the scenes and using a camera projection to calm things down a bit. We were still able to maintain the impression that they were being drawn live," remembers Jeremy.

"Other applications were also involved in this project but the lion's share was done in Cinema 4D. In the opening sequence, for example, we created dynamic shots of player statues and rendered them using V-Ray whenever necessary."

"The Cinema 4D Take System was extremely helpful and we used it extensively. I still get the shivers when I think about having to break down the scenes into individual elements without the Take System … It was not cake walk even with the Take System but it was a great deal easier," says Jeremy and adds: "I love Cinema 4D! Combining parametric tools with its endless range of options lets me achieve results that no-one else has achieved before and let my creativity go wild!"