Royal Ascot
Racing at its finest.
A royal audience, the biggest race meeting in the world, a crowd of well-dressed watchers, a vibrant racecourse, an array of colours and textures, split-second movements and brushstrokes, displaced mud, the thud of hooves, the clink of the bridle, galloping through frame by frame.
ITV Creative approached Art&Graft to create a promotional trailer for ‘the best race meeting in the world’, Royal Ascot. Originally the brief focused on portraying the racing scenes in classic watercolour canvases, but the studio team imagined a much more expressionist concept – heavy acrylics, bolder colours and chaotic brush strokes.
The final result is an incredible painterly piece –crafted meticulously in digitally painted frames, drawn frame-by-frame over existing footage. The flitting, textural brushstrokes complement the equestrian movement throughout the film as well as breathing vibrant life into the vast array of outfits and interactions, an integral part of the festivities.
VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
The designers focused their design efforts on how to express the vivid, immersive sense of movement at Ascot, from both the racing proceedings and the onlookers. Experiments with brushstrokes and smears produced glorious expressions of speed while gentle dabs in the background became expressionistic depictions of huge crowds.
While the motion language of the painstrokes is more delicate and implicit for the attendees, the painting style becomes more abstract for the horse racing, smudging between transitions to reflect the intensity and violence of the race. The elegance of the proceedings is further exaggerated by colour palette and outfit development – heritage greens and beige form a familiar base pallette, punctuated by royal reds.
"The challenge for this project was to find a style that really represented the pace and energy of the racing. We created a vibrant, impressionist brush stroke style to indicate the real cut and thrust if being in the middle of the race."
Mike Moloney, Executive Creative Director at Art&Graft
Credits
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