Spirit Halloween - Times Square Billboard
Jack Reaper punching through a block of Times Square.
Spirit Halloween needed a Times Square takeover that felt like something was trying to get out of the screen. The piece ran on the Digital Godzilla display, a 4K board that wraps a corner from 45th to 46th Street, as a forced-perspective illusion. Jack Reaper punches the wall, tears through, and reaches out over Broadway.
We previewed the angle in VR so the punch would read as volume from the sidewalk, not as a sticker on a very expensive wall.
What shipped
What I did
I rebuilt Jack for that canvas. The existing asset needed more control for this shot, so I did a new retopo, painted new textures, and added bones for animation. Cloth sim on the cloak failed. Displacement plus extra bones is what made the cloak work.
The punch-through needed its own breaking-glass setup. I built it from flat geometry and used Cell Fracture with Cracker to generate the fractured structure, then used modifiers, drivers, and shaders to control the breakup and final look.
I animated Jack’s punch, tear, and reach, and handled the cameras and layout for the sidewalk angle. The shot only worked from that viewing position, so animation, camera, glass, and framing had to be judged together.
I also handled the compositing workflow for the shot. I initially set it up around multilayer EXRs, but at the billboard resolution the files were enormous, around 1.4 GB per frame in my tests, and impractical to work with in After Effects. After working through farm output and missing-pass issues, I moved the high-resolution comp into Blender’s compositor and rendered a simpler final output from there.
I used After Effects at the end for the motion graphics, final board output and the distortion required by the display.
Constraints that mattered
Forced perspective only works from a specific sidewalk angle. Every camera and layout decision is in service of that view.
The board was also unforgiving of asset and finishing problems. Jack’s topology, cloak, glass, textures, and the high-resolution comp all had to survive the actual display, not just a local viewport preview.
How we split it
Dale Carman was the Creative Director on the project. I handled the 3D production for the billboard execution, from rebuilding Jack and developing the breaking-glass setup through animation, forced-perspective cameras, lighting, compositing, rendering, and final delivery.
Awards
All of these honors were awarded to Groove Jones for the Spirit Halloween Times Square forced-perspective 3D billboard campaign.
- 2023 NYX Marcom Awards - Grand Award
Category: Advertising - Billboard - 2023 Communicator Awards - Award of Distinction
Category: Billboard - 2023 Hermes Creative Awards - Gold Award
Category: Electronic Media / Digital Advertising / Display Ad - 2023 MUSE Creative Awards - Platinum Award
Category: Outdoor Advertising - Billboard - 2023 Horizon Interactive Awards - Gold Award
Category: Video - Motion Graphics / Effects - 2023 Horizon Interactive Awards - Gold Award
Category: Promotional - Video - 2023 Horizon Interactive Awards - Silver Award
Category: Advertisement / Commercial - Video - 2022 Vega Digital Awards - Canopus Award
Category: Video / Online Video (Single) - Experimental / Innovative