Chess Club Social
The brief was bold: a Godzilla-sized chess piece, slowly gliding through a real-world landscape. The client was heavily inspired by the Arrival film poster and wanted to evoke the cinematic stillness and scale of the spacecraft.
We explored a few directions, including glitch effects to lean into a sci-fi aesthetic, but ultimately stripped things back to let the imagery speak. Our aim was to keep things looming, clean, and suspenseful, while suggesting subtle experimental touches the client may not have expected, from sound design trials to alternate logo treatments.
Modelled, textured and animated in Blender
Composited in After Effects
Audio by Will Curry
To bring the concept to life, we began by modelling and texturing the chess piece in Blender, giving it scale and presence suitable for the cinematic tone.
We motion-tracked the live-action footage to accurately anchor the piece within each environment, then animated a slow, gliding movement to maintain a sense of looming suspense.
Lighting and environmental integration were key, followed by careful colour grading and added film grain to unify the final look. We also trialled logo animations and explored alien-inspired sound design to push the atmosphere further.