HP Serena Williams Hands Commercial

Director: Joseph Khan

Designer: Neil Tsai

3d Leads: John Nguyen + Chris Eckhart

Animators/ Compositors: John Nguyen, Chris Eckhart, Hai Ho, Robin Roepstorff, and quite a few more people I don’t remember.

Summer of ’07 was my first time back to Stardust since 2003-ish. Seeing how my wife and I are HUGE tennis fanatics ( Honor’s tennis blog ), I was easily convinced in driving all the way to the west side for this one.

I got to spend 2 days on set with Serena Williams as TD alongside with Chris Eckhart for Stardust. First day was a Motion Capture session with Serena.

2nd day was mostly green screen. Joseph Khan was the live action director for HP Serena.

On set, Chris Eckhart and I had to take measurements of Serena to get proper proportions for the CG Serena in the video game section. And lemme tell yah, that shelf in the back was truly a shelf.

After the shoot came down to the nitty gritty. With an army of designers creating look frames for each vignette, and on average 5-6 animators, we started creating each vignette.

I worked on the photo album section, mini-tennis player section, video game section, some other smaller 3d sections, and compositing.

I actually designed the tennis stadium for the video game. Unfortunately the way the camera is framed, you can’t see the entire stadium design, but you can see it here.

Members of the 3d team were Hai Ho, Robin Roepstorff, Chris Eckhart, and a few other peeps i can’t seem to remember off the top of my head.

And of course the gratuitous photo of me and Serena. She signed my Wilson racket and a pink Wilson tennis ball for my wife.

And yes her guns are bigger than mine…