NIKELAND X Airtopia

2022 - 2023

In celebration of Nike’s partnership with Roblox, Meister created multiple hype videos, social videos, broadcast videos, and digital out-of-home assets to educate families about their new game launch inside Roblox.

A surprise celebrity element kept the project interesting, and ultimately led to the video we created becoming one of the most-watched videos of all time on Nike’s YouTube channel.

Case Study360 Campaigns3D AnimationIn-game AssetsPartnership

Nikeland on Roblox: Discover a World Where Sport Has No Rules

Airtopia just keeps getting better

On an airtight schedule—only 3 weeks—we concepted, pitched, developed, and animated promo videos that helped to create a new reality within the world of Roblox. As gamers ourselves, we loved creating an immersive new world, utilizing Nike’s iconic brand and in new and inventive ways.

It all starts with a storyboard

Design of the world of Airtopia was not complete yet, so we kicked off our storyboards knowing we’d need to fill in some details later. This also allowed our team to bring fresh ideas to the table and help create concept art that would ultimately inform the final gameplay experience.

AIRTOPIA ANIMATION PROCESS

Real world products, brought into roblox

Our work involved reviewing the current Nike sportswear collection and translating it into the world of Roblox, ultimately developing a set of featured character designs based on real world apparel.

Using Maya and Cinema 4D, we were able to build a Roblox specific rig pipeline that allowed us to easily swap hair styles, clothing, shoes, and other character features.

Drake goes to NIKELAND

A fun plot twist to the project—Drake shot the music video for “Laugh Now Cry Later” on campus at Nike, which opened up a lot of creative partnership opportunities. We saw the perfect chance to translate the music video shot-for - shot in the world of Roblox.

The ultimate result? Two incredibly popular hype videos, that merged the fandoms of Drake, Nike, and Roblox into one fun and visionary package.

In-game capture sequences

Nike needed gameplay capture to promote what we had created together. This meant we had to get really good at Roblox. We bravely rolled up our sleeves, sat on the sofa in our conference room, and focused on gameplay, scoring points, running around all the game stages, and doing everything else we could think of that looked incredibly fun in Roblox—with an attention to cinematic detail, of course.

Introducing Nikeland, at Niketown

As a final, fun digital out-of-home asset, we created a digital map of Nikeland to showcase on screens in Nike’s flagship New York City store. The map acted as an invitation to customers to check out Nike’s unique AR game experiences.

All in all, the experience we designed for Nike x Roblox was visited over 37.4 million times in it’s limited run.

“A small, nimble creative team with amazing vision, completely buttoned up on communication and operations—a dream partnership from start to finish.”

Kenan Smith
Creative Studio Manager

Credits

Client
Nike
Executive Creative Director
CJ Cook
Executive Producer
Sami Cook
Storyboarding
David Saracino
Jared Hickman
Meg O’Brien
Modeling
Brent Austin
Ixchelt Bueno
Pipeline/Rigging
Nick Miller
Cinema 4D Artists
Ronaldo Barry
Brent Austin
Ian Ross
Petru Carvaci
Paul Esteves
Compositing
Brent Austin
CJ Cook
Texturing
Ben Lippert
Brent Le Blanc
3D Animation
Alex Austin
Tabitha Kitchen
Ixchelt Bueno
Gameplay Capture
Jake Tillett
Eric Fritz
Meg O'Brien
Chris Drake
CJ Cook
Jerry Jaimes
Sami Cook
Editing
Sami Cook
CJ Cook
Jake Tillet
Music
Steambox Sound