Courting Cortez

Nike are the elderly statesmen in the world of sports apparel.

Being the amongst the biggest and the oldest means that they have a wealth of heritage and history to draw from, and over time have released many, many classic shoes. Not being slow of the mark – Nike are digging through their back catalogue of styles and updating some of their biggest releases of the past.

In the 80’s if you were into hip hop – you wore Nike Cortez. It was that simple. The Cortez is arguably one of the first icons of the now huge sneaker industry and over time has truly cemented its status as a classic of modern sportswear.

Originally the Cortez was a running shoe; the brainchild of Nike founder Bill Bowerman who allegedly would do anything to improve performance in his running shoes. Its said that Bowerman grafted the soles of a pair of flip-flops onto his runners, and the hybrid design for the Cortez was born. Cue Cortez changing the face of running and athletes going as far as saying ‘it’s like running on the moon’. The Cortez was tattooed into the history book of kicks.

This sneaker-legacy is to be expanded as the Cortez is now the latest sneaker that Nike have granted a modern update. Using lighter technical fabrics Nike have remixed and restructured the Cortez creating the Cortez Fly Motion.

Nike have obviously gone to town on this new release, and aside from releasing an old school and new school Cortez pack (with both classic and the new technical Cortez contained within) to mark the occasion, they also asked Picasso Pictures hot shot directorial team tokyoplastic to create something fresh for them.

We talked to uber animators tokyoplastic about their superb execution ‘The Cortez Brothers’:

What was the brief that Nike approached you with?

Originally we had only been commissioned to create the Cortez Brothers in 2D; Nike were keen to convey the very individual and different characters of both brothers and to incorporate into those designs both elements of the era each shoe had come from and the of shoes themselves. It wasn't an easy task as Nike had very strong ideas about how they wanted everything to turn out visually and aesthetically. Fortunately that made for a hugely enjoyable collaboration and was an experience that I think we were all eager to continue when they decided to take the characters into animation.

Are you guys fans of trainers?

Yes, in short, but neither of us collect them.

Was the idea of helping re-launch such an iconic shoe ever a problem?

No, it was certainly a challenge and at times it was very hard work, but the idea of being involved with this re-launch was exciting more than anything else.

Was it important to try and shoehorn the history of Cortez in the spot?

Originally there was a lot of discussion about going into the heritage of this shoe and there is a huge amount to draw on there, but ultimately I think the piece is more about the shoes as they are now. Hopefully though the fact that we considered all that history throughout the design and development stages comes through in the finished spot.

Was the contrast between the 1972 shoe and the current Cortez the main focus of the characters?

It was hugely important that we created two very individual and unique characters that were also clearly brothers. As I previously mentioned it was also vital for us to incorporate elements of the era and also of the shoe design into each of the brothers. Yes, the contrast between them was a very important factor but at the time I think that we understood if we took care of the other considerations and did a good job then that contrast would ultimately resolve itself for us. Hopefully it worked!

A lot of your earlier work (Drum, Lil’ fella) is charater based, did you always have an idea to characterize the shoe?

That was the brief that Nike approached us with. I think that it was down to our previous experience with character design and animation that we were able to help them meet and, I hope, exceed their expectations.

How long did the project take?

The initial design of the character was the trickiest part of the process and took a couple of weeks. The modelling and render took a further two weeks and the project then had a production schedule that ran over Christmas for about 9 weeks. In terms of our work flow on this project we felt that it was better to work with fewer people and give them a chance to really feel the characters than to throw lots of people at it and rush things.

What did you create the spot with?

The first models of the Cortez Brothers that we did were in Mudbox. We then had to simplify them for animation and that was done on a computer upstairs.

Will we see more of the Cortez Brothers?

I hope so. Nike had them made into actual real life standing up statues that you can see in stores and it was hugely rewarding seeing these characters that we had been involved in creating like that. Plus they promised we would get some of those models too so we will certainly be seeing more of them... everyone else though? The jury is still out.

What are you working on now? (if its top secret you don’t have to tell us)

The third of our short films. The Autumn Sea. It will be released later this year and it is very exciting :)

Top stuff!! We cant Wait!

Big Thanks to the guys at tokyoplastic and to Claire at Picasso for the short notice interview!