Wizz director Gary Levesque channels vintage Japanese TV vibes in this film for the Ranger AF3 shoe, a collab between Nike and Japanese fashion designer Nigö, merging lux sneaker fashion and anime nostalgia.

Gary Levesque: “The inspirations on this film are pretty obvious: Voltron, Transformers etc., anything remotely related to sentai or mecha anime. I tried to take on the role of Nigö who watched these series as a child in the 80s, while at the same time integrating my own references.
 

“I kept in the back of my mind the idea that this film should be made for the child Nigö watching TV on a Saturday morning with a bowl of cereal.”

 
“I kept in the back of my mind the idea that this film should be made for the child Nigö watching TV on a Saturday morning with a bowl of cereal. Then I had to unfold this idea by integrating both my own desires and more universal elements – mixing references from the 70s and 80s with more contemporary and western elements.

“Anime is an extremely codified genre, imposing specifications that are fortunately great fun to pay homage to. In the same way, we tried to adapt as many of the methods and know-how of the time as possible to contemporary animation tools.

“For example, we only used the gouache palette that Japanese studios of the time used for their sets. We wanted to do as much as possible by hand for the animation, but we used 3D for the mechas, making it as invisible as possible. I’m quite satisfied with this aspect as not many people have noticed these sequences are 3D.”
 
 

 
Client: Nike
EP: Leo Becerra
Senior CD: Kimou Meyer
Senior Art Director: Riley Hoke

Production: Psyop
EP: Andrew Linsk
Producer: Jon San

Animation: Wizz
Director: Gary Levesque
Producer: Amanda Stubbs, Matthieu Poirier
Production Coordinator: Akito Martel, Alice Sammut
Character Design: Hugo Moreno, Emmanuel Lantam, David Maingault, Ona Sugar
Storyboard Artists: Olivier Lescot, Ian Alejo
3D Supervisor: Hugo Garnier
3D Modeling Artist: Andrey Kolesov, Wan Affendy, Hugo Hannache
Rigger: Pierrick Picault
Colorboard/Pre-Production: Victor Delorme
Lead Matte Painter: Victor Delorme
Matte Painter: Simon masse
Visual Development Artist: Victor Delorme
3D Animator: Andrey Kolesov, Pierrick, Hugo Hannache
Layout posing: Elodie Xia, James Molle, Aimman Ibrahim
Lead Animator: Xavier Ramonède
2D Animator: Aimman Ibrahim, Angèle Legras, Jean Courtois, Lazarine Biaud-Loison, James Molle
Rough & Tie down: Aimman Ibrahim, James Molle
Conformation Clean-Colo-Shadow: PUDOC
Lead Anim: Xavier Ramonède, Angèle Legras
Lead FX Artist: Axel Digoix
FX 2D: Axel, Louis Quémeneur
Lead Compositing: Benoit Galland
Compositing: Philippe Valette
Editor: Antoine Gaunin, Clara Mavrakis

Music/Sound Design/Mix: Antfood
ECD: Wilson Brown
Creative Director: Yuta Endo
EP: Sue Lee
Senior Producer: Trevor Haimes
Composers: Wilson Brown, Yuta Endo, Benjamin Edelson
Sound Design: Yuta Endo
Musicians: Lou Schmidt, Joshua Heath, Wilson Brown, Yuta Endo, Spencer Casey, Linton Smith
Vocalist: Maika Loubté