Case Study: Milwaukee – Thunder Trials

We looked to the event of the season, the Grand National, for inspiration when planning this client animated presentation combining 2D/3D animation, film editing and motion graphics. We were commissioned by Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. (part of the TTI Group), an industry-leading manufacturer and marketer of heavy-duty, portable electric power tools and accessories for professionals, for the Milwaukee 2019 EMEA conference in Dublin.

The brief was to make a virtual horse racing event consisting of four 3D animated races shown back-to-back across five giant screens, including the stage floor. Creating excitement and fun, and allowing Milwaukee’s invited international distributors to have a flutter, this was a noble mission that our team leapt at.

Based just down the road from the famous Windsor and Ascot courses, we widely researched horse racing – thinking outside the box about camera angles, lighting and sound – to make Milwaukee's international audience feel like they were at the races.

Our animators created 15 horse and jockey options, named in punning allusion to Milwaukee's business, with variables such as colour and texture, and a short biographical profile of each one. The faces of our team were matched to jockeys, head honcho Christine running in company colours!

Our team managed thousands of rendered images into five videos, one for each screen, including a helicopter view of the 3D racetrack on the stage. The result was a quirky, Vegas-inspired arcade-style interpretation of horse racing, complete with a race programme and distinctive designs used to identify the fictional Thunder Trials brand.

The phrase "death by PowerPoint" was anathema when making the rest of the presentation for Milwaukee look more MGM-esque. We did this by means of 3D illusions, animating Milwaukee's conference with an impression of depth and solidity.

"The horse racing event in the evening was a massive success. All the slides worked fantastically well," said Philip Welsh, brand manager at Techtronic Industries (Milwaukee). "The cordless jobsite looked brilliant but my personal favourite was the football slide which got a laugh every night. I really appreciate the Salamandra guys going the extra mile on this one as it is not a typical project."

“It was a blast working with Phil and his team – always great when our clients get as excited as we do about creating something a bit left field," said our head honcho Christine. "We're grateful for the opportunity to work with such a dynamic brand! It required quite a lot of thinking from the team in our studios to work out how to create the 3D hologram effect in the middle and synchronise all the screens too!”