A tribute to the legendary '80s film, Bombardier, directed by Gérard Pires for the Peugeot 205 GTI, "The Legend Returns" for the Peugeot 208 GTI was a joint reflection on how to create a successor that is just and dramatic and powerful as the original.

No scenery, no car, no bomber plane, no car exterior, and no helicopter was filmed during the making of this high-action campaign. After the opening seconds of the old ‘80s commercial, almost the entire film was created using 3D animation software. In order to make the transition from the 4/3 to 16/19 format, that original scene from the ‘80s film was recreated in 3D to look exactly as it was.

The main challenge was to produce a film entirely in photo realistic 3D. What's very specific to animation vs. live action is that every single frame of this film was drawn or modeled beforehand. To stay as close to reality as possible, every 3D camera angle had to be set up as if it were shot in real life and every material, texture and movement required a lot of work and research. Specifically, the lake collapse required multiple iterations due to the interaction of ice and water. Also, the all-white snowy environment required an enormous composition and rendering work to achieve a realistic texture. We also had to recreate the entire scene from the '80s film just before the transition to the 16/9 frame exactly as it appeared back then.

The software used for this film was 3DSmax, Vray, After Effects, but it also required a lot of hardware to render the images. On average it took over an hour to render an image and the explosions took up to 15 hours. We have developed specific tools and workflows for this kind of job, but the software requires an artist to make sure it looks real.