Now, following on from this, The Mill has brought even more heroes onto the TV screen, and this time they're going into battle.

Playstation 'The All Star' is an action packed two minutes that launches the release of Playstation's latest game 'All Stars: Battle Royale'. With VFX by The Mill, the team set about deep research and fine detail to transfer the in-game world onto the screen.

"Throughout the spot, if you watch out for them, there's a huge amount of 'easter eggs' hidden in this world." Says The Mill VFX producer Adam Reeb. "These are little clues hinting to different video games and video game characters dotted everywhere. There are weapons on walls and footprints on floors that you barley notice unless you're really looking. In the hallway we put in 2 CG doors, comped in a CG sword and added the cane that you might notice hanging from the fence in the back."

"In the Aftermath sequence," says Mill VFX supervisor Tim Davies, "we subtly integrated various elements into the scenes, adding in dripping flames, floating embers and heat haze."

As for the hero, "We worked closely with the game developers when it came to re-proportioning Kratos' body" says Tim. "In every shot, we scaled him up as much as 100-125%, to get across his magnitude. We rotoed him and exaggerated his proportions, his killer abs and man pecks! We also created the lightning effects that Cole used as his weapon of choice and created the fire trails, smoke trail and heat distortion that were coming off the back of Sackboy's jet pack. Sackboy was for the most part shot practically. We had to remove his rigs, manipulate his face, and in the landing shot we merged a game animation and made it flow seamlessly into a practical puppet shot of him landing."

"On the 3D side of things" says The Mill 3D Lead John Leonti, "we replaced all the weapons held by Kratos to give them more detail than could be achieved by the practical props. We also generated the sword that he throws around on a chain from scratch. His wings were generated using our proprietary software 'Fevva', which allowed us to play around with their look and scale very quickly, to get a look that everyone loved. The key challenge to these spots is always to bring a games character into the real world in a believable way, while keeping the notoriously detail oriented gaming fans happy."

A battle of the Titans like this also needed a grand setting, explains Adam. "We replaced all skies in battle sequence to achieve the perfect mood. And the explosion sequence also had to be epic. We were given the interactive lighting on the building as assets and everything else we built fully at The Mill." 

This is the next instalment of The Mill's collaboration with Deutsch LA and Imperial Woodpecker: let the 'Battle Royale' commence.