Plants vs. Zombies Part 2: It's About Time!

The long-awaited Plants Vs. Zombies Part 2: It's About Time! game from PopCap Games launches late summer, with a new trailer created by Wolf & Crow.  The sequel finds the original character Crazy Dave traveling through time trying to relive eating a delicious taco while fighting off brain-eating zombies.  The trailer is a day-in-the-life of Dave as he escapes a Plants vs. Zombies skirmish in his RV time machine, Penny.

 

PopCap Games greatly expanded the cast of characters for the new edition, which the gang at Wolf & Crow cleverly introduce in the the trailer, showing the characters training for zombie battles and giving clues to where this latest installment will take gamers.

 

View a making of below:

 

Wolf & Crow dove into the challenge of capturing the essence of the unique 2D characters and transferring them into a 3D world. Live action plates were shot and matched precisely to the actions of the storyboard animatic, relying heavily on reference photos to recreate the 3D environments.  Several high-dynamic-range images (HDR) were captured to generate image-based lighting.  Once the 3D plates were tracked the animators went to work breathing life into the characters. The same HDR images were then used to match the light on the live-action environments for a seamless integration of the CG and shot footage.  

Credits

Client: PopCap/EA
Art Director: Jeremy Vanhoozer
Marketing Manager: Van Riker
Production Co: Wolf & Crow
Director: Matt Berenty & David Bokser
Executive Producer: Eric McCasline
Line Producer: Ben Oswald
DP: Bo Hakala
Post Production: Wolf & Crow
Editor: Wolf & Crow
Managing Director: Kevin Shapiro
VFX Artists: Wendy Klein, Richard Daniels, Mike Dupree, Joe Grossmann, Alex Curtis, Matt Lavoy, Chad Howitt, Travis Button, Phina Kahng, Adam Swaab, Jason Kim, Mike Gajga, Johnny Lum, Darrell Abney, Jamie Leake, Jiyun Ha, Ram Bhat, Marco Campobasso
Music: “I Just Want To Celebrate” - Rare Earth
Sound Design & Mix: Wolf & Crow

Toolkit
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Autodesk Maya
Pixologic Zbrush
Topogun
SideFX Houdini
The Foundry Mari
The Foundry Nuke
Final Cut
Chaos Group Vray