Crispin Porter+Bogusky created the website for “Coach Zero”, the spokesman for Coca-Cola Zero’s partnership with the NCAA. The site introduces the character and houses a series of fun basketball-related games and tools. GASKET STUDIOS partnered with CP+B on H.O.R.S.E. and T-Shirt games, site intro movie, as well as other animated site elements. Each section included full concept boards, art direction and intensive collaboration with the CP+B creative team and web developers. The overall direction was called “Man-Tech”, a phrase coined by one of the art directors, which helped GASKET zero in on the core audience of 18-35 year old male college basketball fans.

   
H.O.R.S.E. is like a regular game of basketball H.O.R.S.E., only played in an office with a bottle and a trash can. To play you bounce an empty Coke Zero bottle off cubical walls, fax machines, filing cabinets, or pretty much anything to make a basket and challenge a buddy.  For the H.O.R.S.E. game we designed one room with a variety of office and everyday objects.

CP+G wanted a realistic office so we put a lot of time into creating the room and objects.  Most of the room is interactive, so individual seamless animations were created and placed independently in Flash.  When the bottle hits an object  it comes to life.   

 
Above are the room concepts we collaborated on with CP+G.  We originally had popup  “gofer” people that could be targeted.  Below is the final game.  Checkout the cool interactive targeting system.  That’s our creative director’s hand, by the way.
 

  
The Coke Zero “Coach Zero” microsite needed an hard driving, NCAA worthy intro animation that would set the look and feel for the whole interactive game site.  Gasket  presented and revised over half dozen boards, eventually settling on a “man-tech” theme, which is electric and exciting with a techie, futuristic look.  The example used to illustrate “man-tech” was the metal power button on a Apple computer.
 

 
Final boards with “man-tech” style. 
  

 
Here’s an initial concept exploration for the open.  This one was called “Inside” where the game is contained within the bottle, eventually escaping its bounds.
 

 
Another concept where the viewer runs down the neck of the Coke Zero bottle, only to emerge into a stadium, which is then shown on the big screen of the Coach Zero home page.
 

 
Green screen production was done in Los Angeles as part of a larger commercial campaign.  We sent reference video mockups with camera and acting direction  to match the board concepts.
 

 
You’ve all see a t-shirt cannon.  It’s the thing the mascot runs out and shoots into the most boisterous parts of the crowd at basketball and baseball games.  This is game version where you can launch t-shirts into the crowd, aiming for the superfans with giant #1 hands.  As each level progresses you get bonus points for hit hitting cheerleaders, players or popcorn venders.

This portion of the Coke Zero site was the broadest in scope with over 100 individual animated deliverables.  They included over 80 fan, player, sports caster, cheerleader and vendor movies, each with unique, loopable action points.  There were also background movies for multiple levels, the t-shirt cannon gun itself and much more.  We communicated very closely with the CP+G team and their game developer to hone the elements both creatively and technically.  There was quite a bit of testing and R&D so that the user would have an addictive experience.
  

 
While the t-shirt gun was partly based on the real thing, this gun was quite a bit more “man-tech.”  We tested a 3D flash version of the gun, but it degraded the model significantly so we stuck with the original design and used an image sequence for game play.
 

 
Two design comps that surround the interactive fans.  These were unique background movies.
 

 
This is the final presentation of the game on Coke Zero’s website.

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