Chicago Marathon

The Chicago Marathon is one of the most important one in the world. Runners from many countries participate yearly. Lasalle Bank is the main sponsor of this event every year. To highlight its client's participation in this event in 2005, Ad agency BBDO Chicago wanted to show runners of differing age and background, running through a typical Chicago red brick building.

To make the animation more interactive, viewers were asked to rollover their cursor on top of the runners to encourage them, as they would in the streets of Chicago. Runners are generated dynamically as sprites. To understand marathons better, Coolstreak's animators attended the Montreal Marathon (held a few weeks before Chicago's) where they shot hundreds of pictures of runners. Much of animation is observation, and field trips such as this is a standard activity for Coolstreak's staff. This project was completed in two weeks.