I love thee, avatar mine!

Amid the many Super Bowl ads that played during Sunday’s Super Bowl, one appealed particularly to gamers – or anyone, actually, who is into avatars . It was made the animators Smith & Foulkes , the same team whose animated short “This Way Up” has been nominated for an Oscar.

Here’s some info that a marketing company sent me by way of explanation:

Shot in Buenos Aires with DP Mattias Montero , all 3-D character design, modeling and animation was done in the Nexus studio in London. Compositing was done with The Framestore London to great effect.

“The challenge for us was to film the live action in a documentary style, incidentally observing moments of human behavior, and then animating the Avatars into the footage in a very naturalistic way,.” the filmmakers said. “It wasn’t about crazy 3-D characters running amok, more about the everyday human behavior of idly sitting around in parks and coffee shops. We initially shot the footage on very long lenses to give the sense of the observational camera, before starting the huge technical challenge of believably replacing humans with Avatars in each shot. Obviously there was a lot of fun to be had in casting each Avatar for each human, showing how people might select their online identity. Some would be a complete fantasy, while others a slightly more exciting version of their real selves. The music track also gave the film a useful emotional counterpoint to illustrate somebody alone in the crowd.”

If you missed the ad, click here . And be patient. It may take some time to load.

Below: This is a trailer for the Oscar-nominated animated, eight-minute long short “This Way Up.”