In late 2001, Rainbow Studios was asked to create a high resolution CG version of Britney Spears for THQ's "Britney's Dance Beat", a Playstation video dance game. This was Rainbow Studios' first character animation project for THQ, Rainbow's  parent company. The CG Britney assets were to be used in producing the game's intro cinematic, and various marketing illustrations for print and web published materials.

     I saw the chance to build a CG Britney Spears as both a huge challenge and a great opportunity.  Though CG humans are nothing new, not many attempts at achieving a likeness of a celebrity have been made. So, it was a chance to see how good a job we could do of generating a Britney model that successfully represented her likeness and at the same time provide CG assets and materials that would enhance the game product.

    As it turned out, some of the high-res materials we created for the project made it into the in-game product. Britney's face textures were lifted from our final model sheets including the animated blinks and smile textures. From what we hear, Britney is pleased with the materials. If she's happy with it, that's good enough for us.

Britney's head, hair and body modeling: Boyd Lake

Facial and hair textures: Boyd Lake

Bodysuit and set  textures: Tyler Williams, Thuan Do

Set models: Thuan Do, Stan Fuka

Set lighting and rendering: Brad Doan, Tom Granberg, Tyler Williams

Hair dynamics simulations: Michael Klucher, Boyd Lake

IK rigging and skinning: Chris Baranowski

Key-frame animation: Boyd Lake, Michael Smith

Motion Capture technical direction and cleanup: Andy Sinur, Paul DeNegris

Animation compositing: Tom Granberg