Clash Royale
A trailer introducing the hero balloon in the mobile game Clash Royale.
Over the years, Airigami has worked on all kinds of projects, including massive installations, illustrated children’s books, stop-motion animation, and puppetry. So when we got the call to help create a trailer for Clash Royale, we said yes before we fully understood what we were saying yes to.
Kelly immediately did what any responsible creative professional would do. She researched the game thoroughly. All weekend. She studied the characters, learned their strengths and weaknesses, understood how they interacted in battle. She took this task so seriously, anyone that didn’t know this was research would think she was hooked on the game.
We’ve made commercials before. Usually it was the two of us, and maybe a couple of extra sets of hands, building something to promote balloons or Oreos, telling a story we largely invented ourselves. This was a different animal entirely. More than fifty people contributed to this trailer, and that’s just the visible crew. Behind them was an agency, a post-production team, sound design, lighting, scenic painters, riggers, and specialists for details I wouldn’t have thought to name.
Working inside an established universe has its own strange logic. In some ways it’s easier. The characters already exist. Fans of the game already know everything about them. But that means the margin for error is small. We weren’t inventing creatures. We were building pieces that had to instantly read as right to people who had spent years inside this world.
What made the whole project feel especially meaningful was learning one of the goals set for this trailer was to create something that could not simply be generated by AI. At a moment when so much conversation about art circles around machines replacing artists, this project was a deliberate step in the other direction. They came to us specifically because balloons, right now, are something AI can’t do, but they knew Airigami could.
We leaned into that, designing characters with puppetable features and practical effects for inflating eyeballs, spinning flames, arrows that launched remotely and more. We brought in two more balloon folks, Michael Abrahamson and Fiona Eagle, to help execute the plan. The commitment to practical magic didn’t end with balloons either. When we arrived at the studio in London, muralists were busy painting a gorgeous moody background on the cyc wall at the far end of the set, so as balloons faded into the distance, the world just kept going. Charlie, the puppeteer, gave motion, and therefore life, to our creations. Catering not only kept us fed, but even made a delicious scratch cake to celebrate Kelly’s birthday on the last day of filming. Lighting, cinematography, special effects. It was a remarkable ballet with so many different skilled artisans working together to create a mini adventure.
The audience so far seems to feel it. Most people watching understand, instinctively, that what they are seeing was actually built. A few assumed it must be AI, which might be the strangest compliment practical work receives these days. If something looks surprising enough, people now suspect it was never physically there at all. We’ll take it. We’ll keep innovating and staying ahead of AI advances.
A little behind-the-scenes action.