After having creative and photographic successes in the past, Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners once again tapped into Michael Tompert of Raygun Studio to help with their creative challenge regarding their not-so-mini client, Mini Cooper.

Impressed with the style Tompert brought to their last Mini project, easygoing but detail-driven art director Jay Lorenzini again called upon Michael to brainstorm on a concept that he had no real path for executing. It was the perfect scenario for them to witness Michael's ingenuity at the CGI drawing board.

The comp provided to Michael illustrated a perfectly manicured lawn, similar to that of a baseball field. It was very unlike the reality of a mega stadium's soccer turf and the agency was hoping the comp could be reinterpreted as a photo illustration. Yet, Michael wondered if it would be believable as anything less than a photograph since the goal of the agency was, after all, reality.

The first step was to locate the source. Michael kicked it off with a virtual quest of a bird's-eye view of a soccer stadium for reference. "When you make stuff from scrap, it never quite looks the way you thought it would when you start out. You have to take a really close look in order to recreate it photoreal," explains Michael. "There's always something to be discovered about how things really work, what their texture is, and the true quality of it." Thanks to Google Earth and the wonderwork of satellite photography, he looked at all kinds of stadiums from around the world, including Stuttgart, Manchester, and the still-under-construction World Cup 2010 stadium in South Africa. These and an assortment of stock shots were shared with Jay to generate reactions and get the creative dialogue flowing. Every little detail was exposed and discussed via e-mail. Experimenting with new software that does real-time rendering like a virtual photo studio, Michael played with all kinds of 3D models of soccer goals and ended up working with a highly detailed and realistic model of a soccer goal that articulated every string of net and was very unlike the look and feel of the one in the original concept.

Next, it was onto the grass, which generated lengthy discussions as to what the reality of the field should look like. This wasn't the World Cup or a suburban kid-friendly stomping ground, it had to lie somewhere in between. A creative e-mail debate ensued over the texture of the grass, the color, whether or not it should have lawn mowing patterns, and whether or not it should look like a real soccer field or be sort of clean and hyper-real. The challenge was to create a delicate balance between a well-played, wear-and-tear soccer field and a state-of-the-art, lovingly manicured lawn. "You don't have to think about these types of things with photography," Tompert says, "because it is what it is. But in 3D, when you are creating it, everything matters." In-between that creative volley match sprung a knockout photorealistic CGI drawing of an imaginary Panda Cup stadium.

In a final team gesture, art buyer Maggy Lynch-Hartley sealed the relationship with an old-school gesture. Michael received a full-size copy of the poster art, right alongside a handwritten thank-you note, proving that, in this type of creative game, everyone can come out a winner.