Directed by Supernature, the movie was conceived as a series of vignettes, each inspired by the principles outlined in ‘The Book Of Five Rings’, a famed 17th-century text by the samurai Miyamoto Musashi. In this book, Musashi outlines his philosophy pertaining to his mastery of the martial arts, and how the discipline can be cultivated to achieve success in all areas of life.

In these movies, generative computer animation is used to express an abstract concept of the body and its motion in space and time. 3D motion capture data of martial arts choreography was used to generate a variety of effects and animation, suggesting the presence of a body in motion without literally depicting one.

Book of Five Rings was conceived within the online creative Contest Raw Power coordinated by SHOWstudio in collaboration with Alexander McQueen PUMA. Young Artists and Filmakers were invited to create and post online a movie reinterpreting various raw footage taken from the shooting of Crane vs Tiger an iconic Alexander McQueen PUMA image created by photographer Nick Knight and Alexander McQueen. Supernature was the winner of the contest and was given the opportunity to create the 2010 sport-fashion movie for Alexander McQueen PUMA Book of Five Rings

Each chapter of the book expresses a different area of philosophy and empahsizes harmony between mind, the body, and the rhythms of action. In particular, there is an emphasis on what Musashi calls “the rhythm of the abstract”.Fashion is an abstraction of the body, and that fashion represents a type of ordering (or disciplining) of the body, similar to the disciplines of martial arts.