I recently re-stumbled on an animated video on YouTube, which features Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Hulk all fighting a handful of giant robots in the streets of New York. At the climax of the video, Iron Man lifts a bomb out of the city into space; his suits suffers a malfunction from the resulting explosion, and just before he crashes to the ground Hulk jumps to catch him.
Of course, all of the is reminiscent of the end battle from The Avengers, minus the inclusion of Spider-Man.
Was the production of this animated short directly tied to the development of the MCU or, in particular, The Avengers?
On searching, the earliest upload of this video I can find is from August 4, 2008. However, I was able to find this article from June 4, 2008, which discusses the video having appeared two months prior, placing it in early April 2008 (around the release of Iron Man):
This has been around for almost two months, but I just caught up with it last night and had to share. It’s apparently a viral promo short created to boost comic book sales. It’s the best CG version of The Hulk I’ve ever seen, and the Spider-man and Iron Man characterizations seem spot on. I wonder who made it. Anyone know?
There doesn't seem to be any information on who created the short. Many comments on the article and video suggest it was BLUR Studios, though I was not able to find the video in the "Work" section on their site.