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36 Post • June 2014 www.postmagazine.com director for the main title and show graphics and Jake Zucker a designer/animator for both. Mo Ghayour was a designer/animator on the main title and Chialung Liu a designer/ animator for the show graphics. Other recent broadcast projects include the season four teaser campaign for HBO's Game of Thrones and the show open for ABC World News with Diane Sawyer. MONKEYHEAD Culver City, California's award-winning motion design studio Monkeyhead (www. monkeyhead.com) has witnessed a lot of trends in broadcast design. "Light 3D, heavy 3D, layered 2D, hand drawn, you name it. Our industry loves the extremes," says cre- ative director and founder Josh Sahley. "Now we're commonly seeing a very clean 2D world, flat and simple. But more dimension and shadow will come back once the indus- try exhausts this cycle." Monkeyhead has been using live-action elements in a lot of recent show packages for Bravo and We TV. But it's their character animation that breaks through in two 15-sec- ond promos for Fox Sports 1, the new pre- mium sports channel from the media giant. The numeral 1 takes on human characteris- tics in The Victorious 1 where, sporting shiny track shoes, he nimbly soars across the bar in a pole vault competition, and in The New Year's 1 where, clad in black tie and cummer- bund, he parties a bit too hearty. Both spots end with him landing prone on the Fox Sports 1 logo viewed from overhead. The studio had worked with Fox Sports before on more serious sports pieces. But for the launch of Fox Sports 1, the network wanted "to bring something different to the table," says Sahley. "That gave us a lot of freedom. There was no set look, no designed character. They were up for anything. You can't ask for a better creative partner." Monkeyhead devised several ideas based on character animation. Fortu- nately, the shape of the numer- al 1 worked well for sprouting arms and legs. The serif-topped numeral's "head" could even wear a sweatband or a funky party hat. For The New Year's 1, Monkeyhead initially conceived the numeral 1 as a solo partygoer on a city rooftop. "We filmed ourselves for quick reference moves — partying, drunk texting," Sahley recalls. "Then we thought it would look cool to populate the rooftop with other 1's in the background. We added layers and layers of details that you don't notice the first time you see it." The Victorious 1 started out with a basket- ball theme, but the team found that pole vaulting worked best. Getting the numeral to soar over the bar took some trial and error. "It's something you don't know how to do until you get in there and experiment," Sahley explains. "We tried making him ultra bendy then stiff and muscular. We found a nice mid-ground where he's more bendy than a human but not over the top. Once you determine the character and its bound- aries it becomes easier to keep consistent with the character." The Victorious 1 opens with a close up of the numeral's shiny photoreal shoes. The animators built out a generic model of a stadium and filled it with a crowd composed of the animators themselves shot in different outfits on greenscreen. A big screen in the background follows the numeral's vault in real time. Tools included Cinema 4D for modeling and animation, Adobe Photoshop and Illus- trator, After Effects for compositing and Uberware's Smedge for rendering in Mon- keyhead's large render farm. "Character animation wasn't always as common [as some other techniques], but it's become more acceptable now," Sahley notes. "We're getting more and more jobs, from commercials to broadcast design, that want us to include a graphic or animated character even if it's not the central focus." Among other recent broadcast design projects from Monkeyhead are a 3D/live- action show open for Bravo's Untying the Knot and a redesigned package for ABC Fam- ily Network's 13 Nights of Halloween. EVOLVE Evolve, the Chicago-based boutique cre- ative production company (www.evolveimg. com), offers a full range of services, including design, production supervision and direction, editorial, color, and sound effects and scoring. It counts show promos for National Geo- graphic, ESPN and TLC among its broadcast design work. Founder and president Joel Edwards and his brother Jesse see more variety than trends in their recent projects but live-action elements find their way into just about every job these days. "There's a merger of live action and dynamic cinematography with VFX, sometimes in text, sometimes full-on motion graphics and design," says Joel. The proliferation of reality programming, especially action-themed shows, lends itself to that style of messaging. Take Wicked Tuna, now in its third season on Nat Geo. Evolve created six 30-second on-air and ad sales pieces for the show about competitive tuna fishing in the North Atlantic. "We had done the previous season's pro- mos, and this year they wanted bigger, bad- der cinematography that played into titling and design," Joel reports. The brothers went on a three-week shoot aboard the boats using a small crew and a Red Epic camera for an almost ENG approach and outfitted themselves with "all the toys," including Techno dollies and Phantom cameras, for a bigger scope of production. The network was open to the idea of using 3D for the main logo text, something they hadn't done before, Joel notes. Evolve took the existing logo for Wicked Tuna and "extrud- ed it, added bevel and glass, a shiny lighting scheme, a color scheme and some grunge texture we stole from the actual tuna boats." But it's the dynamic camera motion on the main logo text that really sells the look, Joel says. "We fly through the text like a helicopter in one shot, and in another we settle on the text as the boat is bobbing on the waves." Lead VFX artist Ryan Trommer headed the Wicked Tuna team. The text was built in Cinema 4D with Video Copilot's Optical Flares tool for light effects. After Effects and Imagineer Systems' Mocha were used for tracking; After Effects was also deployed for compositing and titling. Everything was color graded and finished in Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve. Evolve has received Promax art direction Monkeyhead brought character animation to this promo for the new Fox Sports 1 channel (above). Company founder Josh Sahley (right). Broadcast Design C o n f i g u r e d f o r t h e w a y y o u w o r k SmartTrac v2 ® C O N S O L E S t b c c o n s o l e s . c o m | 1 . 8 8 8 . c o n s o l e