Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/11672
When called on to create a visual ID for a show or network, creatives look at the project from all an- gles. Is it meant to be fun? Evoke the urge to travel? Will it make the viewer find the idea interesting enough to stay tuned or visit the show or network’s Website? Will the brand become iconic? It’s a huge challenge. Imagine if you had to pick certain colors or typefaces to define yourself to the world? Or pick three adjectives that sum up your personality. Are you happy? Intellectual? Carefree? So much goes into branding these days and broadcast design houses are partnering with their clients for the best ways to get their message across... on many different screens. Some of the pros we spoke to this month see trends; others see trends in no new trends. But all see opportunity. SPIKETACULAR WORK Bendingpixels’s Rob Garrott sees the economy playing a big role in today’s broadcast design trends. Clients are want- ing more for less; and they are getting it. “Everybody knows that budgets are shrinking, but clients are still expecting a high level of movement, animation and design in their pieces. It’s really a challenge for designers to figure out how to make things happen with less money.That’s the biggest trend I’ve seen.” Garrott has an interesting bird’s-eye- view of the industry — he’s a freelancer that works on-site at design houses and he also operates his own business: North Hollywood’s Bendingpixels (www.bend- ingpixels.com), where he works with clients remotely via Skype and the Web. Having this kind of flexibility has kept him working in a tough economic climate. His response to the bargain-hunting trend is being able to provide every aspect of this process — from design, animation and editorial to some sound design. “That’s my response to clients’ de- mands for more for less.” In terms of projects, Jason Hearn, creative direc- tor at LA’s Point 360 (www.point360.com) hired Garrott to work on the show open for a new Spike TV series called Super Dave’s Spiketacular, which is produced by and stars comedian Bob Einstein.The Super Dave Osborne character, a clumsy daredevil in the mold of Evel Knievel, was created by Einstein. Hearn had already sold Spike on the visual direc- tion for the logo, but they hadn’t come up with an open yet for the show.They brought Garrott in mid- stream during the creative process and asked him to come up with a show open based on guidelines from Hearn and Spike TV.“The creative direction on the piece was to create an open that was reminis- cent of all the big sports graphics clichés you could think of but also tied back to Super Dave Osborne’s schtick, which is a stunt man whose stunts always go horribly wrong,” explains Garrott. The client wanted the open to reflect the “gigan- tic” attitude of the character. “I tried to incorporate a lot of the elements from the Super Dave show into the open,” says Garrott.“He does stunts with motorcycles, NASCARs and helicopters, and there of the bikini girls and walks off camera.So we had to do a lot of rethinking about how the open was going to work.” Instead of focusing on the character they turned their attention to the stunts themselves. “I had already worked out the camera moves in Cinema 4D and had to go back and rebuild it,” says Garrott.“The biggest thing we had going for us was that because Cinema 4D has such a flexible work- flow — and over the years I developed some tech- niques that make for a flexible workflow going back and forth to After Effects — that we were able to re- spond to changes in a timely manner. So, it didn’t throw us back days or weeks, it threw us back hours.” In addition to Cinema 4D and After Effects, Gar- rott called on Photoshop, Illustrator and Apple Final Cut Pro for the piece. Garrott, who teaches at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, offers this advice to newbies and vets:“Keep your skills up to date.There is no such thing as too much information. You never know what a client is going to ask for, and you need say with confidence that you can do it. If you can’t there are a bunch of other people who are willing and able to do it just as well.” Bottom line, he says,“Have a deep toolbox and a flexible mind.” Tube Creative’s show open for The Weather Channel’s Flick and a Forecast. are girls in bikinis.There is all this in-your-face, over- the-top stuff and I tried to pack it into an intense 30 seconds of animation,” describes Garrott, who was designer/animator on the open. Super Dave wears a red and white jump suit, similar to the one that Evel Knievel wore, and it’s on those colors that the color scheme was based — red, white and blue, with stars and stripes. The biggest challenge for Hearn and Garrott was that their original creative direction involved the actor Bob Einstein being in a lot of the shots, but due to schedule conflicts they didn’t have that op- portunity.“We were left with one little piece where he walks on the stage, gives a disgusted look to one Syfy network returned to NYC’s Blind (www.blind.com) for a co-branded spot with Honey Nut Cheerios. The challenge was not only to integrate the Honey Nut Cheerios brand into the new look of Syfy, but also to find an engaging way to promote the new Honey Nut Cheerios Augmented Reality city. “What was fun and challenging about this project was the central goal of any cross-promotional piece — synthesizing two distinct brands into a harmonious marriage,” says Blind director Richard Eng. “In the case of Honey Nut Cheerios, it was exciting to work with a well-established and recognizable brand — everyone knows Buzz! On the flip side, the Syfy rebrand was still completely new but visually very distinct.” Blind called on Autodesk Maya and Adobe After Effects running on a combination of Mac Dual Core Intels and Dell Precision 490 Xeon workstations. www.postmagazine.com June 2010 • Post 25 WEATHER AND MOVIES Atlanta-based Tube Creative (www.tubecreative. com) has always been a heavy After Effects house, but these days they are incorporating more 3D in their broadcast design work thanks to Cinema 4D. “There is definitely a stronger push in that direction,” explains creative director/owner Chris Downs.“Al- though it hasn’t always been one of our focal points, it’s something we find ourselves more frequently embracing in our designs.” While the tools are always evolving, for Downs and company, it’s more about the design approach and making it unique. It’s also about giving the design a more organic feel, and that is a trend Tube Creative has been seeing.“There are a lot of hand-drawn ele- ments lately, and it gives projects a different flavor,” he says.“I have seen a lot of that on air. It’s not always pristine graphics in HD.” Like the other design shops we spoke to for this piece,Tube Creative gets involved as early as possi- ble with the client, preferably at the conception stage.“We are getting into a process with clients where we are boarding things and developing style frames before animation begins,” explains Downs, who acknowledges that they don’t always have that luxury due to time constraints. “We do our best at engaging the clients needs all