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Oishii-created this open for Discovery's Auction Kings, highlighting each of the stars' unique personality quirks. people do things," adds Hubbard. "The way trends disseminate through the ether out there, so many things have been done in so many ways, I feel there aren't really any rules anymore. I almost think the trend is that there are less trends. People are doing so many amazing composites and shoots — you are only limited by your imagination." Cause & Effect recently finished their own work on promo packaging for A&E's The Glades. The drama centers around a homi- cide detective who has relocated from Chi- cago to the town of Palm Glade in Florida, where crime is minimal — that is, until mur- ders start piling up. Hubbard says the network stressed that whatever they created needed to be easily updatable. They sent Cause & Effect a net- work style guide, key imagery, the tagline, details on the music being used, and informa- tion about show itself. "We did research about how the show was promoted in the past and came up with different design options," Hubbard explains. Ultimately, the promos incorporated a "Killer Weather" tagline and made used of footage that had been shot for previous campaigns. The studio gave the footage an affected, heat/distortion look, and created simple type animation that could be easily updated in house at the network. Cause & Effect was also working on a promo package for the A&E show Storage Wars at press time. And for the network TruTV, Cause & Effect was designing a promo package for the reality show Opera- tion Repo, which follows an LA-based towing company on their vehicle repossessions. Both Zemlicka and Hubbard describe the TruTV work as very different from the A&E promo work. Hubbard sees it as a CG-driven "unreal reality," where a collage of photo- graphs creates a stylistic world. "They did a greenscreen shoot with the talent, and we keyed off the environments of the show, which is shot in LA, and the world they exist in when they are doing repos. We brought that to life — it's based on reality, but is clearly computer generated. It's a mix of a lot of elements — big camera moves, cooler type." Zemlicka says Cause & Effect relies on Maxon Cinema 4D, as well as After Effects and Maya. The studio's art director, he notes, is a young guy with an old-school flair, who opts for NewTek LightWave and Luxology Modo for modeling. Adobe Illustrator is used for creating flat, 2D designs, and Photo- shop is used for clean up and some compos- iting. A Mac house, Cause & Effects has Avid Media Composer and Apple Final Cut Pro software for editing. OISHII CREATIVE Oishii Creative (www.oishiicreative.com) is a six-year-old creative agency based in Los Angeles. The studio was set up by Ismael Obregon, who has been working in design for 25 years. Obregon learned a lot about the business of design while working at Pit- tard Sullivan earlier in his career. He gained Cause & Effect's Jason Zemlicka and Jamie Hubbard. 28 Post • June 2012 www.postmagazine.com an international perspective while working in South America and Spain. Oishii was recently called on to create a new show open for the Discovery Channel series Auction Kings, which is produced in Atlanta by Authentic. An existing series, the studio was tasked with making its characters — those buying, fixing and selling items in an auction house — come off as a little more "bad ass," explains Obregon. Those familiar with the show know that each character has a unique personality, whether it's the owner's interest in weapons, the manager's wackiness, or the auctioneers' ability to drum up interest in an item. The new open highlights each team member via slow-motion imagery that helps reflect their personality. Owner Paul was shot twirling a medieval combat relic. Cindy, the manager, is shown tossing her papers in the air in frus- tration, and repairman Delfino sends sawdust flying while working on a restoration. The live action was shot at high speed — 1,000fps — using a Weisscam. "We were tasked with [adding] more pizzazz," notes Obregon. "As a fan, it was important to maintain [the personalities] and not make them do things out of char- acter. Paul is into weapons — knives and guns. His temperament is nice, cool, with dry humor. We wanted to emphasize that. Cindy, the office manager, is a bit of a scatter brain in an endearing way. Each character got their moment." The background looks like the business's warehouse, but is actually a digital recre- ation. Obregon says it would have been tough to frame the characters without items in the background becoming a dis- traction, so instead, the studio had Authen- tic shoot the show's characters against a greenscreen and then created the all-digital set, filling it with items. Obregon directed the shoot in Atlanta. "The challenge with greenscreen is that the talent is not aware of what is going on around them," he explains. "We worked with