The Santa Monica, California-based Goodspot, announced details of their original broadcast design and animation work for Fox Sports’ 2002 NFL on-air promotions graphics package, as well as their editorial and sound design work on a series of spots promoting Fox’s Sept. 8 broadcast of the St. Louis Rams versus the Denver Broncos.
| <?php virtual(“/includes/boxad.inc”); ?> |
The 10, 20 and 30 second promos debuted on Fox earlier this month and also serve as templates for future network and affiliate promos. In coming up with a unique concept and executing it, creative director Sonia Lamba and her team included among their “secret ingredients” — Macs running Maya, Avid and AfterEffects.
Maya is the industrial-strength 3D design and animation software from Alias/Wavefront, which was updated to version 4.5 this month. AfterEffects is the tool for motion graphics and visual effects from Adobe. The software was running on four dual processor Power Macs.
Back in June, Lamba and executive producer Mandy Martin pitched Fox’s team, including senior vice president and creative director for Fox Sports on-air promotions Scott Bantle, on their concept.
“To illustrate our perception of a football field as being dangerous and ominous, we proposed showing the world beneath the turf as a moving field of intricate, menacing, razor-sharp metallic structures that transform to render the gridiron and the Fox logo itself,” Lamba said. To ensure their vision came across, they used a unique approach. “We actually used Maya key frames to create our storyboards for the pitch. We did this so that our clients would feel confident that what they saw on the boards would indeed be found in the final package.”
As another part of their creative approach, the team’s original design elements created in Maya were composited in Adobe AfterEffects. Having animators that are skilled in both software platforms allowed them to create several pieces and quickly composite them together to make sure they were working, Martin said. The final delivery included over 150 different elements.