Some great in-game stuff coming from Keyframe. They also have a blog. Thanks for the contribution Ryan.

Keyframe designs innovative, entertaining digital content in HD video, 3D animation and motion graphics, specializing in media networks and large scale LED displays, to evoke an emotional connection with viewers.

Home to artists of the digital world, Keyframe is a premier agency contracted to develop creative content in SD and HD video, 2D and 3D animation, and motion graphics. We throw these awe-inspiring creations on LCD and large scale LED video displays, as well as any other electronic broadcasting medium.

This is awesome. Really great idea, and very well executed.

Maybe it’s the speed, maybe it’s the power, or maybe it’s just the ear-splitting noise, but something about tackling a new 
NASCAR project always inspires a lot of really interesting and fun ideas for us to dive into, and this year was no exception. (more…)

All the superbowl commercials are on hulu

My favorite was Pepsuber: http://www.hulu.com/watch/55730/super-bowl-xliii-ads-pepsi-pepsuber

NBC is going to be rolling out a new graphics package for the big game tomorrow. Including a newly designed scorebug that will morph into stats.

The network is tweaking the use of its score bug, which shows both the score and the game clock, to make the overall graphic look less intrusive on the TV screen. Instead of showing individual player stats on-screen at the same time as the score bug, NBC will have the score bug morph into a different graphic, with the score and time momentarily disappearing from the screen.

Looking forward to it.

Read more at Tech Special.

Grid Iron Flow, is going public beta next month. I can’t wait to try this software out. Seems great.

Nucleo Pro 2 for CS4 is not out yet.

Harry Frank of Gray Machine who was spoke at the Chicago Motion Graphics Festival this passed weekend has some incredible tutorials on his site. Particularly interesting for sports motion graphics is his ‘Expressions & External Documents’ tutorial. In which he explains how to use the values from a text document to automatically populate your text layers in After Effects.

I explained how to do this using variable sets in Photoshop last year at the Idea Conference. In the After Effects/Photoshop Tips and Tricks seminar. (Here are my notes from the beginner class). But I haven’t found a great solution for implementing data into After Effects.

I’m curious how far one could take this. Changing RGB values of solids based on the teams color, or grabbing the teams logo from a database and ‘alt-dragging’ it over your animation. Conceivably, repurposing your player introduction for every player on every team in MLB, based purely on a giant excel document.

Harry  is the man! thanks for all the hard work.

http://www.graymachine.com/v3/19-expressions-and-external-documents.html#

Revised: http://www.graymachine.com/2009/04/expressions-and-external-documents-revisited/

Another oldey but a goody. Check out the storyboards as well.

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I know this isn’t fresh news but, Fox Sports Graphics did the BCS Ratings Show intro last year. I thought this was a neat way to affect an edit. I know I’ve been tasked to “throw some graphics” into an edit. But its nice to see something cool like camera mapping the footage onto words. Mark my words, this is the year of anamorphic lens flares and Ambient Occlusion. See Garus Booth’s mlb spot.

Also, if I’m reading their site correctly, they made this spot in 8 hours. Nice!

Credits

EVP Marketing – Eric Markgraf
SVP/Creative Director – Robert Gottlieb
Creative Director – Blake Danforth
Design & Animation – Guillermo Lecuona
Design – Christian De Castro
Flame – Kevin Prendiville
Editor – Junior McRae
Music – Fulton Dingley

Ben Sutter of Bulls/Blackhawks fame recently updated his reel with some great work. Thanks for the contribution, looking good.

Launch Movie

I’m sure everyone has seen the Fox Sports HD tag, in every football game in the last 6months. (more…)