With award categories like "Your Song Kicked Ass But Was Played Too Damn Much" and "Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just My Video?" the 2001 My VH1 Music Awards is clearly not your average music awards ceremony. For one thing, it is the fans that call the shots: the category names, nominees and winners are all determined through an online vote. That distinctly democratic impression was enhanced by a graphics and animation package created for the December 2 broadcast by visual effects/creative design house, PSYOP, NYC. This is the second year that PSYOP had been responsible for the package. PSYOP created fifteen two-part category bumpers, five general bumpers, a 1:15 show open, logo animations, as well as winner and anticipation graphics. Opting for a completely 3D environment that would give the illusion of virtually unlimited space, the PSYOP animators modeled and animated more than 200 characters in three weeks using Softimage|XSI v1.5. In some scenes, however, more than 2500 characters appear and interact seamlessly, thanks to the creation of a sizeable motion library. Final compositions and secondary animations were added using Discreet's Flame. PSYOP created "people icons" of the kind typically associated with graphs and charts, each one ostensibly representing millions of VH1 viewers. For each award category, the icons perform a two-part skit, the first accompanied by the list of nominees, the second for the winner. In the "Your Song Kicked Ass But Was Played Too Damn Much" category, for instance, a group of icons are seen energetically thrashing to their favorite song as the nominees are read, then near exhaustion as the winner is announced.
