S4 Studios (www.s4studios.com) has designed the new graphic Re-Branding campaign for NBC Universal's Universal HD cable network. Over 100 individual promos and IDs were created over nine months of design and production for the 24/7 HD Net, which made its debut in early 2006.
NBC Universal Senior VP of Emerging Networks Dan Harrison and Director of On-Air Promotions Sarah Pierce hired S4 to create a unique identity for its all-new lineup of original HD programming.
The S4 team of Designer/Director Geoffrey Kater and Creative Director Thomas Helmintoller created a campaign around minimalist elements, but large in scope, in order to best utilize the HD 16:9 screen.
Three simple design elementsmetallic, shaded copper balls; metallic tubing, and a clean geometric infinity planemove dozens of different ways in a dynamic interplay.
"The elements in this surrealistic universe combine to introduce shows, fly around, wipe text on and off, and serve as IDs and screen snipes, "Helmintoller said."The HD aesthetic and high resolution environment dictated the design, so it was important to make it feel big."
Kater added, "As we planned the campaign, we started talking about one of my passions, high-end exotic sports cars such as Aston Martin, that are finished with exceptional chrome treatments. But I didn't want to use chrome. It's the obvious choice and everyone does that. Then I thought of using copper as the central design element, and the more I thought about it, the cooler it sounded, especially for a new look HD network. Those elements led us to create this really immense, extremely clean, luminous environment. The animation is very fast, high tech and very in-your-face, but also has a playful quality to it that really engages the viewer."
The design evolution also took into account the different programming blocks being launched by Universal HD, which include sports, movies, series, originals, and special presentations.
Most of the campaign was animated in LightWave 3D 9.0.
"This project shows that LightWave is just not for character animation and cartoons," Kater said. "We created much of the surfacing with the program's new shader node system, and made extensive use of LightWave's hard dynamics, depth of field and environmental controls. LightWave also enabled us to do really fast radiosity rendering in HD. We were using dual quad-core Intels, XP 64bit and 8 gigs of ram per render node. We could render out a 150-frame HD sequence in 35 minutes. That is blindingly fast."
Final compositing and type creation was done in AfterEffects.
S4 Studios partner/writer Larry Le Francis, 3D animators Don McCoy and Ken Wilder, 2D compositor Craig Kuehne and junior compositor Sarah Keturah also share credit.
