ALL SPORTS…

Working on this show was an incredible challenge for all involved. Not only were the timelines aggressive, but we had to set up each of our sequences ourselves. The pipeline would often end up rather “free form” as the client would give us input and feedback on the fly. It was a very interesting way of going about it, and in many ways was like live-action directing of a 3d scene. We would work in iterative processes until we had a sequence that was up to snuff. That sequence would then be cut into the final show however they needed. So what you see here isn’t necessarily exactly how the sequence played out in the episode, and you definitely don’t see some of the really incredible live-action footage that went along with it. Props to the compositor and fx animators who did a fantastic job on all these sequences. I blocked the scene and camera, carried it through to final animation (we used a mix of hand-key and motion capture), and even placed objects to represent the shockwaves, glows, and nerve pulses; but it was the render-time crew, fx animator and compositors that really put the final shine on it all. In the end it paid off in spades – Sports Science and our crew won the 2009 Sports Emmy for “Best Graphic Design in a Sports Program”.