Goal line technology is a hot topic in sports circles as accuracy in goal decisions is vital. This simple animation illustrates a not-so-simple piece of electronic gadgetry that could make any such difficult decisions a thing of the past.

Bob Jamieson developed the ‘Superpuck’, an ice hockey puck with a tiny electronic chip inside (currently shortlisted for a John Logie Baird Award for innovation). The technology clearly had implications for other sports and is now attracting interest from FIFA, the international governing body of football. See the Superpuck website for the full story on Goal Line Technology.

The idea of the 3d animation was to show in under a minute what it could take ten minutes to communicate verbally, and to a potentially non-English speaking audience. The three elements involved are clear – the electronic chip, the sensor strip around the goal and the decoder box. Watch this space.

Categories: 3d Animation | Tags: 3d animation, Goal line technology, superpuck | No Comments

Edinburgh-based production company LA Media asked me to produce an animated ident for their video creations and this extended version above is what I delivered.

They had fairly set ideas about the design style – that it should be monochromatic, gritty and urban – and even had some animation examples to show me. This was a bit unusual, but what was more unusual was that they didn’t want me to use their existing logo.

An ident without a logo was not something I was sure I could do, but I enjoy a challenge.  Like other idents, you only use around 5-10 seconds worth but when they gave me the music they were using – by Mike Jameson – I kind of liked looking at the whole thing.

Categories: Business Graphics | Tags: animated idents, la media, logo design | No Comments

These are examples of scenes that I created for the History of the Devil a while back. The idea was to show little stylised vignettes of various demons, angels and fairies as they were discussed. The documentary used a toy theatre theme throughout so it made sense to put the characters within the theatre.

We used front and back projection screens to create the effect, combining live actors with virtual sets. The 3d graphic theatre backdrops were designed and animated then back projected from a dvd onto an enormous screen behind the performers (Lauren Lamarr and Mark Donnelly).

We also placed a second mesh screen between the camera and the performers and used front projection to cast another layer of motion graphics onto. The set looked amazing. What you see here are the basic rushes, there’s nothing added, and the overall effect is a bit like moving 3d stills.

See also The History Of The Devil.

Categories: Television Graphics | Tags: projection screens, Television Graphics | No Comments

Blink and you’ll miss it, but this is the little ident I produced for STV’s (Scottish Television) hogmanay show ‘The Scots That Rocked.’  The interesting thing about this one is that this was not the original sequence or title that I was commissioned to produce.

Producer/director Dani Carlaw was making a documentary about how Scottish people seem to excel on talent shows such as the X Factor, what with Susan Boyle having recently cracked the American market. The programme was to be called ‘The Scots Factor’ and the opening titles were to parody the glitzy, light-entertainment look of the X Factor, using the cross of the saltire in place of the X.

So the original titles looked like this:

This is a compilation of 3d graphics that I created for the insurance giant Aegon. The individual clips were spread throughout a dvd which detailed the company’s employee pension scheme and explained its finer points.

I tried to make the images as engaging as possible whilst remaining close to their branding and getting their sober message across clearly.

The pig may have been a step too far in the other direction. Although they had a piggy bank just like this one in their printed materials, I don’t think they used it in the dvd.

Categories: Business Graphics | Tags: aegon, dvd, insurance | No Comments

After we created the original Battlefield documentary series and then Battlefield Vietnam in the 90′s, producer Dave Flitton was asked to give the Battlefield treatment to the Korean War. The result was this 2-hour documentary which sadly doesn’t seem to have been as widely seen as its predecessors. I say ‘sadly’ because I remember it being really good. It also seems to have been renamed a couple of times – I’ve seen it advertised as ‘Battlezone Korea’ and others.

Like the previous series, this was entirely made up of archive footage and graphics, so for the title sequence I created this montage of treated shots and animated text, and built it around the theme music.

As my postcard for its premiere shows, it went out on PBS on August 1st 2001.

Categories: Television Graphics | Tags: Battlefield, korean war | No Comments