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Monday, 12 June 2006 | Levent OZLER
Buck Kicks it to ESPN's World Cup Coverage
 ESPN WC open.mov ( 7MB ) - Viewed 471 times
montageWC.mov ( 8MB ) - Viewed 245 times
Los Angeles-based motion graphics and production company BUCK produced an epic and illustrative open as part of ESPN's upcoming coverage of soccer's World Cup championship tournament. The open is part of a complete show package that includes graphic elements detailing team match-ups, player transitions, transitional elements and various openings for different segments within each tournament game broadcast by ESPN. The open began airing Friday.
"This was our first project with ESPN and it was very exciting for us," says Ryan Honey, Creative Director and Principal at BUCK. "Essentially, the package we provided contains all graphical elements that ESPN will be showing during the World Cup. They were looking for an international, almost Olympian feel that would convey to American viewers just how popular soccer is throughout the rest of the world."
As a German stadium full of fans looks on, a muscular footballer employs some complex footwork before kicking a soccer ball downfield. In a scene more painterly than athletic, the ball begins to come apart in the air, transforming into falling bits of confetti as it does so. The confetti falls down upon a group of fans enthusiastically waving the flags of their respective countries before transitioning to a Brazilian beach. Two shirtless players perform some impressive acrobatics before kicking the ball on to the cobblestones of an Italian street, where a group of children pass it back and forth. One of the Italian kids then kicks the ball over a range of snow-capped mountains and into the distinctive Berlin Olympic Stadium.
The BUCK team initially presented five concepts to ESPN and were delighted when the sports network chose the most overtly artistic design. It was then time to bring their paintings to life in the open.
"The opening was most challenging because it was important to make it look realistic, while maintaining a painterly quality," says Honey. "We pitched using illustrations, but realizing those illustrations in 3D was a tall order. A lot of R&D went into it, and we had a dozen people working on it, using Autodesk Maya and Adobe After Effects. It was a painstaking process: there were twelve passes that came out of Maya, and we had our Art Director design three different frames using those passes, all of which required a great deal of handcrafting shadows and balancing color between the motions."
Having succeeded in balancing realism and artistry in the open, the BUCK team then turned to creating elements that would describe players, statistics, soccer facts and so on during each broadcast.
"In the interest of consistency, we tried to stay with the same color palette that we used in the open," says Honey. "Inevitably, however, things became somewhat less organic when including statistics and player information. What we came up with was the idea of using elements that resembled the distinctive architecture of German soccer stadiums. In that way, we were able to blend an artistic sensibility with a structured and highly ordered view of the game.
Buck Credits
Creative Directors: Ryan Honey, Orion Tait
Executive Producer: Maurie Enochson
Producer: Nick Terzich
Art Director: Thomas Schmid
Design: Thomas Schmid, Ben Langsfeld, Yker Moreno
3D/Animation: Paul America, Steve Day, Billy Maloney, Sarah Bocket, Morgan
James, Patrick Scruggs, Dan Willey, Ekin Akalin, Doug Wilkinson, Guy Fuller,
Jose Fuentes, Stephen Kelleher, Richie Sandow
Editor: Harry Walsh
Production Assistant: Garrett Quon
Software: Adobe After Effects, Maxon Cinema 4D, Maya
Buck: http://www.dexigner.com/directory/detail/7477/
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