Ho Ho Ho… Boo!! with the CN Crew!

For Halloween, the extra cool crew at Cartoon Network invited us to make a glob of promos for eight of their shows. Mixing series characters with Halloween themes, the girls and guys at Cartoon Network afforded us a ton of creative freedom in the short production timeline while still keeping things locked to a cyan, magenta, and yellow color palette. In about 30 days, we designed and animated 16 bumps in total, a :10 and a :05 for each show, including a Halloween themed menu template which would be editable and customizable for other network use.

Each piece varies in spook level and fright factor with play on Halloween themes to tie to character attributes and show ideas or storyline.

Bumps were made for Adventure Time, Regular Show, Uncle Grandpa, The Looney Tunes Show, MAD, Annoying Orange, Ben 10 Omniverse, and The Amazing World of Gumball plus the menus.

*Extra super secret Impactist production factoid: Uncle Grandpa premiered as a series during this time, so we communicated only using the phrase “Good Morning” during these weeks, regardless of time of day and for anything that need be said. Good Morning. Good Morning. Good Morning. He’s our Uncle, and our Grandpa.

For the winter holiday season, we continued making promos for the same Cartoon Network shows, but added in the new series Steven Universe. He turns his fingers into cats, so you know we’re instant fans. Meow.

The winter promos follow a tighter visual structure, with a rolling and accumulating snowball initiating movement through each piece. Though, characters and story quickly divert the ball in ways specific to each series to make each piece unique and discoverable in repeat viewings.

Again, we produced two spots for each show, a :10 and a :05, and also a menu template customizable to introduce upcoming shows in the day’s schedule and other use.

Individual bumps were made for Adventure Time, Regular Show, Uncle Grandpa, The Looney Tunes Show, MAD, Annoying Orange, Ben 10 Omniverse, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Steven Universe plus the menus.

Now, nobody sane watches TV with the sound on mute. At least, nobody we’d want to hang with. That’s cray. So, we also created a electro-peppermint tinged music track called “Wintertone” to pair with the winter promos. Nine edits of varied length and composition were delivered to afford Cartoon Network maximum flexibility and use even beyond these specific animated bumps. We think this track is shaking it just right for the holidays. Because shaking it’s all we know.

Now, we can’t lie. We love a challenge and this one was certainly up there: 36 total pieces with 9 tracks of audio in the production timeline we worked in was a test at times. But, we couldn’t be happier to work with the awesome gang at Cartoon Network.

Link to more Impactist – Cartoon Network music posts

Listen & Look: New Work for Cartoon Network

A little ways back, the awesome crew at Cartoon Network reached out and offered us an amazing opportunity to create music for their network summer refresh. Fantastic to work with, the team at CN gave us full creative freedom to develop new sounds for them in our own style.

The end result was two frenetic tracks, “Glazer” and “Wires,” complete with ten additional edits of shorter lengths for use throughout the network in a variety of bumpers and on-air promotions. As a fun bonus, we also put together numerous mnemonic jingles heard when the CN logo spins at the end of promos which ranged from expected to downright strange.

Word of caution, this music might cause you to have an urge to celebrate your sock, bust out your dance moves, or start punching a balloon.

If you like these tracks, check out more of our music on iTunes & Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube MusicSpotify, Amazon, Soundcloud, and Rdio among others.

If that weren’t enough fun for us, beyond the music, we were also invited to participate in a collaborative animation with five other fantastic studios/artists from around the world. A 60 second version of “Wires” serves as the framework from which we all worked, one piece leading into the next, showcasing the characters of Cartoon Network. Our only restriction being the CMY palette, we were all let loose to create what we feel resulted an amazingly strong piece where the picture perfectly compliments the music and vice versa.

Each studio/artist created ten seconds of animation which would flow from what came before and after their sequence. The order of authors in the piece is Alex Grigg (England), Eamonn O’Neill (England), Impactist (US), CRCR (France), Rubber House (Australia), and Awesome Inc. (US).

Our animated section takes place from :20 to :30 and because of our music involvement with the piece we chose to incorporate little Gunter playing the keys while Bloxx transforms his iceberg into a supersonic-superstar dj space booth.

For the last few years, we’ve made note of the quality of clients we have had the pleasure to work with and Cartoon Network is no exception. This project was nothing but positive and we really enjoyed our time working with their team in Atlanta.

Go Gunter and Go Cartoon Network!

 

Below are a few examples of CN produced on-air promos, menu bumpers, and ads that feature “Wires” and “Glazer.”

 

Link to more Impactist – Cartoon Network music posts

Undercast Is Overrated Promos

These are a few promos we created for tracks off our latest release, Undercast Is Overrated. These tracks and others are available for download from iTunesAmazonBandcamp, or can be added to your playlist and streamed via Spotify.

Happy listening and stay safe out there.  Beware the in-fear-structure.

Links to QuickTime versions and stills: “Yeah”“Rooby”, and “Fck Kpop 4real”.

Wilfred Season 2

Once again, it’s that time of year when our appetite for twisted tales between best friends, man and dog, can only be satiated by a weekly dose of Wilfred on FX.  The always fantastic team at FX was kind enough to ask us to expand upon the animated graphic package ideas we had already delivered last year for Wilfred’s inaugural season.

Impactist_WilfredS2_448

This season’s sequences employed a similar color palette, textured feel, and staccato character animation style of last year’s package while showcasing Wilfred’s sometimes indignant, yet always incorrigibly canine attitude towards his friend Ryan.

Impactist_WilfredS2_011

Impactist_WilfredS2_009

Impactist_WilfredS2_242

We delivered a handful of scenarios for season two we dubbed “Super Bone”, “Fetch”, “Laser”, “Rug”, and “Flirt”. These ranged from harmless to humping.  Each scenario was built to exist as a stand alone piece, while the delivery of isolated animated elements gives FX future flexibility to build new promotions using these components.

Impactist_WilfredS2_08

It’s always a pleasure to have the opportunity to develop content for projects that you are an honest fan of.  Wilfred on FX is one of those projects.

You’ll never look at a rug the same way again.

Impactist_WilfredS2_09

Impactist_WilfredS2_10

Link to Credits and Stills
Link to our blog post on Wilfred Season 1