FX – The Bridge

To promote the first season of The Bridge on FX, we were provided an illustration of a bisected body and tasked with producing a :15 sec ID/tone piece around this simple image. We did this using sequential photography, painted illustrations, and other live elements selected for their visual connection to the street exteriors of Ciudad Juárez. A matte painted look was sought and combined with in-camera diffusion while a shifting multi-plane arrangement separates and rejoins related elements.

The FX Networks series The Bridge follows two police detectives (one from Mexico, and one from the U.S.) in a joint effort to investigate a serial killer after a woman’s bisected body is found spanning the center of the bridge that links the United States and Mexico between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez.

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Additional Stills and Credits

Wilfred Seasons 3 and 4

Four, three, two, one.  Four mind bending seasons and then it’s done.  Farewell Wilfred.  We had a great time creatively straddling the line and hanging over the edge just a little bit with these packages.  So to wrap it all up, we put together a couple short montages of the elements that comprised the episodic packages we delivered to FX and FXX for season three and four respectively.

“Everything has to do with everything.” -Wilfred

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Yule Log 2.014 – Yulish Log Ride

It’s time for Yule Log 2.014, and to accompany our yule log loop we’ve stuffed your stocking with a holiday-ish, x-mas-ish, yule-ish sequence of squeaks and tweaks. Slightly foolish, we call it Yulish. Available to download via bandcamp.

Check out all of this year’s animated loops at watchyulelog.com

High fives to internet friends Daniel Savage, Oddfellows, and Wondersauce for putting this all together and for inviting us to be a part.

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After four years of directing and animating Ryan and Wilfred humping, wiping, tugging, farting, laser-pointing, and dreaming, it all comes to an end as the finale airs tonight.

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It’s been a real treat for us to be part of Wilfred on FX and FXX no matter how tangential. The world can always use more weird, and it’s been great to see the Wilfred team add more range to the strange.

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Full post and website update for the Wilfred episodic packages for season 3 and 4 coming soon. In the meantime, take some whiffs of these gifs.

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FX – Fargo

Oh yeah, you betcha. This winter, we were given the great opportunity to collaborate with the team at FX to design, direct, and deliver the episodic package for the new FX series Fargo. Restrained type, analog ice effects, and stark photography provided by FX and additional shots captured by ourselves all came together in this project. The package is comprised of several individual pieces including editable project files for further customization and updating.

Interestingly, the package includes snow footage from three geographically distant and distinct locales: Fargo, Calgary, and of all places…Portland. The secrets out, just don’t tip off Malvo.

Aces!

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Some roads you shouldn’t go down. Because maps used to say “There be dragons here.” Now they don’t. But that don’t mean the dragons aren’t there.

Additional Stills and Credits

POST UPDATED 06/07/16 with montage of the episodic package and promos.

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