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Experiential Design +
Animation

Overview
Through experience we have been fortunate enough to work with numerous venues and rare canvases when it comes to experiential animation and design. Weather it be a 360 degree ribbon or a 600 ft. wide wall - we pride ourselves in problem solving to find the most effective way to communicate through design and animation. All while keeping the physical space, lighting and aspect ratio at top of mind. Communication with any given production team and / or venue operations is key to a seamless production and overall better experience.
Little Caesars Arena
Detroit, MI


In-arena on-ice projection mapping + custom LED design and animation
The capabilities within the bowl of Little Caesars Arena are endless- from the on-ice projection mapping to the beautiful 360 wrap center hung - creating fully immersive design and animations take the experience to the next level. With over 25 LED screens - it is crucial to have each board in sync with one another for the best results. The ceiling or "Sky Deck" is a 1"x1" grid of lights that can also take an animation file or still artwork to compliment the rest of the arena. Working closely with the lighting team, directors in the control room and operators running the Daktronics systems is key to making the experience in-sync and as beautiful as possible.
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"Jewel Skin" Projection Mapping
At Little Caesars Arena the state of the art "Jewel Skin" is the first thing that will grab your attention in the concourse. This 600 foot canvas that wraps around almost half of the building uses 12, 30W laser projectors to show custom event artwork, corporate sponsored ADs and internal marketing material. Working with the Jewel Skin, the first thing to have to keep in mind is the speed of the animation - When working in a traditional aspect ratio, what would normally animate in 1-2 seconds should be slowed down tremendously with the "Jewel Skin". Thinking of the canvas in feet and not pixels helps adjust animation speeds accordingly, keeping in mind scale relative to the space and the patrons perspective. As with any projection system, boosting the contrast and saturation slightly to compensate for outdoor light and other lighting always helps push the content to feel closer to the original artwork.
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Detroit Red Wings
Hockey Club

Custom LED Configuration and Pixel Mapping + Set Design
We were given a specific amount of LED bricks to work with and set out to create a unique, full frame arrangement with what we had. We created pixel maps / templates to work with these unique configurations. Keeping animation and design in sync across all boards was crucial to the production. We decided to use the foreground LED boards as abstract dots to keep the attention on the player and name. Working directly with the lighting crew and production company for a streamlined workflow - full frame color wipes worked effectively as a dramatic lighting shift.
For the in-arena experience we went on to add that same dot pattern as a frame nestling the edit from the above production. The dots were in sync with the music/beat and all other LEDs in the arena were designed, animated and sunc to that same audio, creating a fully immersive experience. We also added on-ice projection of each players name card, in-sync with the edit.
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Reconfiguring the LEDs + Pixel Mapping + Set Design
For the in-arena experience we decided to maintain the same amount of LED bricks but looked to reconfigure the layout of how they were used. For players entrances onto the ice we inverted the color way so that lighting was able to drive the event on the players. We created a custom animation for every player, for all other screens in the arena.

Turn Table Portraits on Green Screen
For the 2018 NHL season we decided to shoot the players standing on a turn table with a green screen sweep. This allowed us to to get a 360 degree turn of the player, emulating a full 360 degree camera move without tools to do so. Giving the fans a view of the players name and number before revealing the portrait was the goal. We then time-remapped these to emulate slow motion which worked very effectively in-arena.
Oprah Winfreys
"Path Made Clear" Tour

Custom LED Pixel Mapping + Set Design Animations
In 2018 we created a custom set of animations and background art for Oprah's "Path Made Clear" tour. Content varied from abstract art, nature photography, 3D book animations. We created a custom pixel map for each LED on stage and we then created one 16x9 template to nest all three stage LED comps in. This created consistency and ease with our file management and also helped up keep all files / screens in sync.
We worked directly with each venues in-arena production teams to populate any other video boards possible (ie. Ribbons, Jumbo Trons, etc.) The tour spanned from the Belle Centre in Montreal to Rogers Arena in Vancouver- making stops at the Saddledome in Calgary and Rogers Place in Edmonton.






Looping Set Graphics
Looping set animations work extremely well for walk-in-looks and anything in general that has an open running time. They also work extremely well for the director to have in their back pocket in any case a show is delayed, paused or their is a technical issue with the file they are trying to push to screen.




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