Sports Graphics Forum: ESPN, Troika Team to Bring Fanitude' to ESPN's College Basketball Coverage By Brian Harris
Thursday, March 15, 2018 - 10:59 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Like the blustery winter weather that greeted attendees to SVG's Sports Graphics Forum on March 7, the beginning of March ushers in the madness that is the college basketball postseason. To match the intensity that comes from the both the players on the court as well as the rowdy students in the crowd, the graphics team at ESPN, along with their partners at Troika, presented a case study on how the network's new graphics package captures the fanitude that encapsulates college basketball.
It is our biggest production at ESPN, hands down. College football is a close second, said Timothy O'Shaughnessy, creative director at ESPN. Ultimately, we wanted to make something that may be the biggest production in sports television.
According to Trokia's Executive Creative Director Gil Haslam, the concept that the two teams came up with was fanitude', the energy that comes from the players, fans, and TV personalities of college basketball.
What we needed to do is focus on the uniqueness of college basketball; it is the richest fabric of passion and color, Haslam said. We have an embarrassment of riches of things to pull from everything from handwritten signs to mascots to colors the things that the fans are truly most passionate about. So what we came up with for a concept was fanitude'. We really wanted to be able to push the attitude, the spirit, the passion, the tribalism.
Michael Arcangeli, Troika's art director, said that the when the design team at Troika was starting to come up with ideas for the different graphic elements, they wanted to see what they think they, both fans as well as designers, would see, so they went with hand-written fonts and giant head cutouts.
We really came at it from an emotional point of view, said Arcangeli. We tried to imagine if we were fans in the stands, but designers, how would we make this look. We took inspiration from what's in the crowd and we looked at those fan-made signs and said, how can we bring that to life in a new way here?'
Using fan signs and the giant heads that permeate crowds through the college basketball landscape, the two teams collaborated to come up with ideas that they felt brought back something that was missing from current sports graphics.
Our creative north star was the keyword fun', Archangeli said. We were showing some of the stuff to some of the senior people and someone made a really good point about how sports graphics don't really feel fun anymore. Sometimes we take things to serious, and we felt that this was a pretty good space to get a little crazy.
Echoing the statement about bringing fun to these new graphics was O'Shaughnessy.
The question that we would ask ourselves as we were designing is, is this element as fun as it could be?', O'Shaughnessy said. It was definitely a guiding principle for how we moved forward in design.
With fun in mind, the two-headed team started to create a workflow that swirled together elements of traditional cell animation with more modern 2D and 3D technology, they also took the big head concept and turned them into stickers, giving them more of a playful element.
A lot of it was about finding new ways to represent the players using photography, trying fuse the spirit and emotion in it and the passion that exists in college sports, O'Shaughnessy said.
For the illustrated language, the design team looked to fan signs for inspiration, according to O'Shaughnessy.
This was about really representing the fan, he said. How we get that look that's out in the stands but taken through our design perspective so doing hand-drawn type pattern and cell accents to really bring this frenzied look along.
Arcangeli added: We wanted a font that we felt that really captured the fan-illustrated sign out in the stands. So we created our own custom font we created an animated version of it as well and, to take it a step further, we said, well, there are certain phrases and language around the game that already exist to create signature illustrations for. Some of it was kind of generic basketball language; others, we started to look at Dick Vitale he has so many sayings, so we felt that we could use those in new ways, combining them with player photography to create new elements.
These new animations, which were dubbed moment transitions', were meant to replace the standard, generic transition graphics usually seen during games.
We'd called them moment transitions, so instead of a generic team logo transition or replay wipe, we thought if we know certain players for a certain type of play like dunking or a three-pointer, we could create something that was actually cued up so that if that play happened with him, we'd could actually trigger that signature transition and be very responsive to the action going on within the game, Arcangeli said.
All of these idea led to the two teams coming up with a graphics concept that was both outside-the-box and in line with the concept of fanitude' which is a goal that both teams felt that they accomplished.
The creative process was a little unorthodox on this one, according to ESPN Senior Concept Designer Dale Harney. It allowed us to play off of each others ideas and almost function like one creative group. It gave us each ownership of the project and it led to the fun part of creative, which was coming up with the ideas, some of them being the sneaker machine, basketball factory and flaming basketballs.
Arcangeli added: It was also great presenting creative from the Troika team, because they would always have stuff to s
North America Stories
25/04/2024
Sundance Institute Founder Robert Redford during a press conference at the 1996 ...
25/04/2024
alt= class=wp-image-12361 data-lazy-src=/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/NAB-booth-2024-960x540-1.jpg/> Set against a vibrant backdrop of innovation and collaboratio...
25/04/2024
alt= class=wp-image-12356 data-lazy-src=/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/NAB-mod-win-960x540-1.jpg/>NAB's Eric Trabb (right) awards SNS with two NAB Show Product...
25/04/2024
PHILADELPHIA Comcast beat earnings estimates in its Q1 2024 financial report, as streaming losses continued to decline and Peacock's paid subscribers spiked...
25/04/2024
SEATTLE The Seattle Kraken have inked new multi-year agreements with Tegna and Prime Video that will expand access to their games over broadcast stations and st...
25/04/2024
Cintel Scanner G3 HDR Restores Egypt's Cinema Treasures to Their Former Glo...
25/04/2024
Sinclair Broadcast Group said it named Kevin Coskren chief meteorologist at KTUL, its ABC affiliate in Tulsa, Oklahoma....
25/04/2024
The Business of TV News, a new one-day event featuring Martha Raddatz, Shannon Bream, Glenn Kirschner and other major figures in television news, happens at Hot...
25/04/2024
Conditions put on the proposed sale of WADL Detroit, to Mission Broadcasting have created a potential drama in the Motor City....
25/04/2024
TelevisaUnivision reported a $52 million loss in the first quarter, up from $3 m...
25/04/2024
Comcast reported flat first-quarter earnings as it reduced the red ink at Peacock but continued to lose video and broadband customers....
25/04/2024
Music-video network Vevo said it launched its app on Telly, the company offering consumers free dual-screen TVs in return for data about what they're watchi...
25/04/2024
Future Today said it has introduced a redesigned user interface for about half of its 300 streaming apps, including Fawesome, HappyKids and iFood.TV....
25/04/2024
Broadpeak , a leading provider of content delivery network (CDN) and video streaming solutions for content providers and pay-TV operators worldwide, announced t...
25/04/2024
Lightware Visual Engineering, a leading manufacturer of connectivity solutions for the professional integrated systems market and a pioneer in signal management...
25/04/2024
Net Insight has entered into a collaboration with DMC Production that positions Net Insight at the forefront of sports broadcasting in the Nordics. Net Insight ...
25/04/2024
GlobalM has announced a strategic partnership with scoopa, the specialists in broadcast-quality content distribution, offering a complementary service for live ...
25/04/2024
PlayBox Neo announces the completion of a new multichannel playout system for the DDish direct-to-home satellite television network in Mongolia. Based in the na...
25/04/2024
Canadian music producer and engineer Garth Richardson also known as Gggarth due to his stutter - has embraced immersive audio by installing a PMC monitoring s...
25/04/2024
Leading video software provider Synamedia today announced that Televisa, the Mexican telecommunications and broadcasting company, has chosen Synamedia as its pa...
25/04/2024
OTTera, a leading provider of end-to-end OTT and FAST channel solutions, proudly announces its strategic partnership with ThinkAnalytics, a global leader in adv...
25/04/2024
The American Tobacco Campus will be hopping with activity tonight and this weekend with two fun events!
Durham Night Market
At last! The Durham Night Market i...
25/04/2024
WEST CHESTER, Pa. Video commerce provider Qurate Retail Group has launched The Big Dish, a new culinary-themed FAST channel on The Roku Channel....
25/04/2024
LOS ANGELES The Hollywood Professional Association has announced that submissions for the 2024 HPA Engineering Excellence Awards are now being accepted. This re...
25/04/2024
NEW YORK The digital media measurement and analytics firm DoubleVerify has announced that it has received Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for Video Vie...
25/04/2024
SAN FRANCISCO Fox Corp.'s ad-supported streaming service Tubi has announced a licensing agreement with the sports platform DAZN that will see DAZN Ringside ...
25/04/2024
NEW YORK In the runup to the 2024 IAB NewFronts, the IAB has announced three key appointments to its leadership team....
25/04/2024
Epic Games releases Unreal Engine 5.4 with new Motion Design Mode, Unreal VCam f...
25/04/2024
Content Creation, Production, Distribution Is In a State of Flux
Andy Marken April 24, 2024
0 Comments
My empathy is creeping towards what I would de...
25/04/2024
The Carolina Panthers and Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC) announced they have...
25/04/2024
Berklee Student Riko Sasaski Named 2024 Yamaha Young Performing Artist The accomplished saxophonist secured a spot among the elite winners of this year's ...
25/04/2024
Stations everywhere take pride in having a main anchor who comes from the market they represent. That applies in St. Louis, too, but it also pertains to general...
25/04/2024
Edward Moody is joining the WBTW Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, anchor crew, and will anchor the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts alongside Trish Williford. He comes f...
25/04/2024
MTV said the 2024 Video Music Awards will return to New York and take place at the new UBS Arena....
25/04/2024
Season three of comedy The Outlaws premieres on Prime Video May 31. Stephen Merchant co-created the show, and stars. There are five episodes....
25/04/2024
The E.W. Scripps Co. is evaluating offers for Bounce, its multicast channel for African-American viewers, according to a report from CNBC....
25/04/2024
Paramount Plus has ordered a second season for Dora, the animated preschool show based on Dora the Explorer. The show, featuring Dora on a rainforest adventure ...
25/04/2024
April 25th, 2024 Press Materials Available Here
TRIBECA FESTIVAL 2024 ANNOUNCES AUDIO STORYTELLING AND GAMES LINEUP
Audio Storytelling Program Features 10th ...
25/04/2024
NFL Draft 2024: Verizon Expands Broadband Capacity To Handle the Spike in Demand Mobile cells will help accommodate first responders, social media, sports betti...
25/04/2024
NFL Draft 2024: NFL Media Teams With The Fantasy Footballers on Hybrid, REMI Pro...
25/04/2024
NFL Draft 2024: ESPN Motors Into Detroit With Trio of Simultaneous Live Presenta...
25/04/2024
Back to All News
Let the Pleasure Begin: Doctor Climax' and Its Steamy Q&A...
25/04/2024
Back to All News
Netflix Joins The Thursday Murder Club
Entertainment
25 April 2024
Global
Link copied to clipboard
Writer, Director: Chris Columbus
Prod...
25/04/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of Into the Omniverse, a series focused on ...
25/04/2024
Support for Battle.net on GeForce NOW expands this GFN Thursday, as titles from the iconic StarCraft and Diablo series come to the cloud.
StarCraft Remastered,...
24/04/2024
ATLANTA Mundo Hispano Digital has launched a new advertising product, MundoNow Connect, that is designed to help advertisers reach Hispanic audiences on connect...
24/04/2024
Epic Games has released a major new version of Unreal Engine, which has become a mainstay in virtual production, that includes new features and improvements to ...
24/04/2024
The National Association of Broadcasters welcomed the industry to its annual extravaganza last month in Las Vegas. The sights and sounds were similar to previou...
24/04/2024
NEW YORK Chptr and Gray Television have announced that they are introducing a new video solution for funeral homes and communities that will allow funeral direc...
Sports Graphics Forum: ESPN, Troika Team to Bring Fanitude' to ESPN's College Basketball Coverage By Brian Harris 
