
ESPN, Disney Take Next Tech Leap in Kids-Focused Broadcast With Live, Animated NHL Big City Greens Classic' The entire game will be presented with motion-captured announcers, Big City Greens characters By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Tuesday, March 14, 2023 - 2:34 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The puck drops tonight on the next chapter in kids-focused sports broadcasts. ESPN's Big City Greens NHL Classic featuring the New York Rangers and Washington Capitals will be the first-ever fully animated game telecast.
Besides live, real-time volumetric animation of players on the ice, ESPN Creative Studio and Silver Spoon have created motion-captured animated versions of ESPN commentators Kevin Weekes and Drew Carter calling the game, as well live interviews with characters from Disney's Emmy Award-winning animated series using live facial-capture technology.
ESPN, Disney Channel, and the NHL are teaming up to bring fans the NHL Big City Greens Classic, the first-ever live animated NHL game telecast, featuring the Washington Capitals vs. New York Rangers, on March 14 at 7 p.m. ET.
Weekes and Carter will wear motion-capture suits to allow the full-body animations of them in the Big City to mimic their movements while calling the action from a studio in Bristol, CT. Series talent Chris Houghton (co-creator/executive producer, Big City Greens, and voice of Cricket) and Marieve Herington (voice of Tilly) will use facial-recognition technology to imitate their reactions to the game remotely from Disney Television Animations studios in Los Angeles. Additionally, ESPN Creative Studio has created a full Big City Greens-centric graphics package and scorebug for the broadcast.
The Big City Greens Classic is being produced in conjunction with ESPN Edge Innovation Center and NHL EDGE Innovation partners Verizon, Beyond Sports and Silver Spoon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQy8p9v_JKg
Cartoons on Ice: Tracking Data, Beyond Sports Drive Player Avatars, Animated Characters The first-of-its-kind alternative presentation uses the NHL Edge puck- and player-tracking data from SMT and Sony's Beyond Sports AI-based data-visualization platform to re-create the action on the ice in real time while featuring Big City Greens characters skating alongside animated versions of the NHL players. ESPN Creative Studio designed and modeled stylized 3D players to be used as avatars representing the players and animated via the live tracking data in conjunction with Beyond Sports.
ESPN and Silver Spoon built a motion-capture set for announcers in Studio Z in Bristol, CT.
Alternative broadcasts like this are all about trying to expand your audience, says Michael Spike Szykowny, senior director, motion graphics and production planning, ESPN Creative Studio. This is more for the casual, younger fans, not our normal super-fan who is already watching ESPN. We have been trying to find an opportunity to do something like this, so this a great opportunity for all the different parties involved.
Cricket Green will take the place of the Rangers' Vincent Trocheck, and Tilly Green will play in place of the Capitals' Evgeny Kuznetsov. Meanwhile, Grandma Alice and Bill Green will be in goal for the Rangers and Caps, respectively. Placey teases that viewers could see some surprise characters throughout the game.
Beyond Sports Group has done a great job in showing us how they can manage that data and make it very user-friendly to do a production like this, says Placey. Oftentimes, [new technologies] may look cool but aren't as nimble and instant as you need them to be to do a live game. But, when we saw how fast and user-friendly the technology was, we said, Why don't we just go ahead and do the whole darn game?'
Beyond Sports is driving the animated game action.
The broadcast will be produced out of a production-control room in Bristol, and only the NHL Edge tracking data and nat sound (no cameras) will be sent from the arena to create the animated telecast. Director Jeff Nelson, at the front bench alongside producer Pete Dellaria, will be calling cameras to two TDs operating switchers: one will cut between the 49 virtual camera angles; the other will handle the rest of the animated enhancements.
We have more cameras on this show than we have at the NFL Draft, which is pretty amazing, says Nelson. In addition to all the other cameras, we can click on each character and see an angle of each individual player in case you want to talk about somebody specific.
We're creating our own monitor wall with still images of each angle, he continues. We're putting them on paper and printing them out, and I'm sticking them in front of me. As I go through the game, I know the angle I'm looking for even though I can't see what's happening before I take that camera. It has a lot to do with feel and awareness.
ESPN will have 49 virtual camera angles to cut between during the broadcast.
Nelson says the actual game broadcast will be roughly 10 seconds ahead of the animated production, alerting him when a key moment is about to take place. He adds that, since there will be no crowd incorporated into the broadcast, he will have to get creative for fan cutaways and other transition shots.
That was my biggest concern when we started testing this: What can we cut away to? he says. Thankfully, we've remedied that and have a bunch of fun cutaway shots ready to go. When we started rehearsing, we chuckled every 10 minutes that this is what we were doing. But it's going to be a lot of fun, and we're really excited about it.
Animated Announcers: Silver Spoon's Motion-Capture Technology Using full-body mo-cap technology and custom avatars, ESPN will turn announcers Carter and Weekes into characters straight out of Big City Greens. T
More from Sports Video Group
02/07/2025
Progressive realism: Aurora on taking up the broadcast reins for World RX alongs...
02/07/2025
Great speed: New host broadcaster Aurora on getting the World RX 2025 season pro...
02/07/2025
Seat of its pants: Aurora boxes clever and looks ahead for the FIA as new host b...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: EBU, BBC Sport and Sunset Vine talk coverage plans, ...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Women's Super League launches new content series...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Ignite puts fans and players front and centre with t...
02/07/2025
Storytelling in the Live Game Broadcast: ESPN Director Jimmy Platt Breaks Down t...
02/07/2025
CONCACAF's Miguel Angel Garcia on the Gold Cup's Enhanced 2025 Productio...
01/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Spyrosoft's Jonathan Witty on Futher Business Exp...
01/07/2025
The NIL Effect: How the Shifting Business of College Athletics Impacts On-Campus...
01/07/2025
Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 w...
01/07/2025
NESN's Josh Jun on Keeping Alternative Broadcasts Fresh for Boston Red Sox, ...
01/07/2025
TNT Sports Races Back Into NASCAR With Fresh Look, Familiar Edge Production approach emphasizes creative freedom, bold storytelling, casual-fan-friendly tone B...
27/06/2025
How smarter compression is creating a sustainable future By Michael Burns
Monday, June 23, 2025 - 14:13
Print This Story
Live sport is especially vulnerab...
27/06/2025
Behind the Mic: FOX Sports Ratchets Up UEFA Women's EURO 2025 With Top-Class...
27/06/2025
RTL Group To Acquire Sky Deutschland By George Bevir, Editorial Director, SVG Europe
Friday, June 27, 2025 - 8:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story ...
27/06/2025
Frictionless, At Scale: The Current State of Live Video Streaming Techology Leaders from Bitmovin, Comcast Technology Solutions, Harmonic, IMAX, and Phenix brea...
27/06/2025
Marquee Sports Network's Nick Steger on Meeting the Moment of the Contending...
27/06/2025
NHL Draft 2025: The League Is Primed for First Decentralized Draft in Non-Pandem...
26/06/2025
10th-Annual SVG Regional Sports Production Summit Presents Useful Roadmap for th...
26/06/2025
The Big Cloud Debate: Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid Tech leaders from CineSys, Diversified, and Net Insight breaks down all flavors of cloud By Jason Dachman, ...
26/06/2025
Program Productions' Jess Kowatch on Training the Next and Current Gener...
25/06/2025
SVG College Summit 2025: Select Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAY Tackling the latest in college sports video: NIL, live production, virtual productio...
25/06/2025
ESPN Is Set To Bring AR Graphics to Wimbledon, Revamps Bunker and Studio 18 VO B...
24/06/2025
2025 NBA Draft: ABC/ESPN Prepares for Two-Day Draft at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By M...
24/06/2025
Cloud Broadcast Tech Update: Google Cloud's Jane Day on the Impact of AI on ...
24/06/2025
Cloud Broadcast Tech Update: AWS's Dana LaGattuta on Data-Driven Innovation ...
24/06/2025
Lions live: Dublin opener sees Sky Sports take remote route By Fergal Ringrose ...
24/06/2025
Pumas maul Lions as S4C and TG4 deliver first-ever joint host in Dublin By Ferg...
24/06/2025
ABC/ESPN Prepares for 2025 NBA Draft, the First at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By Mark ...
23/06/2025
Adventures in Live Cloud Production: Stories From the Trenches with MLB, NHL, NB...
23/06/2025
Finding the edge: How Badger & Combes produces live-streamed coverage of county ...
23/06/2025
Masters of Madness: New football format shakes up the rules of sportainment By Adrian Pennington
Monday, June 16, 2025 - 11:38
Print This Story
The ball i...
23/06/2025
New State-of-the-Art Mountain Media Center Launches in Former Starz Encore Build...
23/06/2025
ESPN Says Goodbye to Seaport Studios, Hello to New State-of-the-Art Production F...
20/06/2025
Feeling Unlimited, Part 1: Athletes Unlimited Softball League Deploys Remote Pro...
20/06/2025
A True Test? Cricket's Growth on the Global Stage and the Role Broadcast Can...
20/06/2025
Sky Sports goes large for the British & Irish Lions Tour with AR graphics, UHD a...
20/06/2025
ESPN's Men's College World Series Finals Coverage Combines Innovation, L...
19/06/2025
SVG Rewind: PGA Tour Introduces Drone AR Smart Tracing, Reflects on Winning Geor...
18/06/2025
Technology focus: Fan expectations drive advances in the in-stadium experience By Jo Ruddock
Tuesday, June 3, 2025 - 08:36
Print This Story
For years, att...
18/06/2025
Making connections: How stadiums are meeting the ever-growing demand for data an...
18/06/2025
SVG Venues & Teams Summit Keynote: RWS Global Powers the Stadium Environment at ...
18/06/2025
SVG Rewind: Behind the Scenes of Producing Tottenham Hotspur's Europa League...
17/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Mercury Intermedia's Tom Richardson, Mike Ligon o...
17/06/2025
Total Sports Performance from Relo Metrics, VideoAmp, Offers Next-Level Media, B...
17/06/2025
From Stage to Stream: Producing Live Esports Events in 2025 Leaders from ESL FACEIT Group, Riot Games, and more break down the latest trends By Jason Dachman, ...
17/06/2025
Inside FIFA 2025 Club World Cup Operations With FIFA's Oscar Sanchez, HBS...
17/06/2025
Production ambitions: Over Exposed on making the National League Promotion Final...