ESPN Euro Cup 2016 Open

Euro Cup 2016

ESPN Broadcast Open / Role: Director

I led a team at Imaginary Forces that, in collaboration with ESPN, created the broadcast package for their coverage of the 2016 Euro Cup. Inspired by the artistic history of the host country of France, we designed and animated nearly 200 individual elements for the month-long tournament. One of the key elements was a heroic opening that would launch the coverage every day.

See the rest of the package here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/69930901/ESPN-Euro-Cup-2016

This package won a PromaxBDA Gold, a Motion Award, and was nominated for a Sports Emmy.

Design

This storyboard was designed by Theo Daley, with direction from myself. We presented a number of different concepts to the client, but had a hunch that they wouldn't be able to resist the elegance of the gilded statues, especially with the concept of them being contained within the ornate decoration on their Euro Cup logo.

Animation

Once the overall direction for the open was approved, we started nailing down the poses we wanted for our player statues. We created a list of iconic soccer actions, and then found the most dynamic, and energetic versions possible. These are the approved player poses, ready to be sculpted.

Meats Meier took our rough poses and turned them into beautiful sculptures. The following screen grabs show some of his sculpting process.

While the player statues were being sculpted, we created a previs of the open. The previs determined what the camera angles and movement would be, as well as the overall edit and pacing. It is very similar to the final piece, but you can see how much imagination it takes to look at the lifeless gray figures and envision it becoming something beautiful.

The majority of the sequence was animated, shaded, lit, and rendered in Maya and V-Ray. Compositing was done in Nuke, bringing the shots to life with depth of field, bloom, glints, volumetric light, and dust.

I personally tackled both the maps of Europe and final shot transitioning us from the world of the gilded trophies into the final logo resolve. I used V-Ray for Cinema 4D to match the look being rendered in Maya for the rest of the sequence.