TruTV:
HALLOWEEN BUMPER
I worked with the great team at Creative Mammals to produce this fun halloween bumper for TruTV. I created styleframes, storyboards, illustration, animation, and sound design for the piece. Try not to get any blood on you while you're watching.
THE BRIEF:
The team wanted to create a seasonally themed bumper for TruTV. Stylistically they wanted something dark and creepy, and referenced the style of the HBO animated series: Animals.
I took elements of that style - primarily their approach to backgrounds, and stylized photographs, instead of using fully drawn backgrounds.
When it came to character design, I chose to go with something more sleek, and less… ratty.
STYLEFRAMES:
I began by designing a styleframe to showcase the look of the backgrounds, and the characters. I stitched together stock photography in photoshop, edit colors and added blurs, then drew back in some details to get the background look. The characters were fully illustrated in photoshop.
Once we’d aligned on a look, I created a storyboard and animatic for the piece - so we could see how it would play out in real time.
Sometimes you need sound to get the full picture of a video, so I went ahead and did sound design for this animatic - including some wind effects I vocalized myself.
THE ANIMATIC:
ANIMATION SAMPLE:
The final step before animating the entire piece was to provide an animation sample. Animation samples can be a really helpful piece of the process, they make sure everyone is aligned on the animation style before too much work is done. If there’s any question about the direction of the animation, an animation sample is well worth the time to produce.
THE RESULTS:
THE BUMPER RAN ON TruTV
WE STRUCK THE BALANCE BETWEEN HALLOWEEN GORE AND SOMETHING THAT CAN RUN ON NETWORK TV
NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS VIDEO
Design Studio: Creative Mammals
Executive Creative Director: Robert Burroughs
Art Director: Jeff Gess
Animation/Illustration: Jeff Gess
Sound Design: Jeff Gess
Producer: Katie Janse