Thursday, October 1, 2009

Workshop Logos

This is amongst the last pieces Brian and I worked on in the Blechman style at The Ink Tank. 1999. And one of the last done completely on film.

The Children's Television Workshop asked us to do a theatrical logo. At the time digital to film technology wasn't really cost effective so we did the old fashioned way.

The clip below is a one light transfer from the negative. We never did a supervised video color correction -always crucial with R. O.'s work on film. That's why the white background is so blue and the colors in general don't pop. We did do several color timings on the print although I don't think this was ever used.



There's was a bit of a fight on the creative here. I kept saying it was too long. I always say that. In this case it was because I felt the format -a logo at the head of film -should only last five, seven, ten seconds tops. This one is positively Russian in length.

Tissa David did the animation. Valerie Cardon assisted, mostly on the little letters. She also did a lot of the cel painting.

Pentagram designed the logo. I don't think they're responsible for all the weird shading and dimensionality.



Not too long after, the same company called ---with a new name!

Sesame Workshop wanted us to animate their new logo. I can't remember who designed it, sorry. It was a big company.

I won on the brevity issue. This was 2.5 seconds. That's it. We did do a few minor variations in action and timing. And a around 10 color variations.

I painted them all on my blue clamshell iBook.

Tissa David animated this as well. I remember in the meeting R. O. trying to impress Sesame Workshop with her Electric Company credits. They totally didn't care.


4 comments:

LampshadeMan said...

I don't know, maybe it's a little long, but I feel it fits the piece. With so many letters making up the name, and the small circus clown car feel to it, it needs that time. The second one doesn't have that problem and the short words are on screen the whole time so brevity fits it, I think. But what do I know. Both are very fun animations though!

Dave said...

"Tissa David animated this as well. I remember in the meeting R. O. trying to impress Sesame Workshop with her Electric Company credits. They totally didn't care."

These people have short memories and couldn't care less about heritage. If someone like Frank Oz decided he wanted to get back into performing puppets the Sesame Workshop people would probably say "Frank who ? "

roconnor said...

In their defense, most of the folks at Sesame Workshop have good understanding of the puppeteering side.

We've actually gotten a call or two from them because we've worked with Frank Oz.

The animation, on the other hand, because it's always been subcontracted has never become fully part of their ethos.

They have poor budgets (so does everybody) but they've always had great producers. Arlene Sherman was one of the best, Nina Elias Bamberger was also a pleasure to work with. Every other producer I've dealt with has been terrific (except the one who never called back after going through hoops on a bid).

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