Transistor Studios Newsletter

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This newsletter is a bit past due... it’s hard to keep up with the mail when we are so busy!

First off, we would like to welcome Nando Costa to the Transistor design director roster. Nando's unique style and wealth of experience are great additions to the Transistor team.

Here are a few current highlights:

Anders Schroder is directing the 2006 Ultimate Fighter graphics package for Spike TV. The 2005 campaign he directed was a big hit so they hired us for round 2. He also designed a promotional video for the U.S. Air Force.

Joel Lava just finished two spots and an end tag for Match.com. He also completed the new Dairy Queen end tag over the holiday break.

Erik Reponen and the interactive crew are off to a great start this year, landing a large website and DVD project for SeaDoo. We also landed the redesign of Sportskool.com.

Jason Salo, one of our LA-based art directors, is finishing up a teaser spot for the upcoming release of the Nike Jordan XXI shoes. We are also doing a series of Jordan XXI large format posters.

James Price is working on a series of image spots for Showtime.

And what have I been doing? Well, if you want to learn how to make DVD motion menus, I wrote a tutorial for Computer Arts Magazine. I will also be speaking at the AIGA xd3 conference in San Diego on April 5 with one or more of our LA directors joining me. We will be sure to remind you when the date draws near. That’s it for now. Be sure to check out more new Transistor work below.

Thanks, Jared

In March, Nando will be joining us at the New York studio as our newest design director. He was most recently a creative director at Modernista in Boston. Nando has a spectacular portfolio of design, illustration, and motion graphics drawing from his roots in Rio de Janeiro. We will be posting all of his work soon. Welcome, Nando!

VH1 - Celebreality > VH1 had a huge project for their new Sunday night block of programming, “Celebreality.” They liked the idea of mixing James and Saiman's styles. Transistor produced the live-action green-screen shoot with noted cinematographer Martin Ahlgren at Broadway Stages in New York. Both James and Saiman were on set to provide technical and creative direction. Our 3D team spent four weeks building and animating sets for the 3D world, using 10 machines rendering around-the-clock to get the first spot delivered on time. The project is on-going, with three more spots still to be delivered.

MTV Europe - LA Rush > This job began when MTV Europe asked Transistor to pitch promo ideas for a new racing video game called “LA Rush.” The contest was to win a trip to London and racing lessons from a stunt driver. James developed an idea that began with a “real” person who fractures into a thousand pieces, then reconstructs as various 3D models (a TV screen, an airplane, etc). During the spot, we race through a 3D model of downtown London with various landmarks visible in the distance. This project allowed the studio to do a live action shoot and blend that footage with animations built by our 3D team. It also brought together a strong modeling/texturing/lighting/animating 3D team that has worked on several recent projects together.

Gatorade - It > Transistor helped Element 79 pitch and land this campaign. We were asked to come up with ideas of how to animate text call outs such as "IT is up here" and "IT is here" over serene footage of athletes in action. To complement the beautiful footage, Anders created simple, subtle animation. He proposed to 3D-track the type so it felt as if the words were actually in the scenes. Gatorade loved the idea and we executed the first spot in a week.

DFORM1 - Trash Totem > Anders originally conceived this piece as an opener for the TV show "X-Play" on G4. The G4 peeps really liked the idea and boards but decided to go in a different creative direction. We thought the piece had a lot of potential so we went ahead and finished it anyway.

Saiman has been keeping very busy. He finished a set of spots for Kiwi shoe polish and then went directly to NYC to collaborate with James on VH1's Celebreality package. Saiman liked NYC so much that he is moving there at the end of January and will be working out of the NYC studio. The LA office will miss you! Also, we just posted Saiman's new montage.

College Basketball on FSN - Promo Toolkit > “College Basketball on FSN” is a lot like the “NBA on FSN” toolkit we produced. We delivered over 100 elements. The major difference is that we did not shoot anything for this kit. All live action elements came from game footage provided by FSN. All of the floorboard animations were created and animated in 3D using Maya and Cinema 4D. Our biggest hurdle in completing this spot was creating a high level of realism for the look of the floorboards. Even though the animation is very abstract, the floorboards needed to shine in a very realistic way.

NBA on FSN - Promo Toolkit > “NBA on FSN” is a series of elements that FSN can use to cut together daily promos highlighting the game of the night. The spot demonstrates how the promo is to be used. We created versions of this toolkit for the 13 FSN regions and for all 30 teams. All of the live action (except the B-Roll footage) was shot in HD Varicam on green screen by Joel. Yes, all of those crowd scenes and dunks are CG composites!

And finally, a few words from Patrick: “Now settled in my luxury LA home quite nicely and not missing dear old Blighty a bit! Last year was a good one for me, directing live action promos in three different countries. Plus, working with Brazilian soccer God Pele for Puma in his native Sao Paulo provided quiet a few experiences. It’s not often a helicopter carrying several secret service agents and a South American city's major land on set, mid-take. And it is also rare to see a 20x20 reflector fly 100 feet and slam into the client's tent and monitor. Anyway, the spot was a success and we will show you soon. My new reel is up on the website and I am more than ready to inject some grimy grey humor into the soft sun-kissed underbelly of the U.S. of A.”