G’Day from Sydney, with news from my adopted home town of a major new project for Australia’s first channel ABC1, orchestrated by local moving image luminaries zspace. You can watch a montage of the idents here, or see some of the completed spots here.
Zspace fought off stiff competition to create a complete set of new idents for ABC1. The idea kick-starting zspace’s pitch was simply ‘one’ and how ABC1 (Or ‘Auntie’ as the broadcaster is endearingly known) represents everyone.
With 7 years of experience working with ABC1, Jean Christophe Danoy felt it was really time to push the boundaries of what they could achieve for their client. So zspace brought in the talents of their first choice of Australian animators and directors, as well producing a good number of idents in-house, to create a refreshingly diverse body of work.
Each ident is about a personality, be it Joe Public or an Australian TV ‘face’ and what they do in their day to day. So live-action footage directed by zspace was used as a base upon which to build animation illustrating the VOs. I particularly like the blue-collar characters, like ‘SES’ (State Emergency Service) by motionographer’s own Jon Gorman and ‘Farmer’ by Mighty Nice. The personalities have a relaxed Australian charm that’s really brought home in the animation treatments.
It’s great to see broadcasters like ABC1 embracing innovative motion-graphics like this. And more power to zspace for pitching heavily on concept as opposed to styleframes, freeing them and their assembled directors up to develop ideas and designs as production progressed.
For mograph thunder from down-under, look no further…