My dream of being paid to create a Norman McLaren-style ‘Begone Dull Care’ animation (1949) for the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival was thwarted here when alas the notion was not to the client’s liking. It was probably just as well as I believe Begone Dull Care must have taken a near lifetime to produce and I’m generally working to eye-wateringly tight broadcast deadlines.

That said, if anyone fancies painting and scratching directly onto celluloid, let me know.

Categories: 2d Motion Graphics, Television Graphics | Tags: 2d animation, Edinburgh, Scottish Television, Television Graphics, kinetic text, stv | No Comments

This is a far from spectacular piece of animation but it’s a good example of the sort of bumper ads that open and close TV programmes. You know, so-and-so sponsors the whatchamacallit-show. They’re short, snappy and help raise brand awareness for the sponsor without detracting too much from the actual show.

The Tipping Point is an ITV quiz hosted by Ben Shephard – see my very poor caricature at the beginning. The sponsor in this case was Penicuik Windows, who use two penguins in all their branding. Hence we had two penguins taking part in a quiz show. Ah, TV, how I love you.

Categories: 2d Motion Graphics, Television Graphics | Tags: 2d animation, Scottish Television, Television Graphics, stv | No Comments

I was surprised to discover that not only was piping a big thing outside Scotland, but that there was also a European Pipe Band competition. Here’s the advert I created for this year’s event. Over a hundred pipe bands from all over the continent amassed in Forres to take part.

I imagine this was a lot of fun both for those attending and those taking part, although the idea of a hundred pipe bands playing at once reminded me of the Gary Larson cartoon where a Maestro is shown to his room in hell and it’s occupied by a large number of banjo players.

Categories: 2d Motion Graphics, Television Graphics | Tags: 2d animation, Scottish Television, Television Graphics, stv | 1 Comment

At first glance, you might think there are no graphics at all in this bumper advert by LA Media for property specialists McEwan Fraser. But do you know how hard it is to train a bee to land on somebody’s nose on cue? They’re really temperamental performers.

That’s why I was asked to create a bee in post-production and match it to the footage, a technique called motion tracking. This example isn’t particularly clever but I liked it because it made me laugh. The original script also used the line “Time to move?” which was even better.

Categories: 2d Motion Graphics, Television Graphics | Tags: 2d animation, Scottish Television, Television Graphics | No Comments

This is a little 2d motion graphics piece in a South Park-style created for the Vehicle Emissions Partnership at West Lothian Council. It was designed to encourage drivers to switch off their engines instead of ‘idling’ but the target audience was primary school-age. (What better way to get drivers to switch off their engines than to have their kids nag them into it?) So I created these little characters and lip-synched them to voiceover with various vehicles demonstrating the problem.

I had to find a way of illustrating pollution so that kids could understand it so I came up with the coughing bird and the sudden changes to monochrome. The other tricky thing was illustrating asthma. This had me stumped for a while until I decided to make the word itself expand and contract as if breathing.

I’m quite fond of idling myself, but I don’t need a car for that.

Categories: 2d Motion Graphics, Business Graphics | Tags: 2d animation, Business Graphics, Motion Graphics, Scotland | No Comments

Kinetic text is a useful technique for when there is a lot of information to report but little in the way of visuals to illustrate it. Sky’s Aspire project was one such case.

An internal video communication, these graphics were used as part of a bigger whole that included interviews with team leaders and progress reports. Business graphics needn’t be dull..

Categories: 2d Motion Graphics, Television Graphics, Business Graphics | Tags: 2d animation, Sky HD, Television Graphics | No Comments