Animated graphics for broadcast — invented commercials, network packaging and title sequences — plus animation of my own.
Animation for broadcast
Sketch television runs on graphics that have to be funny in three seconds and invisible in the fourth. These were animated for the show as it shot — invented commercials, network packaging and cartoon worlds dropped around live actors. Several were made with animator Mike Pantuso.
Gay Sports Center · 30 Rock, NBC0:06A sports network invented from its idents outwards — rotating chrome logo, lower third and ticker, cut into an anchor desk so it reads as a channel somebody actually watches.Live episode product placement · 30 Rock, NBC0:09In comedic contrast to the edgy writing, I went mid-century with a before-colour-TV black & white palette. Mike Pantuso animated the cheerful cheese from frame-by-frame art I made in Adobe Illustrator.Liz Lemon Gets High · 30 Rock, NBC0:11My hand-drawn forest was built around a live-action plate, so the actor could walk through a cartoon and be lit by it. Mike Pantuso brought it to life in After Effects.DAM U · 30 Rock, NBC0:06An animation test for The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell. A college mascot, a fight song and a great deal of beer.Whizz · 30 Rock, NBC0:10A Japanese soft-drink commercial invented for the show, built in flat colour with the kanji for “cold” running across the top.Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt · Netflix0:44Animated backgrounds dropped behind the actor, again with Mike Pantuso. Forty-four seconds, which for this kind of work is a long time.
TGS, and the spin-offs — 30 Rock, NBC
The show inside the show needed its own packaging, and then the network wanted more of it for the website. Same house style on air and online, so the joke holds in both places.
TGS with Tracy Jordan · title card0:19Gold blocks on candy stripes, built to look like a variety show that has been on the air far too long.Frank Vs. Lutz · NBC.com0:07A seven-second opener for a web series, with both writers drawn as characters and a title card that lands like a wrestling bill.
Screen graphics — Relay
Graphics that play on a monitor inside the scene, which is the hardest kind: they have to be legible in a fraction of a second, invented rather than real, and busy enough that nobody doubts them. The main sequence, and two further passes at the same system.
Times Square surveillance · main sequence0:21The full build — the interface as it plays in the scene, twenty-one seconds of it.Times Square surveillance · first pass0:09Live camera feeds, identification boxes and a running data column, all in one dark interface.Times Square surveillance · second pass0:10The same system from a different set of feeds, so the operator can be shown working through the city.
Titles and credits
A title sequence has one job: set the tone before anybody has spoken. Three different answers to that, from a projected lecture to a wall of flat colour.
All Is Well · opening credits0:24Animated credits for a TV pilot I produced. I did the drawings in Adobe Illustrator, animated them in After Effects, and made the music in GarageBand.Classless · titles0:20Cast cards set over antique maps and projected onto a pull-down screen, so the titles feel like a high school lesson.Subway Jeans · Upright Citizens Brigade, Comedy Central0:09A commercial for jeans that do not exist. Design by me, motion by Chris Cushings.
Animation of my own
The same tools pointed at nobody’s brief but mine — drawn frame by frame, or shot on a table with Colorforms and stickers, which is where all of this started.
Alien Garden0:19A science-fiction tragedy told in eighteen seconds, in a garden of flowers with faces.Recycled Wood0:15A musical sketch, drawn straight onto the grain of the wood it is about.Falling in Love Again0:39Stop motion with Colorforms and stickers, moved one frame at a time on a black field.What’s Shaking, Hot Stuff?0:49The same table and the same stop-motion Colorforms technique, with a longer story and a full living room to move around in.