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NHL Tampa Bay
Lightning
Challenge
We were tasked with developing expressive and attention-grabbing animations that capture the excitement of a live Tampa Bay Lightning game. Engaging fans and elevating the in-arena experience in multiple formats.
Research
To gain a clear picture of standout sports graphics and what this NHL team is known for, we spoke with their Motion Graphics Creative Manager, Darlene Sanchez. Getting a peek at how trends are perceived in the hockey world.
Credits
Design and Animation by Sam Budish & David Oye
Compositing by David Oye
Final Animations
Design Approach
Focusing on visually representing personality traits that can be embodied and emanate from the team as one collective force.
Design Directions
Direction 01
This team is often known for its powerful yet highly strategic hockey plays, giving them an underlying, calculated advantage. These plays are often given unique names or are coined after players.
Reflecting these strengths in the form of hockey playbooks and diagrams, as if you were projecting abstract, geometric representations of hockey drills onto the ice.
Direction 02
The Tampa Bay Lightning not only emphasize strategic plays but also showcase an immense amount of raw energy and gritty determination, adding another layer to their play style.
Looking at this aspect of the team, the idea was to layer on textures mimicking the idea of persistence, with each stroke building on the last, just as the team overcomes its challenges on the ice.
Process
1st Pass Animation
Initially experimenting separately allowed us to play with various animation and technical ideas. Although succesful, this made the designs not feel as unified.
Experiments with painterly effects also began to come together but overall felt too smeary and muddy. Losing the edge quality of many objects.
Overall the animations needed to convey more snappy and quick movements. As well as opportunity for bigger and bolder type.
Stylization
Using a software called "FotoSketcher" allowed us to dial in various paint effects on top of our base renders. Bringing that into After Effects, "color key" effects were used to mask out parts of each paint texture, blending them together.
2nd Pass Animation
Changes to the mid-tone blues and saturations were made to avoid feeling almost too childish
We continued to refine the texture effects with better edge quality, while avoiding too much flicker or almost hairy-like edges.
Some of the ice crack motions still had a lack of exaggeration. As opposed to this smoother animation, ice moves so fast that its eases are much more subtle
Time Remapping
By rendering linear and high frame rate animations out of Cinema4d, I was able to use time remapping in After Effects to dial in 3D movements. Allowing me to match the 3D to any 2D animation changes without having to re-render any 3D.
Mockup
Live Event
After completing the project, we were invited to shadow a real Tampa Bay Lightning game with their Motion Graphics team. During this experience, we were able to see behind-the-scenes processes of both the graphics and overall production. Our final animations were also used during the live game. Very grateful for this fun opportunity to see our work in real-world practice.
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