History Channel
The Ultimate Guide to the US Presidents
The Ultimate Guide to the US Presidents
After years of developing promo branding for shows and networks we took on the monumental challenge of creating the look and feel of The Ultimate Guide to the US Presidents, a mini series for The History Channel. Each episode required 20-30 unique animated scenes crafted with assets from an extremely limited source. Whether infographics illustrating the amount of railroads constructed during the civil war or animating scenes based on archival photographs and paintings each episode had a unique set of challenges.
Design | Script | Directorial | Editorial | Motionography | Animation | Compositing | Color Correction
a deep dive into us history
Directors: Bobby Hougham, Sevrin Daniels
Design team: Vince Diga, Bobby Hougham
3D team: Yinzi Xiong, Lena Lee, Alan Llave
2D Animation: Alan Llave, Tommy Hutcherson
Compositing: Alan Llave, Tommy Hutcherson, Yinzi Xiong, Lena Lee
Image prep: Will Wilde, Brody Davis, Irene Jiang
Project Manager: Brianna Larson
Executive Producer: Kelly Green
Production Company: Karga 7
Director: Emre Sahin
Producer: Jeanne Begley
Graphics Producer: Fikret Manoglu
Post Coordinator: Deanna Saracino
Design team: Vince Diga, Bobby Hougham
3D team: Yinzi Xiong, Lena Lee, Alan Llave
2D Animation: Alan Llave, Tommy Hutcherson
Compositing: Alan Llave, Tommy Hutcherson, Yinzi Xiong, Lena Lee
Image prep: Will Wilde, Brody Davis, Irene Jiang
Project Manager: Brianna Larson
Executive Producer: Kelly Green
Director: Emre Sahin
Producer: Jeanne Begley
Graphics Producer: Fikret Manoglu
Post Coordinator: Deanna Saracino
The Process
This approach was initially designed to look like a history textbook brought to life. Timelines, infographics, paintings and photographs all brought together through camera movement, parallax, and subtle animation techniques. The production company and History Channel both liked the treatment but felt the need to inject more texture and age. We developed techniques and scripting to create volumetric distressing, dynamically placing appropriately sized textures in front of the camera regardless the pathing.
Each era of the presidents required different techniques. The farther back in history we went, the fewer assets we could pull from to tell those scenes individual stories. For those we would sometimes split apart and animate camera moves through paintings linking images together dynamically. In the more recent scenes we would have multiple photographs and sometimes even footage to work with.
Infographics were created using a combination of 2D and 3D techniques to illustrate our interpretation of the data. Each scene was analyzed and grouped together for production based on similarities in workflows to optimize efficiencies and calendar.