Weird and wonderful TV idents promote US Science channel

Having seen Blacklist's previous work, the Science Channel contacted the studio to commission some new channel idents. It wanted the channel and its content to look modern and exciting and knew that Blacklist was the go-to firm to get that look.

"Science Channel checked out our previous work and approached us with a pretty open brief," explains producer Marga Sardà. "The idea was to investigate the micro and macro worlds of biology, insects, technology, the strange and the odd - all in dramatic, surprising and unusual ways. We wanted to show Science Channel as the home of smart science fiction."

"All the software we used was vital to the production," adds creative director Teo Guillem. "We used 3ds Max for rigging and animation and V-Ray for rendering: both are very important tools for us. We also used Photoshop to generate some of the textures and After Effects to animate them for compositing. We relied on RealFlow for generating the fluids.

"Liquid presented special challenges in that we had to rig the egg for a very abstract character, but also make the animation look natural. The cracking of the egg was also a bit difficult - we tried to use dynamics, but in the end it was done manually.

"In Erosion we worked with animated textures which in turn generated huge files. It’s something that always makes the process a bit more difficult, especially when you’re working in 3D. In all the spots we experienced vibration during the render which proved to be challenging. But, as always, we worked our way around it."

This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 173.

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