NEW YORK CITY — Creative studio Flavor (www.flavor.tv) helped create the show package for the 2020 AICP Post Awards. The Awards celebrate the artistry and creativity of post production and were presented online June 17th - a response to COVID-19, which made an in-person gathering impossible.
As AICP Post Awards Chair, Chris Franklin (owner and editor of Big Sky Edit) led this year's program development, including the selection of companies providing editorial, graphics and music. With longstanding AICE/AICP member company Cutters Studios onboard for editorial, the committee elected Flavor, its animation/VFX collective, for design. The show's captivating score is 100-percent Yessian.
Aiming for a unifying design concept inspired by these times, Flavor co-directors/creative directors Jason Cook and Brian McCauley felt that most people would relate to a scientist stuck inside a lab, conducting new experiments.
"Only this lab is a highly art-directed world where the experiments manifest in ways that are silly, irreverent, playful and weird," Cook details.
"It really was the perfect idea, because it allowed all of our creatives to contribute with their strengths," McCauley adds. "There's design, 2D, 3D, particles, hair, cloth sims, dynamics, and for those who actually paid attention in school, real science equations."
"When the AICP Awards were moved online in response to the COVID-19 restrictions on the size of gatherings, as well as shelter-at-home orders, Flavor pivoted beautifully to bring this amazing concept to fruition," noted Matt Miller, president and CEO of AICP.
In its entirety, the show package created by the Flavor team spans over 16 minutes of original content. The live-action open was directed by Brian Broeckelman of Dictionary Films. Twenty-nine category winner animations were created, along with an extensive credits sequence.
With Flavor's executive producers Neal Cohen and Darren Jaffe and senior producer Wendy Umanzor orchestrating contributions from LA to Chicago and Detroit, Cutters' editor Tom Brassil and his Chicago colleagues were instrumental in structuring the show, and facilitating the remote workflow.
Conceptually, Cook and McCauley called on art director Ella Yoon to help develop the look and feel for their lab environment and field notebook, where scientific principles are presented and documented – with a twist. In the design system, the science-themed motif and custom shape language colorfully elevate the meaning of each post production craft awarded.
For production, Maxon Cinema 4D, Autodesk Arnold and Maya, Insydium X-particles, Adobe After Effects, and Foundry's Nuke had starring roles. As concepts were approved, they were built by the team in C4D under the lead of CG supervisor Josh Studebaker, using his custom light rig and shader pipeline with a show-tailored color palette. In Chicago, Colby Capes used Procreate to animate a drawing for each winner's card that became part of the design motif. All category and winners' page templates for the animations were built in AE, while Nuke was used for final compositing. As conforms took shape, teams at Cutters and Yessian provided editorial and music.
"Yessian really made these experiments come to life with their audio,” says McCauley. “None of this would have worked without them."
To view the complete list of Awards winners, visit http://www.aicppostawards.com.