Crufts (The Kennel Club) 2022-2026 Animated Titles

Abstract

The production of animation has been constantly under the opposing pressures of tightening budgets and deadlines, and ever-increasing expectations of high-quality outputs. Balancing these constraints involves making choices regarding the visual design, production methods and the amount of animated motion to produce. This final consideration has the greatest impact on the final output. Animation can be reduced to basic ‘motion graphics’ – the transition, rotation and scaling of any number of static images. The result is, however, motion without emotion: the expressive, characterful personality and acting performance of the animated object or character is lost. Animation for the Crufts Dog Show were created with an intention to counteract this tendency and create characters, which would have distinct personality. The goal was to develop potential production methods using existing technologies which prioritise performance and character driven animation within budgetary and deadline constraints.
The result is a package of animation, commissioned by Sunset&Vine and created for Channel 4’s broadcast of The Kennel Club’s Crufts dog show. The outputs included all concept design and development, visual design, storyboards and full animation production consisting of 2 versions of the opening titles (20 seconds), 6 commercial bumpers (3 sets of 2 bumpers; to the commercials and back from the commercials (12 seconds total) and 1 replay wipe (1.5 seconds @ 50 frames per second). All sequences were exported at 4K resolution, and alternate versions of all animation were produced with additional year dates from 2022 – 2026. The first broadcast was in March 2022 on Channel 4 and More 4. The titles will continue to be used annually for the next 3 – 4 years. End title credits, including credit for my work on the titles, scheduled to run following the final broadcast in 2022 were cut due to an overrun on the live final.
The animation technique, style and execution is based on over 30 years’ experience as a practising animator and animation director of TV commercials and children’s TV series. The animation is roughed out using traditional hand drawn methods, and a key pose of the final artwork (made up of several drawing layers) is positioned to roughly match the hand drawn key animation. Envelope deformers consisting of control points and curves are applied to key pose artwork layers and are manipulated to closely match each key drawing of the hand drawn animation. The coordinate values of the deformer controls, handles and curves are used to generate the inbetween drawings. Breakdown poses are inserted as needed, closely matching the drawn animation. The digitally generated inbetweens recalculate their positions according to the values of the original key poses and the new breakdown pose. Easing is applied between key poses and breakdowns. The colour palette is deliberately limited, based on the Kennel Club’s brand guidelines. The concept describes the dog’s journey to the show, seeing other events, and rising through the judging to become best in show. It employs strong graphic devices (enlarged individual letters, used as graphic environmental elements, which resolve to spell Crufts and reversed out overlapping elements) echoing Bauhaus poster art and film title sequences by Saul Bass. The bumpers are designed to further engage the viewer by developing the personality of the dog.
The originality of this work rests in the hybrid method of production based on core, traditional hand-drawn animation techniques and an original use of vector-based image manipulation. Deformation of key artwork, key posing, breakdown poses and key pose easing all contribute to emulate traditional animation techniques. Current industry digital cut out animation methods rely on the construction of a fully rigged character. Rigging is a time consuming and specialist skill, done by a specialist rigger and not usually the animator. For long running TV shows with excessive dialogue and repetitive action and character set-ups the current system works well, but not for short form, unique, illustrative, expressive and active animation, such as short films, commercials and title sequences. The method I am developing doesn’t require a Rigging Artist or specialist rigging knowledge, it can all be done by the animator. As a result, the animator has more control and is able to animate more intuitively, leading to a better animated performance, because the expressive ‘soul’ of the animation, captured in the hand drawn roughs, is retained in the final animated sequence and the final product is a more personal artwork.