In my opinion, the transition was one of the best examples of television presentation I’ve seen (although its somewhat nightmare fuel-ish), no other timesharing channel ever replicated as something as seamless and that connects two channels that have little in common with each other so well, the only common factor is that Turner owns both On 19th December 1998, Cartoon Network launched as part of the Sky Digital satellite which finally give sky viewers a 24 hour channel. The transition animation features somewhat weird characters, such as a mouth with lips and teeth, an eyeball with with and a propeller, a toothbrush and a match. Then a stick of a dynamite explodes (a pun of Turner Network Television’s acronym and the well known explosive also called TNT), then the TNT Classic Movies logo appears. Hi-Ball wears an hourglass on his wrist to remind him how much time CN has left for the day, when the time’s up, Hi-Ball pulls down the switch from CN mode to TNT mode starting the transition sequence and electrocutes him in the process. The animation features one of Cartoon Network’s earliest mascot characters (used exclusively in presentation) – Hi-Ball the Jester. Copies of the guide were given to advertisers, MSO’s (Multiple System Operators aka Cable Companies) and members of the press.Hatmaker also produced an animation for the transition between Cartoon Network and TNT Classic Movies in Europe, every night at 8pm CET (7pm UK), Cartoon Network closes for the night and hands over to its sister channel TNT Classic Movies. The presentation had a wide range of hues and textures and because the logo was black and white, it contrasted well and always stood out.In addition to the channel’s presentation, Hatmaker also designed Cartoon Network’s stationary such as letterheads and business cards and also produced an image guide for the launch of Cartoon Network, which explains the channel’s identity. The presentation had to have cartoon characteristics to fit into the nature of the channel, the presentation adopted a cartoony illustrative style with flexible, bouncy, lively and constant movement, with typical cartoon sound effects. Finding the right typefaces for the logo and the channel’s presentation was done through a trial and error process, in the end, four typefaces were chosen for Cartoon Network’s identity: Gothic 821 Condensed, Spumoni, Eagle Bold (the typeface used on the Cartoon Network’s original checkerboard logo) and Birch. Hatmaker designed the logo in a way to make sure it stands out at all times against a backdrop of various colours, after discovering that black and white were the least used colours in cartoons, it made perfect sense to use black and white in the logo, the checkerboard idea came from finding a way to avoid drop shadows so the logo text stands out, it also worked because the words “Cartoon and “Network have exactly the same amount of letters – 7 letters. They also designed Cartoon Network’s checkerboard infamous logo, the first one to be used in public, unlike the original round logo which was used in the 1991 sales presentation. Hatmaker (who closed in 2003, with its portfolio merged with its sister company – Corey McPherson Nash) developed the Checkerboard graphics package. I love the way he combined the goofy, the grotesque and the triumphant into this project’s sound design, a perfect fit for CN’s 25th anniversary.Cartoon Network begain broadcasting in the USA on 1st October 1992. He always taps into the off-kilter side of my projects, and then elevates the composition to another level. “One last shoutout to Kenny Kusiak, my old friend and go-to sound design collaborator. Working with Harry is a dream, he’s got the Midas touch. “I foisted that second task onto Harry, and he spent nearly 1.5 months working on just five seconds of wild animation. “The two biggest challenges Harry Teitelman (my co-animator) and I faced were how to distort and abstract the characters inside the box without losing sense of who they are (we wanted them to swell and stretch like bubblegum) and the immense challenge of actually forming the 25 with all of those characters. They only stipulated the cube, which characters we used in the 25, and the color palette - beyond those constraints, we got to go to town on the animation. “The design phase was a breeze, my producers at CN were incredibly open to experimenting with form and getting weird with the style and rhythm. The TV was eventually swapped for the CN cube, which features heavily in their current branding. “From there I started thinking about the characters trapped in a TV, and bursting out in a chaotic, celebratory explosion. Cartoon Network just hit their 25th anniversary on the air and revealed the logo for occasion with this manic explosion of the network’s characters designed and directed by Benjy Brooke.ĭesigner/director Benjy Brooke: “The project started with a simple prompt: animate classic CN characters forming into the number 25.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |