Creating the Bcon 2023 Festival Interstitials
- Article
- 19 Jul 2024
- 6 min read
- 7 min watch time
Every year, we organize a 'Festival' within the Blender Conference, where the winners receive a Suzanne Award in each category. These are Best Animation, Best Design, Best Short Film and Special Selection that each need an interstitial with titles. We usually develop the style in-house, but this year (2023) we had to develop the interstitials based on branding developed by a studio in Amsterdam.
Development
The Blender Conference 2023 brand was developed by an external studio that handed over all the documents such as logos, fonts, prints and screen images with the characters and more. The meaning behind some of its design was open for interpretation, which allowed me explore more freely.
Interpretation of the theme
The characters are constructed of various household items like a bottle of bleach, a duster, a brush, a paper bag and such. Simple attributes like this gave the characters their name and possible visual interpretation we can use for the interstitials. The patterns on the shirts were the leading inspiration behind the interstitials because of the many ways one can interpret and create visuals with simple shapes. In the end it was mostly a matter of experimenting and getting the timing right between the audio and video.
Visual exploration
With the bleach character, I wanted to experiment with fluidity or a liquid-like movement for the Best Animation category. Using the colors of Bleach’s shirt to animate stripes to transition to simple water like surface. Bleach was used as the first animation test to present to the folks at the studio. After approval of my plans by Francesco, the interstitials were created and iterated upon.
Here is a collection of small bits as a proof of concept, exploring possible ways of creating a full length Interstitial.
In the end, the basic premise for these interstitials is a well timed visual with a reveal of the category.
Creating the interstitials
For the final versions of the interstitials, Andy mentioned: "Ooh it would be great to have these on 60 fps!" and from that point on it was decided to create an extra smooth result and converting existing animations from 30 to 60 frames per second.
Best Animation
For the Best Animation I used the Bleach character and animated the stripes in the shader using an empty. This version is simplified with more emphasis on smaller movement and timing. The colors are also more intense with purple and light-cyan.
Best Design and Special Selection
This interstitial is my favorite because of the cube/checkered theme. The music also works well with the visuals creating a snappy result.
Best Short Film
Main Title
For the main title, I wanted to combine multiple patterns/elements of the interstitials and shape them into individual letters. More time is spent on the introduction of the festival title and in this case five different beats, four for every letter and the final presented title.
Sound design and music
All of the sound design and music is created in Ableton Live by using various packs and didgeridoo samples that were recorded. The sound design consisted of various textures and hits to give the overall sound a crisp/snappy feel. The didgeridoo recording had various spoken words, growls, wows, and pops in rapid succession which were later processed with filters and triggered in specific arrangements. Combined with a simple drum kit to determine the base rhythm, the result should have a playful digital character but communicate an established and somewhat raw presence thanks to the didgeridoo.
Have a look/listen at the various (exported) iterations below for each category. The initial version were too heavy on the drums and textures too robotic. Francesco Siddi helped me through the process and we discussed various things we liked and what could be improved.
Take a look at some of the elements and techniques used to create the music. The base elements are the drums, the didgeridoo and additional hits/textures.
Final Steps
Text titles
The titles are rendered in the Video Sequence Editor (VSE) by using the same font and colors of the corresponding category, this makes rendering faster and easier.
Final playlist
For the festival we created a playlist in chronological order and sort the productions by category.
Wrapping up
The process of creating the interstitials took more time due to the longer experimental phase. It was definitely a challenge to create visual material based on the branding identity. There were many ways of interpreting the identity with more visual complexity of the characters, but I chose a simpler route and have more time to experiment by going more abstract.
If you are curious and want to take a look, you can download the blend file here:
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