STEPHEN COLBERT’S TOONING OUT THE NEWS
An animated series parodying top news stories of the day and interviewing real-world guests.
Character Designer; Graphic Designer, and Illustrator
Designing and building out a selection of the show’s main characters. Character aesthetics (physical attributes, clothing, poses/expressions inspired by prominent cable news figures. Working with art-director, show-runner, and writing team to capture humor and churn out polished graphic images to keep up with daily news schedule.
SKILLSET APPLIED:
Motion: video editing, motion graphics, sound design and editing, modifying and combining existing assets provided by Pixar (alpha animations, static backgrounds, title treatments).
Illustration: custom illustrations of original design assets (approved by Pixar) that fit the film's aesthetic.
Graphic Design: layout, compositing, title treatment, text treatment.
CHARACTER DESIGN
In order to respond to the news cycle day-of, the show used Adobe Character Animator, a technology that motion tracks a video of an actor running lines, and that tracking would be applied to a corresponding character in real time. Recurring characters had to be meticulously built out, particularly in the face: every possible viseme (the position of the face and mouth when saying a word) was drawn out, from multiple angles.
GRAPHIC DESIGN + ILLUSTRATION
The best part of the job was coordinating with the art director, the show runner and the writers room to turn around one to two ridiculous graphics at a VERY fast pace. Every day was a new, weird project, and it strengthened my ability to prioritize and keep a clear head while multitasking under tight deadlines.
The show started pre-production two months before the COVID-19 national quarantine and began airing one month into it.
*OF NOTE:
We adapted and executed work of a quality that holds up compared to productions before and since that era. I was incredibly impressed to watch my colleagues adapt and create a show 5 days a week and I was proud of our work. Regarding the humor, Please keep in mind that this show parodied cable news reacting to politics in a contentious climate.