CDs Chris Bahry, Alexandre Torres and the Tendril crew help Canada’s Space Channel go beyond their core demo of young men in search a broader (read female) audience with a stunning set of macro-world IDs.

From issue 113 of the Stash Permanent Collection:

Executive producer Kate Bate at Tendril in Toronto: “When Mike Stanley from Bell media initially came to us with the brief we got really excited. We love working inside the broadcast ID format as they are always short in length, high in design, and usually involve some kind of unexpected twist – it’s the perfect format for experimentation, fun, and pushing visual quality.

“The aim with this set of IDs and promo toolkit was to launch a brand refresh of Space that would re-position the channel for broader appeal, especially to a female audience.

“The past look and feel of Space is quite dark and clearly directed at young men. The intention with these was to keep things mysterious and sci-fi, but light-filled and colorful, and with one foot firmly planted in the real world; to ‘surprise and delight’ viewers with the unexpected wonder that exists in the real world all around us.

“Making a spider not creepy was a major challenge. Another challenge was in arriving at a design for the Sci-Fi projector device that didn’t feel too aggressive. The overall project creative challenge was to maintain the right feel and tone and keep it coherent across the full set of IDs.

“Lots of technical challenges! [One of the biggest was] rigging the spider web to respond to the movements of the spider in a natural way. When it came to rendering the spider ID, we experimented with Corona Render engine.

“It is always a challenge to experiment with new software in production and in this case a fine web with very shallow-focus and heavy depth of field in addition to lots of glossy refraction was a hardcore test of its capabilities. We used a custom-mapped bokeh kernel that gave us some really nice results.

“Another big challenge on the Eggs spot was the soft-body collision dynamics as well as the bio-luminescence. With refractive objects there’s nowhere to hide the intersections so the sim had to be very precise. To achieve the effect we created a P-flow rig that attached particles at each vertex of a sphere to create a convex hull for a particle-based softbody dynamics simulation.

“On the Iron Space spots the challenge was shooting the iron-filings live and making them move in interesting ways. Getting the filings to stay inside our stencil shape without getting constantly sucked up by the magnets or blown away was painstaking detail work.

For Bell Media Space Channel
Creative director: Mike Stanley

For Tendril
Creative directors: Chris Bahry, Alexandre Torres
Executive producer: Kate Bate
Producers: Anne Deslauriers, Leah Wesolowski

“Neon Spider”:
Editor: Steve Manz
Concept art: Rodolfo Perisse Rocha
Art direction: Alexandre Torres, Leo Mateus
Modeling: Victor Hugo Dias de Sousa, Marcelo Alves de Souza
Additional modeling: Vini Nascimento
Rigging: Clovis Gay
Animation and web dynamics: Marcin Porebski
Look dev, lighting, textures, render: Marcelo Alves de Souza
Technical directors: Ben Pilgrim, Marcin Porebski
Compositing: Chris Bahry

“Space Projector”:
Art direction: Alexandre Torres, Chris Bahry
Modeling and design: Alexandre Torres, Vini Nascimento, Rowan Simpson, Marcin Porebski, Christian Hecht
Technical director: Ben Pilgrim
Animation: Marcin Porebski
Lighting, render, textures: Brad Husband
ParticleFX /UI /hologram: Gabriel Rocha
Decal textures: Steven Hollman
Compositing: Brad Husband, Chris Bahry
Editor: Steve Manz

“Space Eggs”:
Art direction: Chris Bahry, Leo Mateus
Look dev, animation, rigging, FX: Will Sharkey
Textures: Will Sharkey, Alasgar Hasanov
Lighting, render: Alasgar Hasanov
Compositing: Alasgar Hasanov, Chris Bahry
Editor: Steve Manz

“Iron Pink and Blue”:
Live action and art direction: Chris Bahry, Leo Mateus
Compositing: Chris Bahry, Leo Mateus
Editor: Jackie Roda

Music and sound design: John Black of CypherAudio

Toolkit
Sony Alpha7s with a Shogun recorder, 3ds Max, ZBrush, Nuke, V-Ray, Corona Render Engine