Creative firm ViewPoint Studios created the new open and program package for Discovery Wings Channel’s, EXTREME AIR. ViewPoint Studios’ designer/art director Michael MacKenzie said, “Discovery Wings Channel supplied us with some truly amazing footage.

Ring of Fire completed three 30-second spots, "High Noon," "Day of the Dumpsters" and "Fashion Show,” for a Unisys campaign. Ring of Fire’s gear of tools included: Quantel Henry, Discreet Logic Inferno, Maya, Commotion and Adobe After Effects. "'Day of the Dumpsters' required a wide range of visual effects," remarked Ring of Fire senior post-production producer Casey Conroy. "One of our challenges was to create a CGI building that would sit in the middle of a lone desert landscape.

Creative firm ViewPoint Studios announced the completion of a promotional campaign for the Court TV series, FORENSIC FILES. The campaign highlights the fascinating investigative process and intriguing stories of forensic specialists. To effectively convey how the science and technology used by forensic specialists works to uncover the truth surrounding crimes, ViewPoint Studio chose to show how an ordinary object could actually be a crucial piece of evidence. They used everyday objects such as a piece of gum, a cigarette butt, a hair and a fly as their focal points.

New York’s Quiet Man recently created visual effects for three 30-second spots for Mike's Hard Lemonade. In each spot, the victim – either a lumberjack, a distracted marine biologist or an unfastened construction worker – enjoys recovering from a serious accident with a mug of Mike's Hard Lemonade. "There is a great deal of humor in the inappropriate," says Quiet Man creative director and founder Johnnie Semerad about the Monty Python-esque storylines behind the three spots.

DMA Animation created the broadcast design package for the Lifetime Network's new television franchise, DANCESPORT CHAMPIONSHIPS. The DanceSport event took place in Monaco, where the world's best dancers met for this international competition. DMA designed a rhythmic flowing show open to highlight the beauty and motion of the dancers. DMA's design package included an open, bumpers and lower thirds along with other ancillary graphic elements, using a combination of live action footage and CGI ribbons. DMA Animation designs for television, film, the Internet and new media.

ATTIK directed and designed the live-action, graphics and an end tag for “Periwinkle” and “In Your Face,” a pair of 30-second spots for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s Earle Palmer Brown and Comcast Corporation. “Periwinkle” began airing in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and the Midwest in mid-April, and “In Your Face” in mid-May 2001. These are the first two spots in an evolving campaign.

Glassworks, a London post-production house, has recently completed work on a commercial for American car legend Cadillac’s new Escalade sports utility vehicle. The commercial showcases Glassworks’ skills in 3D modeling and animation in some explosive action sequences during a high-speed chase with missiles. The smoke effects were created using Glassworks' own smoke effect plugin which was integrated into Mental Images' Mental Ray. The plugin has the capability of adding an unlimited amount of smoke trails to any 3D scene and can be fine-tuned to create a precise look.

The Ring of Fire creative team has designed and produced a promo package for FOX Sports Net's "Regional Sports Report" that began airing on March 22, 2001. The package was customized for broadcast in 16 different regions. Targeted promos were created for the four main markets -- Southern California, Seattle, the South and Southwest -- which included footage of various athletes from those important regions. Ring of Fire also created a generic version of the promo, which contained generic footage and graphical elements that could easily be changed to identify specific regional teams.

New York visual effects company Quiet Man recently created "Organ Grinder," a 30-second spot featuring a talking monkey. The spot was commissioned by New York’s Fallon McElliot agency for Conseco Insurance. It first aired April 12, 2001. Quiet Man 3D designer David Shirk got involved in pre-production with a review of camcorder footage of a monkey. Based on footage of the monkey’s head and various side views with an emphasis on his jaw and lower face, Shirk constructed a computer model with Realviz Image Modeller and Softimage 3D, later adding fur in Softimage 3D.

Visual effects studio Rhinoceros Effects has recently finished a new spot for health insurance group Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield and agency Gotham Inc. Titled “Beacon,” the spot combines photo-realistic CG with live-action camera moves. “The ’Beacon’ butterflies that star in the spot required deep work in CG, but shooting the live materials was also very important,” said director Harry Dorrington. “We shot the room using very slow moves, as well as capturing light sources and background textures.

EyeballNYC has created a new ID package for New York Central, the Metro Channel's new late night show that provides New Yorkers with a daily fix of New York entertainment, gossip, lifestyle and culture. The 100+ element ID package reflects EyeballNYC's distinctive use of rapid-fire still photographs and edgy, flat graphic animation to simulate a typical New Yorker's blurred morning commute. When asked for one, EyeballNYC produced five show opens, with original music, as well as numerous ID elements, bumpers, lower thirds, credit beds and re-opens.

Santa Monica, California’s R!OT provided design and visual effects services for the new Eve video, WHO'S THAT GIRL? The video, which is the first from Eve's just released CD SCORPION, places the hip-hop diva, along with an enormous Bengal tiger, into an eerie ice kingdom and several other virtual environments. "In order to achieve perfect integration, most of the compositing needed to be done by hand, with each frame treated as an individual work of art," said compositor Klaus Hansen. Hansen produced a digital matte painting to extend the apartment set.

MacGuff Ligne Paris transformed Kraft's Jello gelatin and pudding products into a fantasy of pastoral landscapes for a new series of Foote Cone Belding spots. The ad agency chose MacGuff Ligne, thanks in part to its collaborative history with director Jean Pierre Roux and his renowned spot for Evian featuring a baby ballet of synchronized swimming infants. "MacGuff was uniquely suited to make that magic happen due to our flexibility,” says executive producer Nico Trout.

London’s production house HRA has completed the latest commercial for Cereal Partners’ “Shreddies,” featuring “Mr. Hungry”. HRA director Andrew Painter teamed with Ian Sharp, director at Talkback Productions, to produce a matchless combination of live-action and animation. The live-action component was inspired by the well-known musical version of OLIVER, perfectly captured to create an atmospheric world inhabited by larger than life characters, both human and animated.

Santa Monica, California’s Computer Cafe provided 3D animation and visual effects services for a new spot for Bayer Home Health. Conceived by Chicago agency Euro RSCG Tatham, the 30-second spot promotes Bayer Home Health Total Termite Control system. The spot opens on a man lying in a magnetic resonance imaging system. The machine's scanning bar performs a pass and reveals an interior view of the man's chest. The scene then shifts to the man's home and dissolves to a MRI-like view in which the insides of the home's skeletal structure are plainly in view.

Los Angeles’ Click 3X provided design, 3D animation, visual effects and integration services for BRAVE NEW WORLD, a new series of television commercials for EMC networked data storage systems. The campaign was conceived by Boston agency Arnold Worldwide and directed by Morton Jankel Zander's Marcus Nispel. Each of the three 60-second commercials uses a vision of an apocalyptic future world as a metaphor for businesses searching for reinforcement in a world being bombarded by information.

Manchester, UK’s 422 Ltd. used Cambridge Animation Systems' Inkworks software to achieve a traditional cel look in 3D for two recent projects. Mr. T is a 30-second commercial produced by Equinox Film & TV Productions and directed by Gary Cowan for the Accident Group, a compensation claims company. Mr. T was first modeled in Maya and prepared for animation using the software's set-driven keys and animation features. Once the pace of the animation was determined, Inkworks was used on the outlines and scenes were painted with the Maya renderer to achieve a cel look.

Venice, California’s Blur Studio's broadcast design division recently created a show open for ROBOTICA, The Learning Channel's new 1-hour robot competition series airing on Wednesday nights. Creative director Tim Brown came up with the piece's innovative design, centering on a chrome-plated, flying robot that mounts an aggressive assault on the television screen. Blur Studio concept artist Feng Shu designed the robot character and 3D artist Juan Granja modeled and animated it. Blur Studio also handled the production of the open, composed entirely of photo-real 3D computer animation.

New York’s Curious Pictures has created CHEESE CHANNEL, a 30-second spot for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Chicago’s Foote, Cone and Belding ad agency. Switching between several classic daytime TV vignettes, the comic spot blends stock footage and a variety of mixed media techniques, including live-action, stop-motion animation and computer/cel animation. “We’re proud of the cheese-surfing Kraft Mac and Cheese spot,” said Jim Shirreff, art director, Foote, Cone and Belding. “The universe of television is condensed to a world of macaroni and cheese.”

yU + co has designed and produced a television advertising campaign for Turner Network Television in support of TNT and CNN/SI coverage of WUSA, the women's professional soccer league. Directed by yU + co creative director Garson Yu, the campaign launches with a 60-second television spot in which soccer stars Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy and Brianna Scurry morph into animated superheroes.