Phil Knock, Senior Producer at Disney approached London’s MGFX Studio, the creative arm of visual effects agency Rushes, to design and create a new set of idents for the Disney XD channel; a channel targeted towards male viewers between the ages of 6 and 14. He wanted something that reflected the demographic, with way more grunge and distortion and far less pixie dust and sparkles.

Headed by Matt Lawrence, the creative team at MGFX Studio set to the challenge, and following Phil’s instructions built a large scale electrified glass pulsating neon logo using Cinema 4D.

“It needed to be big, blocky and hard edged, no frills or softness. The trick was to get the right combination of refractions, making the 3D reflective, hard and luminant without being messy or fussy” says artist Brad Le Riche.

“We laid out the scenes with quick choppy camera moves and wide angle lenses to generate dynamic cutaways trying to get as far as we could in C4D before pushing it out to composite in After Effects” explains Matt. “Using our C4D to AE pipeline really helped, as Barry (Corcoran) could use the cameras it generated to layer in background elements and flares to really punch the comp out,” he adds.

The end result is a distinctly “XD channel” series of break bumpers and idents, with the comp effects punching out the hard glossy 3D and the audio bed complementing the graphics making sure each sting has the same look and feel and sits neatly within the channel’s overall brand.

Matt Lawrence
www.mgfxstudio.co.uk