Sportschau Rebranding Designing a new look for Germany’s most beloved sports show is understandably no trivial matter.
The Sportschau is Germany’s premier
sport reporting show that has for decades been a staple of the German
sports diet for millions of sports enthusiasts. In
the past, public broadcasters in Germany were the only source of
information for sports-related news in television. The television
landscape has evolved greatly over time and numerous other show formats
have emerged – all wanting to grab their share of viewers using all
sorts of eye candy! Being the show with the largest audience, Sportschau
needed a new visual outfit in order to maintain – and accurately
reflect – its image as the preeminent authority in sports reporting. The
job of re-designing this visual outfit was given to BDA Creative, whose
pitch was deemed the best of 5 that were submitted. Creative Director
Tim Finnamore commented: “In our concept, the iconographic S-shape was
turned into an element that could embrace logos and other brands for
individual or group events. It makes it immediately clear that the
Sportshau is the host and sole organizer of the event.”
After it had been decided that new concept would revolve around the flowing S, the concept had to be visualized – and this was done using Cinema 4D. Creating the flying chrome strands, luminous points and background spheres made up of pixels required quite a bit of know-how to realize according to plan. Particularly challenging was the transformation of the S – which was made up entirely of chrome strands – into a sphere at the center of the entire structure. A combination of multiple Warp, Taper and Twist Deformers in Cinema 4D was needed to create the desired S shape. The Cloth Surface function was used to add depth to the object and a Subdivision Surface modifier was applied to create the smooth surface and ensure that all corners and edges were slightly rounded.
BDA Creative’s branding concept has already proven how effective it is for various sporting events in 2016. The excellent integration of the Sportschau’s new logo with the logos of events such as the Olympics or the Tour de France demonstrated another important aspect of this rebranding: Even though the Sportschau hosts the respective event, its logo and the event’s logo come together to create a homogenous visual impresson.
Rendering was done externally using the Octane renderer in several passes. These elements were then combined in After Effects to achieve the desired result. Initially, the position of some elements changed unexpectedly in the course of the animation, which could not be corrected in the compositing phase. These changes in position were being caused by the Warp Deformers. “After we had found out what was causing these issues, we created an XPresso setup that supplied us with the correct coordinates by simply bypassing the Warp Deformer, which gave us the data we needed for compositing,” explains Managing Director Benjamin Kerneck.
In the end, the Sportschau rebranding was a resounding success, which was celebrated by both the client and the viewing public alike. “Cinema 4D is intuitive to use and easy to understand, which is exactly what is needed when experimenting during the realization of a project. The connectivity to After Effects is perfect and ensured a smooth workflow for this job,” Benjamin Kerneck sums up.