HOT HOUSE: Troika’s Triple-Threat Branding

Something good came out of the 2000 dot-com bust (besides the demise of the self-satisfied, cigar-smoking, 19-year-old instant millionaire). Back in the day when it seemed that all things Internet would transform our dreary existence into something that would blow the mind of even George Jetson, there existed a well-regarded broadcast design company called Pittard Sullivan.

Something good came out of the 2000 dot-com bust (besides the demise of the self-satisfied, cigar-smoking, 19-year-old instant millionaire). Back in the day when it seemed that all things Internet would transform our dreary existence into something that would blow the mind of even George Jetson, there existed a well-regarded broadcast design company called Pittard Sullivan. Pittard was the go-to company for any television network in search of quality design work. And when the dot-comers came a-calling, Pittard quickly expanded to fill the needs of every upstart start-up company looking to spend its new-found wealth on expensive graphics packages. When these companies collapsed, they took the venerable Pittard down with them.

Dan Pappalardo, a senior designer at Pittard, was working on the ABC-TV account as things were disintegrating around him and saw a way to turn this crisis into an opportunity. He, along with fellow Pittard employees Chuck Carey and Mark Bohman, formed Troika. Now in its seventh year, Troika has distinguished itself as a leading Hollywood design team that specializes in network branding assignments, sports packaging, show packaging and promo spots. Pappalardo says Troika’s "pedigree is network branding," which is evident simply by tuning into ABC or Fox this season. Troika and Pappalardo (who still has that original ABC account) have launched the "ABC Start Here" campaign this fall, ABC’s first-ever network-wide multiplatform branding initiative that extends beyond television to online, mobile, iTunes, DVD and VOD. And Fox asked Troika to "reinvigorate" its network identity this season, which means that Troika updated its own design, having created the original Fox packages in 2005.

You may have to look a little harder for the re-branding work the studio completed recently for MHD (Music High Definition), but it’s worth searching for. MHD is a new(ish) network from Viacom, which offers up music videos from MTV, VH1 and CMT in high definition and in Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound. When Troika was hired to re-brand the network, it started from the beginning, the very beginning, as in the creation of music. The team dreamt up an entire mythology that illustrates how music was introduced to the world. The result is a stunning group of animated network IDs with, at its center, a 35-second image spot entitled “Creation” that looks like a primal, rock-and-roll version of the Tower of Babel story packaged as a sequel to 300– all designed by Hieronymus Bosch.

The animators used both Maya and Cinema 4D to create these spots. It was "a huge challenge to integrate these two platforms," says Pappalardo. "It was a headache for our animators, but we wanted to exploit who was good at what on our team."

Heather Kim, the lead designer on the MHD project, explains how it was done: "To start, we used Photoshop to scan hand-drawn illustrations and watercolor textures, and then used Photoshop and Corel Painter to paint the characters and backgrounds. For modeling and animation, we used Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, and MAXON Cinema 4D. Maya’s Fluid and Paint effects along with Next Limit Real Flow came in handy for building atmospheric and environmental elements, such as clouds, grass and water. For the compositing, we used Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects. With Trapcode’s Particular (in After Effects), we built light and cloud particles that we overlaid on top of the illustration."