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Challenge
An on-air identity for DreamWorks Channel built around an imaginary studio set, where each character performs in a 3D stage of their own. We designed and animated the majority of the character idents, on the original launch and again for the later refresh.
Approach
DreamWorks Channel needed an on-air identity that could carry an animation library rather than sit politely beside it. The answer was an imaginary DreamWorks studio set: a 3D stage where the studio's characters behave the way they do on screen.
Every character gets the stage to themselves. Po throws a karate chop, Puss dances, Oh wiggles, Shrek makes a mess. Each one carries its own graphic pattern, imprinted into the set, and its own piece of music, so the channel reads as one brand while the characters stay unmistakably themselves.
Panels rise and fall through frame to carry the transitions, giving the set a weight and a rhythm that holds whether an ident runs long or is cut to a few seconds.
We came back to the channel for the later refresh, rebuilding the idents for a multiscreen toolkit. The character logic carried over intact; what changed was the engineering underneath, so a small in-house team could produce hundreds of assets across languages, formats and territories without rebuilding the animation each time.
Sequence Stills
Each ident is a single continuous move through the studio set. The character arrives, does the one thing only they would do, and the DreamWorks logo resolves behind them. Frames across the roster show how far the set stretches while the channel still reads as one place.
CG Work
Motion
Results