Washington Capitals - Youth Hockey Day Starter Headshots

I had the pleasure of creating a series of motion graphics videos for the starter headshots. The concept took inspiration from a few ideas that were floated, and I ran with the nostalgic charm of a View-Master.

Challenges and Solutions

The first challenge was crafting the perfect setting—a 1990s youth’s room with a heavy hockey theme. Despite hours of searching, I couldn’t find an image that fully captured the nostalgic vibe I envisioned. That’s when I turned to DALL-E to generate a custom image. Afterward, I brought it into Photoshop for further refinement, adjusting the elements to enhance the nostalgic look I was aiming for.

The second challenge was designing the View-Master itself in After Effects. Realism was paramount, so I created a fully functional reel with seven precomps. This setup allowed for images to be placed directly into the reel, delivering a high level of realism while remaining easy to iterate.

Technical Approach

While this project didn’t rely heavily on expressions, it demanded meticulous art direction and attention to detail. To achieve the snapback motion of the rotating reel, I used one of my favorite expressions, Initial Bounce. This expression was applied to a slider controlling the reel’s rotation, integrated through Essential Graphics parameters to keep the workflow efficient and flexible.

Here’s the expression used for the snapback motion: amp = .05;

freq = 2.0;

decay = 10.0;

n = 0;

time_max = 4;

if (numKeys > 0){

n = nearestKey(time).index;

if (key(n).time > time){

n--;

}}

if (n == 0){ t = 0;

}else{

t = time - key(n).time;

}

if (n > 0 && t < time_max){

v = velocityAtTime(key(n).time - thisComp.frameDuration/10);

value + v*amp*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);

}else{value}