Washington Wizards Hot Ones: Intro Animation

Monumental Sports Network produced a series of Stella Artois Hot Ones shows featuring players and coaches. I was given the task of designing a unique intro for the series. Inspired by the Nashville bar scene, where wings are a staple, I created a neon sign animation that flickers on, followed by a fiery flame wipe to emphasize the spicy, bold theme of the show.

Full episode can be viewed here:

A look inside the project:

Technical:

One of the custom expressions I developed automated the cycling of the flames. I used three shape layers controlled by a menu and a loopOut(“cycle”) expression. Each individual fire layer had the following expression applied: a = thisComp.layer("Controller").effect("Fire select")("Menu");

if (a == 1) {100} else {0} This allowed for seamless cycling of the flame animations throughout the intro.