As a naive 70’s kid from Hobart, where growing up we didn’t even have Maccas, it was mind boggling To visit the hallowed turf of the MCG in NOVEMBER 1993 to witness U2’s Zoo TV.

Some 23 years after Zoo TV, my wife and I were organising the very first Node event. We realised late in the game we needed to create some event opening titles.

I was reminded of Zoo TV.

U2's explosion of sight and sound left a permanent mark on my brain and introduced me to “Television, the drug of the nation” by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

“I loved the chaos, the mess and the intensity of this, which recalled my childhood where TV was my gateway drug into motion design.”

This would form a big inspiration for the inaugural Node event titles. Ironic as TV work paid most of the bills.

But you can’t make titles just out of TV static and noise. That was merely icing on the cake. What was in the cake, what was the story?

After spitballing ideas and throwing darts at the intern, I soon realised that Node had four letters and by an amazing coincidence, there were four main types of keyframe interpolation in animation software.

Perhaps this could serve as a setting for our titles. So we set about exploring a stylised world for each keyframe type.

- James Cowen, Creative Director | Yes Captain\

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Linear. Continuous. Ease. Hold.

But I sure as shit couldn't do this alone. I needed the man they call Burrito. 🌯

I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with Ted Adair on a number of our studio projects. Without a doubt, one of the best freelancers in this corner of the globe. A part from being extremely good looking and a real nice guy, he would often rock up to the studio wearing a monkey beanie. That's a beanie, with a monkey's face on it. How can you not love that?

In employment, too many people feel they just need to do what they are told. I know I did the same starting out. You can easily feel intimidated or that you're meant to be subservient.

But not Ted. He wasn’t afraid of speaking his mind, suggesting ideas and even challenging me (the so-called “boss”) if he thought something could be better. Always respectful, never arrogant or egotistical, only for the betterment of the project.

"This is why you employ someone! Not to just press buttons, but to generate ideas, and make your ideas better!"

- James

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- Ted Adair

After working on another project for Yes Captain, Jimmy asked me to help out on this small love project for a couple of weeks for something called "Node Fest" with the promise of mexican food as payment. 🌮

The four distinct chapters of the animation were supposed to capture the unique essence of motion of each keyframe but stylistically blend together. Because time was tight we had to take a streamlined approach to how we built this, and decided the fastest way to the best result was to pump out as many untextured/lit shots as I could in the 2 weeks, then Jimmy would build the story in editing and then go back to texture/light as the final stage. We felt like the flow and story was the most important part and wanted to prioritize that.

I pumped out as many different variations of shots as I could and then stepped away from the project after a couple of weeks to leave Jimmy to it and was delighted when I came back later to see a fully realized story edited together combining shots and cuts I didn't expect.

I gave him some suggestions on how to level up some of the amazing shots he had rendered and helped animate some type for the titles and we were done, just in time for the first ever Node.

“Unfortunately this was created before the wonder of Redshift and GPU render magic had hit the mainstream so we were in for a real battle to hammer these shots into shape before the deadline.”

Because this was the first ever Node we had no expectations or previous opening titles to guide us to a standard, we just kinda winged it and hoped for the best. Overall it was a super fun project to be apart of with very few restraints outside of time. It was super liberating having creative freedom to make what ever we wanted and Jimmy was an amazing collaborator that provided the best vibes and the tastiest tacos. A++ would collaborate again!

‍Rewind. Enjoy the innagural Node Event titles from the CPU render days.

Credits

Directed by | Yes Captain
Motion Design & Animation by | Ted Adair & James Cowen
Music by | Brendon WIlliams
Sound FX & Mix by | Jay Curtis
Produced by | Kim Cowen