MONSTER JAM ON NBC SPORTS TITLE SEQUENCE

Every episode of Monster Jam covered an event that was at a different location. I wanted to include that detail into the title sequence by incorporating each location into the second shot with the close up of the globe, thus giving all 20+ locations their own subtly unique intro.

But I took it a step further by adding more unique details for the All Star show in Las Vegas. The theme of the show was Fire vs Ice, each team with a captain. Not only were new textures /models applied but you can clearly see both Captain's trucks in two panning shots, both of which are then covered in either flame or ice. This gave me a chance to explore vertex maps and fields again with C4D, but a lot of compositing was applied through After Effects.

TOP: Standard treatment displaying new location

BOTTOM: All Star Fire and Ice treatment

I pitched this concept to the Manager of the Monster Jam television show, Wayne Juerke, back in the fall of 2017. A few months after I first started working in August. But due to agreements with FOX SPORTS I would not be able to push forward with this concept so I had to put the idea on the back burner for a full year before I was able to re-present it when we moved our tv show to NBC SPORTS.

The new Director of the Video Editing Department, Oliver de Lantsheere, along with Wayne wanted me to go ahead and start working on it. We felt the "Global Domination" concept was more fitting for Monster Jam as it allowed for us to explore more themes along with the representation that it is a global brand - displaying the different locations the show has either been to or is presently at. It is the first title sequence Monster Jam's tv show has broadcasted.

BREAKDOWN

Drawn in Photoshop, I wanted my superiors to understand my vision for the title sequence. There were of course changes as to prolong the title sequence.

After roughly making the base models I mostly stayed true to the Global Domination storyboard but expanded it from the initial 15 seconds to 30 seconds. Made a few passes of rough animatics to explore camera angles and animations. After choosing from a few version and some added fine-tuning, this is what we went with.

I thought about how I would visually signify Monster Jam's expansion across domestic and international markets. And I decided to experiment with Cinema 4D's fields system with vertex maps (for those at work who were not familiar with C4D's new tool at the time, I called it "The Infectious System" for simplification) and eventually after a bunch of testing I was successful with this animation, expanding the gold on the carbon surface.

At the same time while playing with C4D's fields on the globe I was also creating the base that would hold everything. Initially it was just a simple base, with a lot of extrudes and textures, but my director then suggested I incorporate a BKT Tire (one of the many sponsors with Monster Jam) into the scene somehow, and that's what is in the middle of the base. You can see more of it at the beginning and end of the final animation.

The only things of this whole project I did not create from scratch were the chasis and bodies of the trucks - along with it's textures - these were provided by FELD ENTERTAINMENT. And the screens have some parts from the chasis... bless kit bashing.

This is a variety of different renders that I made to see the overall look and animation of some of the assets I created for the intro. A lot was scrapped to simplify the overall design of the sequence.