Nascar Animation

[Algernon Alcala]

Andso it began. From the start, we were tasked with creating the monsters for the top 12 nascar drivers. For nearly a month, we researched and drew like madmen. We brought our great pal Chuck BB in to lend a hand. Crafting a monster that reflected the personality of the driver, combined with elements from the sponsor was a great challenge. Lots of variables to take into consideration, that meant lots and lots of revisions. Unfortunately, not all of these insane fuckers made it into the final spot.

Vegas is cold as a dead hooker in December. Jk just jk-ing. Three days of some serious choreographed racing took place. These cars are no joke, you can feel the rumbling of the engines in your chest, and when they rev up and accelerate out, your heart wants to explode from the intense noise and vibrations, it was awesome.

The footage was edited and a cut was locked, but all you saw was a bunch of cars driving around. Enter 3LL. We started by pulling screengrabs from each shot, and placed all the monsters based on the script. That got approved really quick, so we brought in the muscle. Our animation team finally started by busting out rough timing for the whole spot. Peep that shit.

Once we had locked the animation, we exported the clean flash lines into a now defunct program called Mirage for clean up. The lines needed to have the same kind of imperfections, strokes, width, and intensity that real light writing has. The only way to do this was to hand draw them in several layers.. The lines were retraced, then layers of glows and smears were built up to create the glow. All of this was created in black and white, color was added in compositing. Take a look at the raw animation. Its pretty sweet on its own.

The cleanup phase was a monster in itself. It took ridiculous time to retrace and polish stuff to our liking. To get things done right, we called upon all of our friends and pulled together a mini-infantry of additional cleanup artists. They came in with smiles on their faces and let us beat them into the ground. Thanks guys! Catch a glimpse of life inside the 3L Lair.

For the last two seasons, Fox Sports has tapped Engine Room for custom animation pieces involving intensive and rapidly produced, animated comic-style CG recaps of each weekly NASCAR race. This year, the collaboration went into overdrive, with Engine Room delivering an entire broadcast sports package that showcases the thrills, spills and upsets intrinsic to NASCAR, all with a fresh new look.

It was a pleasure to work with the talented team at 2Tall Animation on this 2024 TV Shop Spot for NASCAR. I was commissioned to create a series of illustrations which were then animated by the team at 2Tall animation. The final Shop Spot advert can be seen below, along with some of my illustrations, and the video was aired on various TV channels in the USA in 2024.

Here is a commission build for Jay Ward the head of Pixar animation. This is my interpretation of what the real Doc Hudson car would have looked like. This model has real metal trim and bumpers. I also created custom decals for this build.

The first two Nextel Cup races featured nine different drivers, with only Earnhardt carried over from Daytona to California. The lineup for Las Vegas, on March 11, will include Kasey Kahne, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Dale Jarrett and Carl Edwards.

Sirius Satellite Radio has "Team Talk," 10 fully produced channels putting fans inside the helmet of one of 10 drivers for the whole race. It includes all radio communications between the driver and his team. When team members aren't on the radio, the live race broadcast audio comes up, allowing listeners to follow the race.

TrackPass RaceView is a 3-D application on NASCAR.com that features animation similar to sports video games. Fans can watch race data displayed on a computer screen showing drivers' positions and movements to within a few inches. They can select one driver or switch among the full field, following them around the track while viewing driver data such as live position, speed and time behind leader, as well as listening to in-car audio feeds.

Three different race views are available for each driver, including Lead View, which shows the front of the driver's car, as well as the cars in pursuit; Flyover View, an aerial view from above; and Draft View, showing the car from behind and the field in front of the driver. Other features include pit road statistics, lap-by-lap editorial commentary and a fantasy game integration.

"I'm an Earnhardt fan. You could watch him in every turn and watch his speed, his RPMs, see everything from his point of view. You could tell everything about what he is doing, but you could still see what everybody else is doing, too, because of the Fox broadcast."

"I didn't really like the announcer they had on the Earnhardt broadcast. I thought they ought to have an Earnhardt fan. I mean, if it's the Earnhardt channel, they ought to have somebody who is going to get excited about Earnhardt. It might not have been as professional, but it might have held fans' interest more."

The old technology, which consisted of jet fuel-powered track dryers, would typically take more than two hours to dry a circuit the size of the Speedway. NASCAR hopes it can reduce that time by 80 percent or to a half-hour and have smaller tracks race-ready in even less time.

While the technology has been in the works at NASCAR's Research & Development Center in North Carolina for some time, the final development process came within the past eight months after the Daytona 500 was delayed by rain for the first time in its 54-year history, he said.

According to an animation provided by NASCAR, in the event of rain, Air Titan modules would be taken to opposite sides of the track and blow water down to the apron. An air vacuum truck, developed by Elgin Sweeper, would suck water from the apron. Five jet dryers would follow each cycle, O'Donnell said.

Following the fireball incident, workers towing the jet dryers are now required to wear fire suits and radio communication has been increased during cautions. Cars will not be on the track when Air Titan is in use, O'Donnell said.

We know that when a red flag comes out, that's a challenge, and so speeding up any downtime we think is a win-win for the entire industry, the tracks, the drivers, the race teams, the fans. That's the goal is to get this down to as short a time as possible, and if we do that, we think it's a benefit to the entire industry.

This fall, the four-time Super Bowl Champion New York Giants will celebrate their 100th anniversary season. With a rich history that pre-dates the creation of the National Football League, the franchise wanted to honor their lineage through a logo animation video that runs through memorable plays and players over the years. Tapping a working relationship of 17 years, the club recruited the services of The Famous Group (TFG) to execute their vision.

For another round of Capital One's The Match at The Park West Palm, the ninth edition since debuting in 2018, TNT Sports' presentation of this unique exhibition golf event did not disappoint the viewers at home. Tapping a drone for aerial views, a hefty slate of wireless and handheld cameras for ...

Live sports productions, particularly smaller shows, have begun to embrace cloud-based productions, whereby camera signals are sent directly into the cloud rather than being cut on site. Manufacturers and facility providers discuss the latest developments in cloud-based production and how your or...

NASCAR Racers is a animated series created by NASCAR.The racing scenes around complicated futuristic tracks were 3D computer animation, while the characters were drawn in traditional 2D cel animation.

Before I begin reviewing Sierra's NASCAR 2, allow me to make one crucial point: NASCAR 2 is not a toy. I thought I was fairly adept at your average brake-accelerate PC racer, but NASCAR draws a thin line between exhilarating action-racing and strategic planning. This is a game where every track must be considered individually when tweaking the design of your car, where you need to know where and when to pit, all while staying aware of your competition's position on the road. After a few hours of roaring around the oval, taking cues from your spotter through a headset (let's assume you're wearing headphones during your game) it becomes startlingly clear: NASCAR 2 is so realistic, it's scary.

First of all, NASCAR 2's graphics are top-notch. Sierra has improved on the frame rate of the first game, making for fluid car animation, and realistic body damage. Simply put, this is as close as most of us are going to come to participating in an actual televised race. As an added bonus, Sierra has included a paintshop-style program where you're given the opportunity to customize the artwork of any car on the track. Slap your dog's name on the hood, a smiley face on the bumper. The association doesn't care: In NASCAR 2 the car is your canvas.

I don't mean this wholly in an artistic sense. Half the fun of NASCAR 2 is making the ever-so-slight adjustments to your vehicle's tire pressure, foil height, camber, and gear ratios to achieve optimal performance for a particular track. Experienced racers - whether they're the real McCoy or just veteran desktop competitors - will know what all these arcane terms mean from the start. However, before hitting the first NASCAR track, most of us are going to need an quick learner's course. An easy to understand which-element-on-your-car-affects-what diagram made it all clear, and in no time at all I began to experiment until I felt I had a firm grasp on exactly what I could tweak to make my V-8 the finest machine on the track.

The AI in the game is pretty incredible. When you accidentally blindside another vehicle (or even on purpose, if you don't believe in good sportsmanship), the other cars realistically slow down or cautiously slide out to avoid a collision. It's funny, but although NASCAR 2 doesn't purport itself as being the kind of body-casualty ride that Psygnosis' Destruction Derby 2 is (with its incredibly realistic incremental car damage - fenders mashing in, hoods flying off, wheels tearing from their axles, bouncing down the track, requiring a tow into the pit-stop), it certainly rivals that game damage-wise. . If you collide with another vehicle because you performed an action contradictory to your spotter's directions, he'll remind you of your ineptitude with a reprimanding "What kind of bone-headed move was that!" And at that point, you're probably so absorbed in the race that you'll want to go back and apologize to him personally.

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