The Hive brings festive touch to ITV idents

The Hive, part of full-service broadcast postproduction facility VTR, has created ITV1’s new Christmas packaging, on air since December 11.
Based on a very detailed storyboard from ITV’s Mark Gouldie, The Hive has produced promo openings, interclips and endframes that will be used to package up trailers for ITV1 programming over the Christmas period. The four blue and yellow blocks of the ITV1 logo transform to become playfully animated ‘fairy light characters’ that are designed to appeal to all age groups.
The Hive’s Phil Hurrell and Howard Bell spent around four weeks doing all the CGI creation in Softimage XSI, with some additional flame work done by Glenn Cone.
Hurrell, Creative Director at The Hive, said: “Even a two-second animation is going to take some time when you have four characters to animate and they have a luminous quality and give off their own light – like a light bulb.
“Also, the characters have to animate in such a way that they give the impression of being small – they’re quite ‘flicky’ as opposed to being large and ponderous.”
Alongside the promo elements, The Hive have incorporated the look into the channel’s idents and break bumpers. The whole kit links all of ITV1’s Christmas programming with a common theme.
Steve Allen, Creative Director of the ITV Network Promotions Unit, said: “We go to the Hive because we have total confidence that the final product will be the best it can be.
“They’re incredibly good value for money for the quality of work they produce.”
(GB)