Channel 4 : beijing 2022 winter paralympics

Overview: GHM&D was happy to be working with the team at Chapter 3 three with their next challenge. Channel 4’s Coverage of the Beijing Winter Paralympics.

Working in Cinema 4D and using a range of different techniques the team and I were to create a title sequence as well as some mograph bumpers to be overlayed on top of their sports guides.

The titles were inspired by Elastic’s sequence for BBC’s adaptation of ‘His Dark Materials’ in which the camera is pulling back through and array of environments relevent to the different books as well as “Seasons” by Shannon Hoyne and Adam Singer. We wished to take a similar tour through China, but offering a much more abstract approach and intergrating mograph and athletes footage to support the journey and make it our own.

GHM&D was responsible for creating a few of the environments as well as some Mograph that can be seen in the Sports Guides and the main titles. Early examples of which can be seen below.

The Greatwall was designed and built within Cinema 4D. The wall was constructed of small sections of walls, windows and floor that could then be placed within a cloner and extended. This cloner was then deformed with a spline deformer to create the winding helical animation. This was then placed within a symmetry object to create a mirror and then a final cloner to create the radiating ‘arms’. These formed a twisting and turning tunnel the camera could pass down. The scene was lit with volumetric lighting and textured with Redshift.

The Birdsnest was based around the design of the ‘Birdsnest’ stadium In Beijing. Drawn in Illustrator it was then extruded in Cinema 4D and spline wrapped to create a tunnel. Using a metallic texture and volumetric ligthing the camera pulls through as the two layers rotate at slightly different speeds. The created some interesting volumetric bursts through the gaps in the structure.

The Mountains were created to reflect the outdoor aspects of the games. Designed in World Creator, the maps were exported and transferred into the shader object of Insydium’s Terrain FX. Unfortunately the external render farms hadn’t upgraded, so the same maps were applied to a plain and displacement deformer. Trees were mapped across the lower scene, and lanterns animated in X-Particles were rendered seperately. The higher scene used a different texturing and perspective to create a whole new environment. The scene was lit by Insydiums 360 HDR pack and Chalotte Quillet. The tunnel scene saw the mountains wrapped in an animated spline deformer that changed from square to circle as the camera passed through.

The Sportsguides Mograph elements were supplied and arranged using a combination of deformers and cloners already set up by Onur Senturk and Charlotte Quillet. The Hockey sticks were modelled and textured in Cinema 4D as there wasn’t much online. Adapting their scenes helped to create the sportsguides Mograph.

The Mograph elements and the Asian Buildings in the main animation were designed, textured, animated and lit by a combination of Onur at the start and then taken over and finished by Charlotte Quillet, who also composited the piece and set up the most of the of lighting.

Despite the large amounts of rendering and slight issues on the farm, the project turned out great!

Year: 2022

Software: Cinema 4d, Adobe After Effects,

Plugins: Redshift Renderer, World Creator, X-Particles, Insydium Terrain FX, Adobe Illustrator

Credits: Chapter 3, Whisper, GHM&D, Charlotte Quillet, Onur Senturk

final version

quicklook : greatwall

quicklook : birdsnest

quicklook : mountains

quicklook : mograph