Confetti is planning on creating their own 80’s-style comedy game show inspired by ‘Give Us a Clue’, which is a British televised version of charades. It was broadcasted on ITV from 1979 to 1992 and involved two teams, a captain of each and, usually, the participation of celebrities.
Our challenge was to create an animated intro for Confetti’s show, called ‘Give Us a Confetti Clue’. The criteria were to make it 80’s themed (something that would fit the show), use the confetti logo in the design and the original soundtrack if possible. In terms of timing, it was to be 20 seconds long, with a pause for five seconds on the show’s logo at the end, meaning a total of 25 seconds. All of this gave me my needed requirements and a direction for inspiration. I knew I would be including well-known objects and colours from the 1980s, and also creating a logo in the same style. Keeping this in mind, I went on my usual hunt for images and ideas on the internet.
Just from this mood board alone, I gained a lot of ideas about what I could include in the intro. Certain elements really stood out to me, such as the sun behind the woman’s head, the coloured silhouette echoes behind the astronaut and the neon-funk logo design. On top of it all, bold colours and bright patterns radiate the chaotic disco energy of the 80’s era and act as a baseline for the entire animation. I planned on using some of these elements in my work, but I needed some more inspo before moving onto production, since I still had little to no clue what kind of style was prevalent in 80’s intros, especially in terms of editing and transitions. It didn’t take too long to find some examples on YouTube.
I noted that the major conventions were the use of text and (usually basic) shapes in a dynamic way. Bright colours, striking patterns and flamboyant effects were popular, evidently used to capture the audience’s attention and make their show stand out. They were unafraid to make the words spin and transform across the screen, along with overlaying shapes and colours to make an illusion of sorts and have the viewers entranced. This type of style is generally avoided in modern television because it is seen as obnoxious and tacky and people tend to be more drawn towards cleaner, almost minimalistic intros (strictly in terms of TV). Effects nowadays are generally more simple, but when paired with the right imagery, powerful and memorable.
Now I felt that I was ready to move onto storyboarding and consolidate all of the best ideas that I had when gathering images and watching the intros. I wanted there to be obvious links to the era, which is why I included things like roller-skates. Those elements made up the basis of the animation but I still had gaps left to fill, in which I thought of adding different shapes and transitions. For example, the wavy lines filling up the screen take up a solid couple of seconds, but are only used to progress from one main scene to another. Because of our limited time, it is a very rough, very messy storyboard (please ignore the question mark). As you can see, the main idea is to have each part of the title appear one by one with accompanying objects and shapes moving across the screen, such as a boombox. I also wanted to design a new ‘Lady Liberty’ that would resemble an 80’s pop icon, like the artwork of the woman with the sun behind her head. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get the time for this, but I did improvise and ended up with something I like even better.
In After Effects, I began by very roughly tracing the image I found of a person in roller-skates (specifically the legs) not bothering with the smaller details and instead focusing on getting the main shape correct. With the limited time we had on this project, I wanted the assets to be recognizable and fun, which meant that I didn’t need to focus on each exact curve and cranny that the shoes had. Once I had an outline, I realised that I needed a colour scheme for not only the skates but also the entire animation! I quickly typed in ’80’s colour palettes’ and picked one which looked vibrant. Using the eyedropper tool, I experimented with the placement of different colours until I had something I was happy with.
Following my storyboard, I made the roller-skates move to the right and almost drag behind them, a trail of wavy coloured strips, and the words ‘give’ and ‘us’. This process was pretty much the same for each part of the intro; making the asset, animating it to move and then adding in the shapes and text, all bouncing, turning, scaling up or down or just some form of movement to keep the energy high throughout. When adding colours, I had to think carefully about what was on the screen last and what would be seen next. What was the primary colour of each scene? Is there too much red or pink? I wanted to balance the accents, main assets and transitions so that none of the colours were too overbearing and all complimented each other nicely.
Time was definitely one of the more challenging factors to work around. I didn’t have very long to create this, and I only wanted to add finishing touches at home, so I had to make shortcuts here and there. One example is this section with the boombox, where I wanted raining stars in the background. Unfortunately, even with duplication, this wouldn’t work, since I had to alter the animation of each star copy so that they don’t fall the exact same way and there was simply not enough time to do this with every single star that would be needed for a full background. I did try staggering, but this didn’t look natural either, since the stars were falling at different times, but still spinning the same way. Of course, there were ways to achieve the effect I wanted, but again, I didn’t want to spend that long on the background of a scene, so I opted for animating a few stars and carrying on. I think it still turned out pretty cool!
The last part of the intro, before the logo at the end, was probably my favourite to create. I didn’t get to completely re-design Liberty, as I mentioned before, but I managed to add some jazzy touch-ups with the chosen colours. Using simple shapes, I changed up her outfit and crown, and gave her a cartoony face – I had a lot of fun with it! She looked especially awesome with that 80’s sun I wanted to include behind her head. Using parenting, I animated them both to shoot up at the beginning of the scene, from the opposite direction the text lines come in, so there is a balanced but still eye-catching result.
It was also super fun to add in the swirly effects at the end. The first was called ‘Twirl’ and is the one I applied to the pink strip behind the word ‘clue’, in order to make it almost come alive and bend in the middle of the screen. This is reminiscent of the exact types of effects that they used in tv intros during the ’80s and I think it works really well with the final transition. It came out exactly as planned on the storyboard – a cock turn transition that revealed the next screen, with the logo. The effect is called ‘Radial Wipe’ and was super simple to add. I think it really completed the animation – since all of the fast-paced movement came to a stop at that point.
The final aspects were to design the logo and add the soundtrack. These both happened pretty quickly because the logo design involved combining simple shapes and the title, all within the colour palette and 80’s style, and for the audio, it was just a matter of finding the original theme tune and adding it on top in After Effects. Using the image of the ’80’s world’ logo I had found, I spruced mine up with some simple circles, triangles and wiggly lines, and also a white border on the text. And with the video I found, cutting it to the exact point that ‘Give Us a Clue’ started, downloading it and adding it into the intro wasn’t difficult at all. My intro was complete! And I’m so happy with how it turned out, especially given how little time I spent on it, in comparison with what I could have done with an extra week for example.