BBC 2 are known for having some amazing creative idents, and these have really inspired my interest in creating this kind of work. Above is a reel of some of their more abstract idents, and I think these are really nice. None of them explicitly feature the number 2, they all imply the 2 with ‘s’ like curves and I think that is a very clever way to incorporate it into art.
Here are some of my favourites:
This piece is amazing, it is pretty much photo real and looks like some form of gemstone or mineral. The colours go wonderfully together and create a nice cool tone to the piece, and it keeps the consistent curve to suggest the 2 in the centre. This one would probably be more complex to recreate, the gems on the left could be done with a bump map or a cloner on the surface, but creating them to look so photoreal would be a real skill.
This piece is much more minimalistic compared to the rest, especially since its 2D. I think that the lines do a really good job of tricking your brain into seeing the 3D though, and I really like it. This was probably created in 3D and then made to look 2D with some form of shader because you can clearly see that there are 3D forms there. As much as I like the black and white colour scheme, I think that in my own work I would like the freedom to be more expressive and use more colour.
This is perhaps one of the most abstract pieces in that I can’t actually figure out how they have done it. I can’t tell if its a few shapes together that have been fractured to create the gaps, and if they’re full slices or just strips on a purple/red background, it is very abstract. I really like the light leak in the middle though, and they have again stayed within one colour temperature creating this with warm reds oranges and purples.
This is similar to the lava lamp piece I created last semester in the sense that it uses soft body spheres colliding with each other. I have never managed to get soft bodies to collide this close though; whenever I do it there always seems to be an invisible margin that I can’t remove. I really like the way that they have accentuated the curve here with the difference in colour. The subtle textures add a really nice detail too.
I love how this piece looks like it was hand made. Upon closer inspection, it is likely to be computer-generated but the artist has gone with a hand made, paper cut out style. The cool-toned blues and purples go well with the slightly warmer pink and the strip of yellow in the centre really pops. I like the way that this one simulates a lower frame rate, implying that it is done with stop motion. I could easily recreate this in Cinema 4D with some layers and paper textures.
This piece is beautifully minimal. The lighting is perfectly soft on the ridges and the shade of white is bright enough for you to think that its white, but not too bright as to drown out the BBC TWO logo at the bottom.
General Findings:
-They don’t have a solid colour scheme, the pieces are all different, but the colours are usually bold, and the logo is always displayed at the bottom to link the piece to their brand.
-Even though multiple colours are used, most pieces either stick to a monochrome, warm, or cool colour scheme.
-The styles vary from photoreal to stylistic, and it features a range of 2D and 3D.
Bibliography
BBC, 2018. How Trippy Are BBC Two’s Psychedelic New Idents? – BBC. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://youtu.be/szX9L8J6CC8> [Accessed 30 April 2020].
Jennie Hawkes 