Flying the Flag

In yet another mockery of legendary TV presentation, I attempted to recreate the 1988 Anglia Television flag ident. A somewhat divisive rebrand, seeing off the Anglia knight after so many years, it is however one of the more memorable ones for me, having grown up in the nineties. Mr. Bean and Interceptor are what spring to mind upon seeing this.

Achieving a faithful flag would mean delving into those fearsome cloth and simulation effects for the first time for a while, although, saying that, it wasn’t actually too hard to get the flag in place. It’s funny how I remember these things from seven years ago but can’t remember what I did last week. But I’m sure that’s not just me.

As you can see, once the flag was flying it took a fair bit of wrangling, and there were some unpredictable and hilarious results. But eventually, something reasonable came out in the wash. I do think it could do with a bit more oomph with regards to the turbulence, but it seemed to be a very fine line to tread. It was a lot of trial and error adjusting wind speed, turbulence, gravity, lift and more. I can’t say I really knew what I was doing!

One setback was that fixing the side of the flag in place meant that it couldn’t be moved, so I had to settle for the static version of the ident; originally intended was a version wherein segments move into place to form the flag. It still allowed me to alternate the segments, which was done using multiple alpha layers fading into one another, removing the pieces as required to create a sequence.

For a day’s work, it has come out quite well. I’m definitely going to return to it, to see if I can improve the flag’s motion, and also see if I can find a way to create the “proper” version with pieces moving in.

Bring On The Chase

Oh no! That must be our brand new Chaser. It’s the Spectral Specimen himself – “The Ghost” Irmin Visible!

Here we have some work from way back in July – an attempted recreation of ITV’s The Chase for another Pacdude Games collab. Unfortunately, the project hit the buffers as we struggled to find a way to properly implement graphics for the show’s final round, meaning these are semi-complete at best. The set is complete, though, so this is going up.

Perhaps TV’s most ubiquitous quiz show, The Chase started quietly in summer 2009, just a short while before long-time rival Pointless reared its head on BBC Two. In the show, a team of four take it in turns to pit their wits against a ruthless quiz genius – The Chaser – with the winners progressing to the final round, where they work as a team to try and defeat the massive geek one more time.

Why ubiquitous, I hear you ask? Well, at some point in the mid-2010s it seems that The Chase rather took off, soaring ahead of Pointless – much to Richard Osman’s dismay, I’m sure – and becoming one of ITV’s biggest shows. This meant other programmes were elbowed out of the way to make way for Chase repeats. As well as the weekdaily showings, it would appear at weekends. During the morning. Celebrity spin-offs. Family spin-offs. And none of this is to mention Challenge often showing nothing but The Chase reruns all day long. While over two thousand episodes have been made, there must be a similar number of showings every year, factoring in all those repeats. And still people go nuts on Twitter whenever, heaven forbid, ITV have the audacity to try a new quiz in the 5pm slot.

Of course, there’s a reason for all of that; the format is very strong and holds up exceptionally well. The final round is probably one of the best of any quiz format, regularly delivering on tension and drama. The Chasers themselves are generally entertaining and likeable – much more than the Eggheads – and more than happy to play up to their perceived persona; as such, there are times where you’re rooting for them. Originally, there were only two Chasers; now, there are six of them – another way in which the show remains fresh.

The lynchpin, though, is surely Bradley Walsh, who is one of the best presenters on TV and superb at both encouraging the contestants and needling the Chasers. It would likely be quite a dry show without him. I don’t really watch it very often, but make a point of catching the Christmas blooper special as he’s bound to make you laugh, either by fluffing his lines or just losing it over a ridiculous question.

Here’s one notable example of that aforementioned final round, where only Judith made it through and still managed to rack up a score of 20 for the Chaser to try and match.

Countdown 1991

I got the bug again after my last Countdown effort. It seemed like the obvious choice to pick my most dated model and give it a refresh. My model of this short-lived (1989-1991) set hasn’t really been touched since my blog post on it which, scarily enough, was more than six years ago. Pre-Brexit, even!

Since that 2016 attempt, I’ve learnt that the letters and numbers boards were the wrong way around, so that’s been fixed, and the boards in general are much improved, having been flown in from my more recent models. I believe they used pretty much the same boards until 1999, so that’s handy, really.

Elswhere, a newer clock is dropped in; weird arch over said clock redone; desks reworked; lighting completely redone.

It does look a lot better, despite the unusually dark lighting; perhaps, by this point, they had decided that darkness was the best thing for this set, or maybe it was an attempt to create mood for the Champion of Champions mini-series. We’ll never know.

Remember when I tried to rework the titles of this era? They’ve been updated now – well, in February anyway – hopefully free of (glaring) errors like the double NOD.

Now, I’m off to Do the Bartman listen to some Metallica. Definitely Metallica.

Hi-Res Countdown

Recently, I gave my model of the Countdown clock a revisit to meddle with its animation. With that, I thought it rude not to give the whole set an overhaul.

It wasn’t really much in the way of reshaping or remodelling elements; the vast majority of it was achieved by modifying textures – some of which hung around for years, much longer than they should have – and lighting. I referred, quite slavishly, to screenshots from a recent episode to create a more authentic setup.

It does rather reinforce just how much a model (or set, for that matter) depends on lighting. The build is mostly the same, yet it’s night and day. I suppose braving the higher resolutions – and resigning myself to the longer render times – helps in the long run. Thank god for Muckluck and his Broken Sword playthroughs, is all I can say.

And here’s the impetus for the whole thing, a render of everyone’s favourite clock running:

Apparently, the new clock (in place since 2013) runs at 29.5 seconds, not 30, so I reworked it accordingly to see if it made a visible difference. I’ll let you decide…

If you were to take a look back at my first attempt from January last year, I hope you’d agree that there’s a significant improvement. I’m pleased with this particular upgrade. Onward, and upward.

Countdown, and indeed Channel 4 itself, will celebrate its fortieth birthday on 2nd November. Not long now – the countdown has started!

Is That Your Final Answer?

Back into the realm of PowerPoint game shows we go, with a mock-up of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in its classic, Tarrant-led incarnation. This is something I’ve attempted several times over several years, but this is definitely the best yet. Some extra sparkle is provided by renders of my now rather old 3D model of the 2001 set. I would ideally have gone for the original 1998 set, but my model of that is inferior and, frankly, the motivation to redo it isn’t there.

Hopefully it’s not too hard to see how it works from the video, but in any case: the options appear by clicking anywhere. The quizmaster then clicks on the letter at the bottom of the screen corresponding to the contestant’s final answer. Clicking on said letter a second time reveals the correct answer. Lifelines function for every question; it’s just a case of remembering to input the information beforehand. I have yet to find a way of carrying over the usage of lifelines; it might not even be possible, so as it is the contestant has all three available for every question.

Question setups for each correct answer are ready-made, and can be copied and pasted in any order to create a full stack.

It’s quite a convoluted animation setup, as anyone who’s worked with PowerPoint beyond spinning and bouncing text can probably imagine, but it works rather well and isn’t overly hard to edit. It’s implementing the sound effects which is likely to be the phone a friend moment.

Extended Titles

It’s that Countdown sequence remake I mentioned back in January, when I reworked the 1989 titles. You have doubtless been on the edge of your seats since then, and for that I can only apologise.

And yes, there are some errors in there, but hopefully none so shamefully glaring as previously. It’s an extended cut this time around too, as, for some reason, the original Countdown theme tune was edited down to twenty seconds, despite predecessor Calendar Countdown using a perfectly serviceable thirty second version. I’m using that uncut theme here.

These snazzy CGI titles were introduced in 1987 for the 500th episode special (for the record, we’re fast approaching 8,000 episodes and forty years on air) and lasted just over two years. I’m wondering if they were perhaps saw the teatime game show on the other side – Blockbusters, of course – and decided they too would like a futuristic 7-segment style logotype? While we’re at it, how on earth did Bob manage to get away without a single appearance in Dictionary Corner? He’d probably have been a brilliant host aswell. Perhaps he was just too cool for Countdown.

Though obviously a big visual update back in the day, I was somewhat indifferent to the titles prior to working on this. I can imagine the animation process in the eighties was rather more challenging and laborious than today, and still I found it a pain to get those letters and numbers to fly around into the box. That’s partly why I hit the wall months ago – I just didn’t have a clue how to do it properly! Eventually, after resolving to get it out of the way by hook or by crook, I found a way using a spline and offsetting each letter. But it still doesn’t look quite as elegant as the original, so hats off to YTV and whoever animated this sequence.

Busting Blocks

Busting creative blocks that is, or at least attempting to, for here we have another game show title sort-of-recreation-but-not-good-enough-to-be-exact-so-let’s-call-it-a-redux. And that’s Blockbusters. I’ve gone with the original, lesser-remembered sequence, used from 1983 until around 1986, when the more famous metropolis with flying hexagons came in.

Aside from adding some extra pink glow and turning the “stream of knowledge” into some trippy tunnel – and with different nuggets of said knowledge – not a huge amount has changed. This one was good fun – frustrating in places, but it seems like every 3D project goes that way to a degree. I’ve learnt some nifty new shortcuts on this and the Countdown attempt, so they’re not completely pointless (now there’s a game show you’ll never have to put up with here!)

As far as I can tell, there aren’t any screw-ups in this one, either, so that’s something to hand jive about. I did have to pull the original version from YouTube because of some horrible flicker on the aforementioned glow, but that seems to have been fixed.

For reference, comparison or just sheer nostalgia, here’s the first ever episode of (UK) Blockbusters, from almost forty years ago.

Complete Titles

Happy New Year to you. You crazy fool, sticking around for all this time.

So. A new year. A bit battered, a bit tired, but a fresh start apparently. So let’s go back to the late eighties while also throwing back to last year. In a semi-response to a post from a few months back, here we have a complete Countdown title redux.

The real thing here is, can you spot the cock-up in my recreation?

It’s relatively minor, such that it took me a few watches to notice so, if you do catch it, a nod to you for being awake and bothered. There are lots of TV and game show enthusiasts among my YouTube subscribers, many of whom beyond eagle-eyed. I’m frankly surprised that none of them pointed it out straight away.

Anyway, this is based on the titles introduced in summer of 1989. I have upscaled to widescreen and applied a few tweaks here and there, chiefly a more faithful representation of the clock (without losing the aesthetic) and using the familiar white and blue colour scheme for the words, not the red and white which proved problematic to say the least. It’s a rather simple sequence; creation was more time-consuming than difficult. It does look primitive now, but I still think it’s a neat title concept, probably the strongest the show has had.

I’m warning you now that, partly due to the kind reaction to this on YouTube, a similar treatment of the preceding Countdown sequence is underway, so watch out for that. If it’s good, it might end up here. If there’s an error, it might too end up here!

Spotted it yet?

Spin Again

Wheel of Fortune!

Yes, it’s a bit of a throwback for me, but then what isn’t at this point of dragging Jaywalks along? People who have been here for a while may recall an old wheel model being the star of more than one art series, most prominently so in Twenty-Six Spins, where it determined the prompts for each day. That was three and half years ago now. Let that sink in. Three and a half years. And still I haven’t got around to doing it again.

This project was nothing more than me taking the old girl for another spin and giving her a fresh coat of paint, in line with the first series of Wheel of Fortune on ITV, back in 1988. The decadence of the tubes surrounding the wheel, flashing in sync with each spin felt like a fun aesthetic to try and recreate. Felt like. Inspiration also came from YouTube recommending me videos of people showing off their home-made wheels – actual, physical wheels which are much more impressive than this. See here.

Incidentally, Wheel at the time offered some of the largest major prizes on television (£4,000 or a cool eighties car) and it would hold its own in that regard for ten years or so; only when Who Wants To Be A Millionaire came along did Wheel start to look somewhat naff and, sure enough, by 2000 it was hidden away in daytime. By 2002 it was all over, bar the odd filler repeat. Though not exactly a huge favourite of mine – I enjoyed playing the Nintendo game with my sister more than the actual show – I remain surprised that it hasn’t been brought back at some point in the last twenty years. What’s stopping them? Everything else has come back.

However, if we’re seriously talking American game shows that deserve another shot here… Jeopardy please please please, but do it properly for heaven’s sake.

If you were wondering what the answer is, here you go and you’re welcome.

Countdown Throwdown

A few weeks ago, I was approached on YouTube by Pacdude Games, who suggested collaborating to update his Countdown presentation package, for streams and such. This sounded exciting and I’ve always liked his work, so I said yes.

Thankfully, the majority of visual work had already been done, as I tackled the current Countdown set way back in January. This project was mostly tidying the set up, and placing cameras for rendering the clock sequence in a fashion that is somewhat faithful to the programme – making sure there is space in the lower third for the different puzzles which, helpfully, are not uniform. Also added was a retexturing for the crucial conundrum, which can now adopt mood lighting resembling that seen on the show.

This was good fun, and Cory’s coding has turned these elements into something I could only dream of creating. It’s always satisfying to see graphics actually being used.

Here’s the first Countdown Throwdown stream. It’s a good laugh! Hopefully there will be more. You can also find Pacdude Games here.