Day 9 - Online Graphics and Motion Graphics Team.

• how the placement has further inspired them to study the subject
• what the placement has taught them about the subject that they have applied to study (this could be specific knowledge or more general insight)
• how the placement has helped to demonstrate in practice what they have learnt previously (or alternatively how the placement has made them question what has previously been learnt!)
• how the placement has further inspired them to seek a long-term career within the subject
• how their abilities or previous experience fit with the demands of a career related to the subject.

AM:

Today I met with Steve Little who took me through the basic process of the online graphics team.
Below is an example of the graphics they produce for online promotions.

 Using celebrities with a huge fan base extends the reach of promotions at a massive scale. Nevertheless Simon explains this comes at a high cost to sponsor them, regardless worth it.

The team deal with global CRM promotion, which encourages people to spend money online and social media graphics too. CRM stands for customer response management. There is an annual cycle of promotions but they also create new ones by yearly events e.g World Cup or Olympics.

The team have 60 different template sizes to work with including ones for the

• Homepage banner
• Landing page banner
• Thumbnails
• 8 x different mobile sizes
• The Client (the gaming platform) has different sized graphics with in
• Social media graphics (Facebook, twitter, insta, etc)

With all these graphics they need to be translated into 28 different languages. Simon explains at PokerStars they are still a bit behind with the operation side of this and using HTML would make the execution easier. Now they still need to go through the long process of

1. Execution
2. Content
3. Execution
4. Online Graphics
5. Execution
6. Translation to different languages

They also say, its not often they get to have the visual process but sometimes they do.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Simon, he was very in depth with the pros and cons of working in the online graphics side of things

I have taken away with me the thought that the creation of the graphics on adobe is not something I can see my self, nevertheless I believe directing the process is something I'll be good at.

                          PM:

Digital Animation was my next step. I was absolutely stunned by the amazing pieces of work the team come out with.

Neal Pleasance described his team as 

• 3 x on online advertising/apps/banners and coding
• 3 x on 3D motion graphics and TV Live events.

I then went on to ask about what is the general outline of the teams work and their place at pokerstars. I was told that any motion graphic goes to his department this also includes webcasts. He stated that they started of as GIFS and FLASH banners but FLASH cannot be seen on all devices as we know. Its now 90% moved over to HTML5, which he said was 'inferior' to flash but thats the way it has to work in order for the animations to be visible on all platforms. They also deal with Facebook and Instagram animations too.

For the live events the team come up with animations for the screens, tv backdrop, micro tiles, live event app, countdown to registration notices, table planners (so staff can keep tabs on who is where and shift tables about) and they do the coding swell for the above. 

Neal then showed me a showreel of previous work which outstounded me. I was beyond impressed with the work they output. More impressively the work is never from a template and anything from water to chips are done from scratch using 4D software.