Throttle Out | Intro Animation

Throttle Out hosts, Ari Henning and Zack Courts, have been riding bikes together since they were kids goofing off near the track while their dads raced professionally. For this new show's intro, the goal was to capture this pair's deep history as succinctly as possible, by time-traveling through decades of friendship in just 15 seconds.

I was given main concept and the scenes we wanted to cover; riding BMX bikes together near a racetrack, riding scramblers through the desert, having them riding around the world somehow, etc.  And I was given the sequence in which they should play out.  It was then up to me to figure out how to stitch them together.

A short timeline and the request for a rough, hand-drawn style forced me to use all of the tricks in my toolbox. I ended up sketching elements on paper, drawing over the scans in Animate, exporting SVGs to open in Illustrator where I could apply roughened lines, then exporting PNGs to bring in to C4D, where I used the images as cards.  All of the animation was done in Cinema, and I added textures, grading, and additional elements in After Effects.

I really wanted to push the transitions in this piece, and am really happy with the way they turned out - especially that from street to track, and from flag to desert. Storyboarding this one was invaluable.

SOFTWARE | Cinema 4D, Animate, After Effects, Illustrator
CLIENT | MotorTrend
Concept, Storyboards, Art Direction, Animation | Jiro Ietaka
Concept, Additional Art Direction | Levi Rugg