Why does one of the planet's most successful animation companies venture into broadcast design?

"It's an interesting thing because Klasky Csupo started out doing broadcast design," says Sam Schoemann head of Klasky Csupo Broadcast Design and ex of Fuel, Razorfish and Columbia Tristar. "They did the openings for In Living Color and The Tracey Ullman Show."

The latter led to The Simpsons and the rest, as they say, is rug rats and happy meals.

John Andrews, former bigwig of animation at MTV and senior VP of KC's commercial division, asked Schoemann to come aboard after they teamed up to pitch MTV an animated opening for the new reality sitcom The Osbournes. Starring Ozzy and his family, the show opening nods to '60s sitcoms, is set to a crooning cover of Ozzy's tune "Crazy Train," and has been adapted for Web site elements and a downloadable screensaver.

Andrews saw a business in the making. "Sam had a strong [BD] background and was really excited about our talent pool." Schoemann adds that this new division is a great opportunity to apply KC's commercial design directors and animation talent to an estimated $300 million US to $500 million US broadcast design industry.

The commercial division, which produces the broadcast design projects, has 15 full-time people, six of whom are allocated to BD, and uses Smoke, US Animation, After Effects, Maya, Lightwave, 3D Studio max, Final Cut Pro and Avid.

Other work includes the logo trailer for Arclight premium cinemas, titles for Steve Martin's The Downer Channel and Roswell's dream sequence parody of Bewitched. While Schoemann acknowledges that much of the smaller "bread-and-butter" BD projects dropped off in the past year, he thinks things are looking up: "Ad dollars are beginning to pick up and the networks are beginning to commit more ad dollars to their promotion strategy."

Webfiles:
Klasky Csupo> http://www.klaskycsupo.com
MTV> http://www.mtv.com/onair/osbournes/downloadables/