The challenge for any good ident is to remain fresh after repeated viewings, as opposed to becoming the acclimatized noise between programs.

When redesigning the idents for UK digital channel E4 (an offshoot of Channel 4), designer/director Noah Harris' solution was to create a universe jammed with incongruous elements interacting simultaneously, leaving the viewer no choice but to pay attention to his eclectic creations.

The package - consisting of five set-specific idents, "Hotel", "Barn", "Beach", "Loading Bay" and "Front Room" as well as 10 bumpers - is a mix of live action, and stop-motion and CG animation, featuring everything from a yellow toy pig (present in all the idents), to disembodied purple tentacles, origami birds, floating tea cups, cats in hot air balloons, a dog with a neck brace and an inexhaustible supply of wondrous elements, all exploding upon the scenarios in vibrant color. Their quick and sometimes subtle entrances reveal something new upon each viewing.

"I wanted the look to be celebratory, chaotic and entertaining but not in a droll way," explains Harris. "Branding needs to surpass fad and stand the test of time."

That desire to shun faddishness led Harris to reject the client's suggestion of a MySpace aesthetic, which he dubs a "lo-fi, almost ironic approach to non-design". Instead, his mish-mash has a purposeful design, the product of seven months of meticulous planning.

"We had several pre-production meetings where my scripts were dissected so that everyone knew exactly what was happening in each shot," says Harris, who worked with Bristol-based prodco Hothead Films on the live action and animation company Busty Kelp for the CG. "Before we started each shot, I would sit down and write out frame numbers for when everything happened. It was amazing as it all started to come together. The concept is quite difficult to visualize completely in your head so when [we] started seeing bits of animation on playback it got pretty exciting."

The shoot took place in a Bristol studio that the crew split in half to save time - when one set was completed the action would be shot while in the other half, another set was being built. Each set, based on animatics that Harris put together in Cinema4D, took about a week to construct and the same time to shoot. The team shot with motion control cameras, while rotoscoping was required to integrate the CG work, as time constraints didn't allow the use of green screen for every element that required it.

"There were times when everything felt like it was going frustratingly slow," says Harris. "But there were various moments of elation. I had wondered whether my concept was too far out... I think people on set wondered what the hell I was doing until they started to see it happen!"

Noah Harris http://www.noahharris.co.uk
Busty Kelp http://www.bustykelp.com
Hothead Films http://www.hotheadfilms.co.uk
E4 http://www.e4.com