Mike Gulley is the Motion Graphics Coordinator for the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team. “This is my third season working with the Cavaliers and my role has expanded as time has gone on. I initially started here as the in-house LED Fascia Board designer. At that point most projects were out-sourced but over the years more and more projects became an in-house affair, and therefore became my responsibility. We produce content for the in-game Jumbotron, also for the in-arena video screens, outdoor video screens and broadcast promos. The workload has become such that more members of our production team began contributing to the motion graphics as well. Having other artists on-board also helps to mix up the content we create. Each individual brings their own style and ideas to the table.”
Mike works at the arena. His office is on the same level as the game floor, near the locker rooms so he often bumps into basketball or hockey players the halls. “Our QTV group is a full-fledged production department from pre-production to post. We do it all around here. We are dedicated, passionate, efficient and effective. The QTV team really knows how to engage the crowd.”
Mike first heard about Zaxwerks software in college. “What really brought me to Invigorator and then ProAnimator was the fact that I could branch out into 3D without leaving the familiar Adobe environment. Learning any new program is usually daunting and quite time consuming, so the ability to use a Zaxwerks plug-in to do 3D within the same pipeline I was used to, was reason ‘numero uno’ and still is. Plus, 3D just looks cooler!”
Now in his work with the Cavaliers, Zaxwerks products have become part of Mike’s everyday workflow especially ProAnimator. “I’ve read the manual at least 6 times, no Joke. I’ve got sticky notes everywhere with all the cool things in ProAnimator I have yet to try. ProAnimator is quite a robust piece of software in which I can pretty much make anything I desire. I learn something new in ProAnimator every day. I’m at the point where if I have an idea I can make it happen in almost any case, and now with the imminent release of ProAnimator 5 I’m absolutely psyched up beyond comprehension, and my team is ridiculously excited, especially after my colleagues saw it in action at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference.”
“We often combine ProAnimator and 3D Flag. 3D Flag is easy to learn and it yields some truly beautiful results. I wanted to make an animation for SHAQ with a SUPER-SHAQ cape blowing in the wind and voila! 3D Flag took care of that wonderfully!”
“ProAnimator’s interface is brilliant. It takes complex tasks and brings them down to earth in a way where a single artist can create a brilliant piece of content. Other 3D programs are so complex that you need a team of 4 or 5 individuals working on the project to get anything of substance done that and a huge render farm! ProAnimator inside After Effects equals one happy artist when it comes to speed of rendering and quality of the graphics.”
Not too long ago Mike’s team needed to create an animation for Zydrunas Ilgauskas a beloved player for the Cavaliers. “Everyone likes Z. I had to make something really cool, so I busted out ProAnimator and made a snazzy Z-Nation animation.”
“ProAnimator is really excellent at keeping our workflow fast. Whenever the season is about to get underway we have to redo all the NBA team logos. That’s a lot of 3D graphics, but it goes pretty quick thanks to ProAnimator. Zaxwerks products have seriously sped up the motion graphics pipeline as far as going from concept to content. And in the ridiculously fast-paced world of the NBA basketball we need a program that is speedy but yields high quality results.”
