Cartoon Network
ID: Originals
Art & Design
Imagination, sculpted by hand
and set loose in the clouds.
Cartoon Network's "Originals" ID sells one idea — this is where original ideas come from — without a frame of animation. Instead it's all real, handmade stuff: letters carved from foam, bursts of powder, everyday objects shot in-camera, then floated up into a bright cartoon sky. My job was to make the things.
Say "Originals" — with real things.
For a network built on original animation, the spot went the opposite direction: no CG, no cartoons — just tactile, slightly absurd craft standing in for imagination itself. Working as prop artist for agency Favorite Color, I built the physical pieces the camera would fall in love with: dimensional lettering, props and the odd surprise, each made to read big and playful on screen.
Proof that an idea can be held in your hands.
Carved, lit, and shot for real.
Letters were sculpted by hand from foam and plaster — a whole alphabet of chunky, characterful type — then lit and photographed on set. And because it's Cartoon Network, the shoot left room to play: a well-timed cloud of powder to the face, hair flying, caught in-camera across a few frames. The finished ID is polished; getting there was gloriously messy.
The ID, up in the sky.
Cut together, the handmade pieces drift and tumble through the clouds into the Cartoon Network mark — warm, witty and unmistakably built by people, not renderers. A little bit of magic you can tell was real.
