CASE STUDY — 01 / 22 · ← WORK
The Now Era & Draw The Line
- CLIENT
- NCAA
- STUDIO
- Fern
- ROLE
- Lead Compositor
- YEAR
- 2026
- FORMAT
- 2 broadcast campaigns · March Madness
THE NOW ERA 
DRAW THE LINE SAME TOURNAMENT, OPPOSITE TONE
Two NCAA campaigns that aired nationally through the Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Championships. The Now Era is warm, about the support systems behind student-athletes. Draw The Line is confrontational, about the online harassment athletes absorb from sports bettors. Same tournament, same illustration system, opposite tone.
2D OR NOT 2D?
The hardest (and most fun) part was the openers. Cel animators drew the characters in a world with sweeping camera moves. Only there wasn't a "camera". So, to stay most faithful to the original art, I rebuilt the finished style-frames with shape layers in Ae. From there I could keyframe the backgrounds to match the camera move that the animators had dreamed up. Plus those same shape layers served as perfect mattes to layer in all the brushy textures.
PROCESS
CREDITS
- CLIENT
- NCAA
- AGENCY
- The Basement
- STUDIO
- Fern
- DIRECTOR & ECD
- James Mabery
- EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
- Caroline Lobo
- CREATIVE DIRECTOR
- Alexandra Badiu
- ILLUSTRATION & DESIGN
- Alexandra Badiu · Alexandra Francis · Dennis Wardzala · Jackie Nguyen · Kate Caillet · Quincy Baltes
- ANIMATION
- Quincy Baltes · Taka Yuki · Saki Tanaka · Drew Jackson · Dennis Wardzala · Josh Trotter · James Mabery · Bruno de Mendonca
- 2D COMPOSITE
- Drew Jackson
- MUSIC & SOUND
- Joe Basile (The Chicken)
My contribution: all 2D compositing and animation across both spots except the cel character performances — including the two opening camera moves, the ball rig, and the shape-layer rebuild of the illustration system.