422 South has created a series of 70 visually-striking animations visualising data such as the path taken by pizza delivery cyclists on a single New York evening for Lion TV’s 4×60-minute series America Revealed.

America Revealed will be broadcast on PBS UK (through Sky and Virgin) from 20th June 2012.

The 4 × 60-minute program will be presented by Hugh Dennis (Outnumbered, Mock The Week) and Julia Bradbury (Countryfile, Canal Walks), and will focus on different areas of Britain, featuring the South Downs, Yorkshire, Devon & Cornwall and the Scottish Highlands.

Each episode will include specially shot images of the present-day scene and then resolve into a photo-real construction of how the landscape was, in the geological past. This will be facilitated by data visualization technology based on data from a range of geological experts helping with the series.

“This is a chance to enjoy great stories behind some of the greatest landscapes the UK has to cover with an exciting twist – the chance to get a flavor of them as they once were,” said Fiona Pitcher, executive producer at BBC Scotland.

Andy Davies Coward, creative director at 422 South, added: “Whilst everyone is familiar with many of Britain’s best loved landscapes, there is very little evidence to demonstrate how these same landscapes would have looked like over thousands and even millions of years ago. This series will be the first to demonstrate this technology.”

422 South have produced stunning new animations for this major landmark series to be premiered across the USA on PBS April 17th.

The company developed techniques first used to create animations for the BBC’s Britain from Above, then later for Deutschland von Oben for ZDF Germany and most recently for Nederland van Boven for Dutch broadcaster nederlandvanboven.vpro.nl.

Vast amounts of data were sourced by our client – New York-based production company Lion TV. That data was passed to our technical team who used proprietary techniques to unpack the information and to convert it to a form suitable for animation. The result was over sixty animations on subjects as diverse as aircraft movements, New York commuters, telephone calls, crop spraying, food distribution and wind direction.

The unique approach to storytelling led to unique challenges for the 422 South team. The team were at work for 18 months – much longer than project of this size would normally need. Only once 422 South started to work with the data would the story that it contained emerge. Some data proved inconclusive. Some was downright perverse ! But the resulting information was fed back to the producers who modified the script, or sought fresh data in response. Thus progress was made one small step at a time.

Our creative team then took over to introduce a ‘God’s Eye’ view of the USA at different heights. The data was visualized as glowing dots, lines, or coloured streaks, each application carefully designed to reflect the subject matter, and superimposed over satellite photographs of the USA, to create a beautiful and accurate composite of both location and data.

AMERICA REVEALED episodes include (all working titles):

The Great American Breadbasket
How America keeps pace with its insatiable appetite; who decides what food is produced; and how pastures and prairies turned into the biggest food machine in the world.

The American Dynamo
How America propels itself through energy, including the extraction of valuable ore and oil; the creation of electricity through water, wind and nuclear power; and the intricacies of energy distribution.

America in Motion
How America moves, whether the transportation mode is a bicycle on a neighborhood sidewalk, a family car on the mammoth interstate highway system or air traffic moving above the clouds.

Made in America
How American industry creates, whether it’s a simple cardboard box, a sleek new car, a jumbo jet or a tiny silicon chip, and how supply and demand, manufacturing and assembly are interconnected.

TX on Discovery Channel Canada Sunday December 11th

Client – MSP
Broadcaster – National Geographic, Discovery Canada

An epic film that uses CGI based on real lake floor survey data to reveal surprising facts about the iconic Lakes. 422 South’s CGI takes the audience back in time to when the lakes were covered in a mile thick layer of ice, to a later era when the lakes were watery, but at much lower levels than today, and to reveal the natural and man made features that only draining away the water can reveal.

The CGI was created by landscape CI specialists at 422 South led by Richard Fraser.

Led by Technical Director Craig Howarth, 422 South’s team wrote bespoke software to translate data sets describing many aspects of modern life – taxi rides, aircraft flights, phone calls, ship movements and even the wanderings of wild animals in city suburbs.
This data is then interpreted by 422 South’s CGI artists as beautiful – almost poetic animations that are informative and sometimes strangely moving.

For VPRO, making 10 × 30 minutes of prime time TV has meant commissioning over 20 minutes of animation – some of which was still in production even as the first episodes was going to air. But in keeping with the trend for 360 degree projects, the project also has an extensive web presence for which Dutch –UK relationship was opened up to include a US partner – interactive designers Stamen Design.

Over 90 percent of our daily actions are carried out unconsciously by an auto-pilot in our heads. AUTOMATIC BRAIN looks at the inner autopilots of Martha and Jake, two people whose paths cross by chance. Like all of us, their actions are guided by unconscious circuits: from brushing our teeth, to what we wear and how we drive, to one of the most important decisions of our lives: whom we fall in love with. 3D animations show us deep inside Martha and Jake’s heads, where modules which determine what they do are lit up. The truth is that our sense of reason is easily overpowered and has amazingly little influence.

422 South worked with Colourfield in Germany to produce a series of shots to help visualise the internal workings of the brain. A stylised look was developed by 422’s creative team and seamlessly composited with live action footage to explain how it all works.