World Wrestling Entertainment Graphics Team: Slammed: Creating Motion Graphics for WWE
For the creative team at World Wrestling Entertainment, “motion” and “shake” refer to more than just the exploits of wrestlers. They are invaluable tools used to pound out an astonishing amount of special effects. The nine-person team chews through more than seven shows a week, 52 weeks a year, using a tough team of Power Mac G5s, Final Cut Pro, Motion and Shake.
“We have the most insane deadlines I’ve ever seen in the graphic design industry,” says Peter Castellano, an artist with WWE. “We’re always getting hammered. Anything can change — a wrestler’s plane can be delayed or there could be an injury — and we get a call telling us we need to do another graphic. We have very few people with almost no time on their hands. What makes us special is we can get the shows out quick and still make them look pretty damn good. Apple has helped us free up time to get that done even quicker.”
“To me, creative freedom is the most important thing in a job, more so than salary,” says WWE graphic artist Peter Castellano. “Here they give us the opportunity to flex our creative muscles.”
Creative Muscle
“RAW,” “SmackDown!” and “Royal Rumble” are the kind of titles that make people dive for cover — or the remote, depending on the audience. They also pretty accurately describe what working for WWE is like. Simply put, it’s not dull. Good guys are transformed into villains, tag team partners stab each other in the back and new stars burst into the ring to trounce old champions. The creative team grinds out graphics that reflect those dramatic plotlines. And, of course, it strives to thrash the audience with bigger, badder effects.
“It’s very fast-paced and it’s always evolving,” says Castellano. “You can do something absolutely tremendous one month and then the next month it just gets destroyed by something else that’s better. You almost never catch your breath — it’s always moving.”
The WWE team have plenty of space to try out new moves. Producers toss their ideas into its ring and step back — they don’t referee. The result is a no-holds-barred creative melee. Castellano and Senior Graphic Designer Dan Ormsby get to use whatever tricks they’ve got.
It hasn’t always been that way. Early in their careers, both were caught in creative chokeholds — Castellano churned out bland designs for pharmaceutical companies and Ormsby assembled graphics for a local news channel.
“I almost had no say in what I could do with the designs,” says Castellano. “The company was very conservative with layout and colors and things like that. You couldn’t really get too crazy. That’s where I really learned the value of creative freedom. To me, it’s the most important thing in a job, more so than salary. Here they give us the opportunity to flex our creative muscles.”
“A lot of places don’t give you that freedom,” says Ormsby. “They basically come in with a design and say, ‘This is what you have to work with, don’t deviate from the design.’ Here they definitely encourage you to keep designing and keep coming up with new looks. They just keep saying, ‘Give us more, give us more.’”
Speed and Power
When a wrestler wants speed and power, he or she pumps iron. When the graphics gang wanted the same, they ordered a squad of Power Mac G5s and a battery of 10 Xserve G5s. Their Power Mac G5 workstations are wired into a gigabit network and the Xserves manhandle 3D rendering jobs.
The new system lets the group work faster, but it also lets them work smarter. The old system was a hodge-podge of Apple, SGI and PC hardware running a gamut of graphics and special effects software. Now nearly all of the artists run Power Macs with Apple software — Motion, Shake and Final Cut Pro. They can move files from one program into another without any penalties.
