Concept and creative process
Titles for ‘The Great Egg Race Rides Again’, a programme in which Professor Heinz Wolff took a look back at the 80s game show of invention and improvisation, and asked scientists and engineers to solve apparently impossible problems and construct complex machinery, using only logic and the materials to hand. The technology for producing motion graphics had also advanced in the intervening years since the show’s first appearance in 1979. The title sequence for this millennial show was created using the latest digital technology. It comprised two orbiting rings of egg shapes, layered one over the other in a white void, with additional elements, like silhouetted animating cogs and tools, wing nuts and light bulbs, on separate orbits as part of the visual mix. The inner ring of eggs was a wireframe computer animation moving intermittently around a complex mathematical formula. The outer ring comprised egg-shaped vignettes, containing live action images of a pedal powered machine driven by Heinz Wolff himself, which finally brought the mechanically animating programme logo and its vignette to prominence in the centre of the screen.