Every once in a while, MTV gets in touch with artists all over the world, asking them to be as creative as they want, to get the best MTV ident. This time, it is Niceshit studio‘s round to show their team’s masterful skills and create something amazing out of nothing.

Well, barely nothing, because MTV World Creative Studio made the creatives pay extra attention to three concepts: The World Cup, Anxiety, and Purple. For the rest, the artists were given a free hand. And this sounds simple yet demanding at the same time.

So, meet Heart, a purple character that lives in the moment. He experiences a football match as if he were the one playing on the field. And you can easily notice that because of the moods he continuously expresses.

There are a lot of emotions that spin around Heart: from confusion to uncertainty, suspicion, happiness, and anxiety, all these feelings mix so well in his little mauve heart that he can’t handle it anymore and finally drops down because of a deadly heart attack.

There are other hearts around our little buddy. Luckily, they know how to manage their feelings so they don’t have to go through the same tragic end as our cute protagonist. But hey, at least he died doing what he loved the most: watching football!

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To outline the contour of the Heart, the team of artists first flirted with some other ideas. But eventually, they agreed that “a heart that has a heart attack while watching his team on the stands” is the best fit for the popular music channel’s ident.

At the beginning of the project, the team worked with 2D animation and then they translated everything in 3D, frame by frame. Art Director and Motion Designer Nicolás Castro joined the crew and donated some of his talents to visually complement the whole highly-colored experience.

“As a studio, we always try to experiment new styles and techniques, and this was a great chance to get to it. We decided to make some concepts, design the characters and their facial expressions and then animate everything in 2D (some stuff in motion graphics and some stuff in CEL animation). Once we had it, we replicated everything in 3D, frame by frame. That’s when Nico gave us a BIG help with his art direction,” said Rodier Kidmann, Creative Director at Niceshit.

There’s not much left from the World Cup, but we hope you won’t get as excited during the quarter- and semifinals as the joyful Heart did. Be cautious and stay safe while watching these stressful matches!

Credits:

Studio: Niceshit

Creative Directors: Carmen Angelillo, Rodier Kidman & Guido Lambertini

Art Direction: Nicolas Castro, Rodier Kidmann

Animation Director: Guido Lambertini

Concepts & Character Design: Rodier Kidmann

3D Modeling: Nicolas Castro, Rodier Kidmann, Guido Lambertini

Shading & Lighting: Nicolas Castro

2D Animation: Leo Campasso, Guido Lambertini

3D Animation: Guido Lambertini

Music & Sound Design: Facundo Capece

Client: MTV

VP Creative: Sean Saylor

Creative Director: Maxi Borrego

Creative Lead: Fran Casas

Art Director: @lozmendez

Production & Operation Director: Delfina Chiesa

Producer: Francisco Romairone