ESPN

These are my three of my favorite motion graphics I've made because of the complexity and how I self-started these projects. Every single element has to be tracked and aligned perfectly, notice how with each graphic there's more elements to account which adds to the difficulty. These take a lot of time to create, but are extremely worth it because they stand out across social — very few brands or teams do this. In each instance, ESPN was either the only account on social to do this or one of two alongside LSU's creative team.

Video Jersey Swaps

AMPLIFYING OUR COVERAGE OF BLACK WOMEN IN SPORTS

The WNBA is gaining popularity and coverage. But even though 80% of the league is Black and winning numerous awards, they only received a third of the media coverage. I learned this after our VP of Social, Kaitee Daley, dropped a SBJ article into our D&I Committee slack channel. The article specifically studied articles mentioning an athlete's name, but I knew the same could be happening with social media coverage. In order to counteract the lack of Black athlete coverage within the mainstream sports media, I made this one of my goals heading into the year 2021 and we crushed it!

As a trusted media source, I knew we needed to show up in an authentic way and really show the light on these amazing athletes. Therefore, I worked closely alongside our ESPNW lead, Hannah Whitten, to identify and produce numerous custom graphics for the WNBA's best and brightest Black athletes. Together, with the help of the design team, we were able to produce a record number of WNBA custom content. What you see featured are my favorite pieces that I created, which is only a small handful of everything we prepped and produced as a team.

Additionally, ahead of the WNBA season, I gave a presentation to our 60+ team at ESPN Social highlighting the key ways we could provide better coverage of the WNBA. These implementations sparked significant change within the team as the year went on. We made sure the WNBA was a priority and created a plan to make it happen.

Throughout the year, with this new shift in mindset across our team, we put the same level of thought and preparation into sporting events like the Olympics, Women's Tennis, and so much more. Everyone really bought in and it showed because our efforts went beyond custom graphics. It was immersed in every facet of our social media pages, every day, and our news team made sure to amplify their voices, too. I'm proud of how our team showed up this year and look forward to how we'll continue to grow in the future.

WNBA Achievements (Yolanda Griffith).png

Sydney Mclaughlin Custom (Final, 4x5).png

Amplify Black Athletes

BRAND PARTNERSHIPS

ESPN partnered with Drake to curate music for Monday Night Football this year. This was a massive priority for our social team to create strong creative that teases and showcases

this partnership.

Prior to the announcement, I participated in extensive brainstorms to help develop and design concepts that our leadership could pitch to Drake's management team.

Moving forward, we continue to find opportunities to organically incorporate CLB music or Drake references into our creative assets to keep this top of mind for our fans.

For the past two years, we have partnered with EA Sports (Madden NFL) to create and distribute assets that showcase the game's player ratings on our linear and social. Specifically, my role was to make custom motion graphics to announce each of the 99 Club players.

Last year, I opted for a merge between real life and videogame itself — taking actual NFL footage and overlaying all the gameplay mechanics and elements from scratch.

This year, EA provided next-gen gameplay so I utilized that as well as updated all the overlays and elements to match the game's new UI.

Madden 99 Club x ESPN

NBA

With basketball being my favorite sport, this chunk of creative content has a special place in my heart. Looking back at these really makes me proud. Almost everything here was posted to @espn or @sportscenter as these were our big content plays that we prepped for a given event. I hope when watching these they make you feel something: whether it's happy, excited, nostalgic, or even angry if you're a Knicks fan :)

2020 NBA CHAMPIONS LOS ANGELES LAKERS

This was our wave one creative execution for @ESPN to put out the moment the Lakers won. Bouncing our ideas back-and-forth, Tyler Dimich and I landed here: a combination of showcasing the Lakers legends, the addition of their 17th banner in the rafters, and having it in Staples Center to add nostalgia for fans who couldn't go inside the arena all year due to the pandemic.

ICE TRAE

Based on his nickname, this was our @espn post for Trae Young eliminating the Knicks in the 2021 NBA playoff. J'Ron Erby pitched me the idea and I had a ton of fun making this and figuring out how to pull this off. It required a lot of 3D tracking and masking, but I couldn't be happier with the result! If you want to see everything that went into this animation, click here to view the before/after.

NBA IS BACK x NBA STREET vol. 2

For the kick-off of the 2021 NBA season, I pitched the idea of doing another NBA Street themed video. Our NBA lead, Hezekiah Johnson was super excited about it and so we got the ball rolling. I collaborated with our intern, Amir Clato-Day, to focus on the player sequence and he nailed the cut! Simultaneously, I built out the scoreboard, overlays, loading screens and cover art. Ultimately, we complimented each other well and it turned out awesome!

JA MORANT x NBA STREET vol. 2

For Ja Morant winning the 2020 Rookie of the Year award, Mark Kim and I wanted to do something big. The most iconic play from that year was his ankle-breaker against the Clippers. We knew we wanted to use this clip, but wasn't sure what for. Having both grown up playing NBA Street, we got really excited about doing the level 2 gamebreaker effect from NBA Street vol. 2. This was a very challenging motion graphic to execute because it required me to manually keyframe the ball's movement, the sparks, and the path and length of the lines. To this day, this is my favorite collab with Marky Mark.

GIANNIS IS NBA CHAMPION

This ended up being a wave one motion graphic for @ESPN that featured Giannis' iconic NBA Finals alley-oop. At the beginning of game six, Tyler Dimich had the idea to have Antetokounmpo catch the trophy and then during the stare-down have the uniform say "CHAMPS." Thankfully, I was able to scramble and finish this with two minutes left in the game - allowing us to post to all platforms (including TikTok) when the Bucks won!

Lakers Champ Gr phic

NBA Street

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Westbrook Triple Double Crown Collage (4x5, FD).png

Throughout my time working here, we've produced a ton of NBA content! Please enjoy the variety and depth of creative below. There's a mix of my favorite custom stat, NBA Award, NBA Playoff, and NBA Finals still and motion graphics. Make sure to click onto any image below to see them expanded and in full view!

A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING

This year I was tasked with creating all of our World Series custom graphics. With the content strategy led by Matthew Drexler & Mitchell Clements, they laid out the waves of content that needed to be prepped and it was just a matter of bringing them to life! When the Braves won, our content crushed on all platforms - these three Instagram posts totaled over 1.5M likes.

2021 WORLD SERIES

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World Series

CROSS-PROMOTION OF TV THROUGH SOCIAL CREATIVE

Working with marketing to pinpoint key opportunities to cross-promote our TV events airing on ESPN or other major Disney entities, I was tasked with the creative on social. Here are three fun examples that capture peoples' attention in their feed and deliver information about upcoming events that day.

ESPN x STAR WARS

ESPN x MARVEL

ESPN INSTAGRAM LOOP

ESPN CHRISTMAS

Collaborations: Brad Ross (xmas concept), Patrick Truby (xmas illustrations), Tyler Dimich (Marvel concept), J'Ron Erby (Star Wars, IG Loop, and LeBron concept)

ESPN x JAMES FAMILY

ESPN x MARVEL

TV Social Promo

ESPN MMA

Working with the MMA leads has been fun because whenever we collaborate it's always to go big and create something special for the main event! Here's a collection of my favorite pieces for @espn & @espnmma.

Collaborations: Tessa Hursh (all three concepts), Michael Facciolo (Jon "Bones" Jones layout)

MMA

NFL

Despite the Seattle Seahawks not doing particularly well recently, it's been super fun following the NFL the past two seasons. Here is a collection of my favorite content for @espn & @espnnfl.

Brady SB Trophy Timeline (Final, TW).png

CUSTOM GRAPHICS FOR MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL

While we always cover note-worthy games throughout the entire NFL season, we particularly try to emphasize the MNF games because they're on our air. Therefore, I partnered with J'Ron Erby to create these custom motion graphics that highlighted the winner for that night's game. The animation visually stands out on social and allows us to use our curated music tracks and extend that partnership throughout the season.

NFL