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Hope you enjoyed #Bodyguard! We're two eps in now, so I'll do my usual non-spoilery breakdown of some of the graphics that go into making a show like this...
Firstly, police shows require: a Police force. I designed a generic crest for our force, including different colourways to work on uniforms, paperwork, screens, etc, as well as the warrant cards. The crest was extruded into 3D and printed to create the badges for the wallets. 
Paperwork makes up the majority of the worldbuilding graphics; police advisors give us a steer on how the it should look - everything is based on reality, but given an extra pass at feeling a bit more 'designed'. Different textures and colours keep it interesting. #Bodyguard
The things you think aren't a bespoke creation actually take the longest - all of the webpages have to be created from scratch in order to be fully controllable and interactive. @ctgengineering then takes these and makes an animated package from them. #Bodyguard
Fun fact: Keeley Hawes is *such* a national treasure, we got David Cameron to pose for this photo and photoshopped him in to match her, rather than the other way around.
Ep2 next week, or as I like to call it, The One Where I Died Of Screens
T-5 for Ep 3 of #Bodyguard! Ep 2 graphics tweets to follow...
The majority of the work in Ep2 of #Bodyguard was in the control room - the set was a tight, 4-walled space with screens on every wall and desk, with some screens providing scripted action, and other screens displaying filler or generic graphics.
In order to create a set of screens that could fill any room and suit (almost) any scripted situation, I designed a custom program shell that looked moderately techy, that could contain evidence photos, live CCTV feeds, criminal records, documents and traffic feeds.
In the real world, software like this tends to run the gamut from being high end, adaptable databases, to extremely basic network access stuff. I tried to represent all of that and have it not overly-sci fi to give the room a bit of reality.
The suite was programmed by Revolver's @ctgengineering - the elements of the screens were interactive so the supporting artists could actually press buttons, flick through feeds etc to make it look like they were working, and the wall mounted screens animated on repeating loops.
For the car chase, we created interactive software that moved both tracking dots along a map - broadly along the directions as per the script, with left/right turns. The sequence was designed to jump between points as action cut between scenes. #bodyguard
All of our paperwork, powerpoints etc. are fully detailed. You don't always see but things like our aftermath report feature things detailed bomb radius analyses, forensic photos shot by our ace assistant Lucy, and virtual props like these generated passports. #bodyguard
Finally, it's always nice to do a bit of signage, as it means collaborating with other makers. Big huge respect to @CuicaSolo of @Amalgammodels for her hotel signs - that slate effect is a really, really clever bit of paint on foam board. Genius!
T-5 till Ep 4 of #Bodyguard! After it finishes I'll be doing a graphic rundown on Ep3...
So, a lower key #Bodyguard, but lets go back to the explosive Ep3. First up, the small stuff - we build a microset for the police press conference, with large 8' panels with our police logo as a backing. Our E-Fit was provided by a company that does real E-fits (thankfully)
Julia's tablet was another bit of joint work with @ctgengineering / Revolver. I designed an app that was slicker and slightly techier than the stuff we've seen so far, and then created period typewritten documents with loads of noise and photocopy texture to suggest old scans.
I think this was my favourite graphic prop of the show, I like screens but I also love getting to do grungier documents so this was a nice mix of both.
David's PNC search was more of me and @ctgengineering, using the standard Police framework, with a new app inside. This takes a surprising amount of organisation - the AD's have to cast all of the extras who provided a headshot, and Richard had to rehearse using the system.
Back in the police station we have our swanky great big bastard digital evidence boards. With two laptops driving each of the banks of 4 x large TVs, each board has to be created as a left and right, and manually controlled (there's some subtle animation work here).
TV shows don't shoot in chronological order, so we have to manually map out each evidence board as it will appear in any given scene, and then make sure the right boards are loaded for the said scenes. It was... complex. Many paper diagrams were drawn up first, followed by crying
Blink and you'll miss it, but at the end of Ep3, a screen behind Deepak shows incident response units from all over London heading out to the college (or what's left of it). Our control room had a lot of contextual screens to keep it dynamic, and moving in line with the story
Finally, the two sides to RIPA. I generated loads of placards for our protesters - some digital, some by hand, some spread across banners. The interior design for the college was markedly more slick to provide some contrast (and some somewhat ironic copy)
Ep 5 of #Bodyguard starts now... a minor graphics recap of Ep 4 to follow...
Ep 4 of #bodyguard isn't actually that graphic heavy - so will do a couple of minor details now ahead of next week. One of the perks of being The Graphics Dickhead (official title) is that you get to create the branding that isn't scripted.
So the swanky restaurant where Rob places some excruciating moves on Julia in Ep3 is named after famed train guy Sir Nigel Gresley. He and I share an appreciation for ducks so in some ways, this branding designed itself...
A better look at the #bodyguard digital evidence boards. As I mentioned last week, something in the region of 30-odd of these were made for the series, each sequentially updated based on progression in the script. These plain white mockups gave us an idea of how to lay them out.
We had to approach these in a fairly real way as we had to fill them with plenty of 'evidence' - this meant taking on-set photos of stuff like the sniper aftermath, staging CCTV shots, faking passports, generating incident reports, creating paperwork etc #bodyguard
This was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to get my brain around, as you have to work with when actors are available and in costume, when things are being cast, knowing when to go get photos on certain days. Lucy, our art assist, was superhumanly on top of this.
Like, @BAFTA award for Being Lucy level of on top of it.
Until next week! #bodyguard
