The drawing board
The games are back. And so is our Original Works of Sport platform. Sure the high-flying tricks alone could draw a crowd, but understanding the evolution of each athlete’s original work could cultivate an appreciation deeper than the typical awe and disbelief.
Starring champions like Gretchen Bleiler, Travis Rice, and Jon Olsson, the “Blueprints” work uses Real-World Stop-Motion to show the genesis of the athletes’ carefully formulated and artistically executed tricks from their births as ideas. The final result is stop-motion animations of “ideas” that are scrawled in the snow and morph in and out of 3D sculpture, which ultimately emerge from the ground as athletes performing their Original Works of Sport.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for MOTO X.
Because fans couldn't quench their X Games thirst with only 2 events a year, and because motocross athletes will travel to the ends of the Earth in search of the best competition, ESPN began the first ever Moto X World Championships. This inaugural event boasts the greatest course with the world's hugest pile of dirt — enough dirt to make professional riders act like kids chasing down the ice cream truck.
Faces on the [Butter]milk carton
The X Games athletes make the halfpipes and slopestyle challenges look like a walk in the snow park. These superhuman athletes needed a little supernatural competition. How would they fare if Buttermilk Mountain actually came to life — claiming the unlucky few who caught it on a bad day? With the seeds of a viral campaign taking root months before January's competition, blogs and websites latched on to the legend and ran with it. This grassroots momentum, combined with fake Russian news broadcasts and athlete testimonials, resulted in the highest attendance and viewing numbers that X had ever experienced, showing that the legend of a man-eating mountain was just what these legendary athletes needed to make the competition a little more, well, extreme.
X Games Debut
Speed. Dirt. Broken bones. At first glance, you may not see the inherent beauty of the X Games. But as our creative team elevates the meaning of "X" from extreme to expression, fans new and old can see that the real power of these sports lies in the ability of the competitors to create their own "Original Works of Sport."