Boston Red Sox
2026
Howl Motion was brought on to create a series of LED backdrop animations for the Boston Red Sox Spring Training Media Day. Our challenge was to take the team’s vintage, film-inspired design language and bring it to life through motion by creating a visual world that felt nostalgic, energetic, and distinctly Red Sox.
Following the shoot, the animations extended beyond the set, coming to life in Fenway Park and across the @RedSox social channels.
Motion Exploration
The Red Sox creative team developed an intriguing brand kit for the 2026 MLB season, drawing inspiration from the visual language of retro movie titles. Our goal was to translate that cinematic foundation into motion while balancing the character of old-school film with the energy and pace of a modern sports media day.
We explored a range of visual cues pulled from the world of Hollywood premiere spotlights, Theater marquee lights, and a jittery, film-inspired texture. While film grain and noise felt right conceptually, they became overly distracting when pushed across a 30-foot video wall. We scaled back the texture to preserve the character of the system without compromising clarity at scale.
Starting with black-and-white artwork, we introduced the Red Sox 2026 color palette to give the system its full visual identity. From there, we dropped the animation to 12fps and introduced subtle movement and imperfections throughout the frames, creating the hand-crafted, jittery quality that became the signature of the final motion package.
Animation
With the visual language established, we were able to build an exciting, scalable motion design package for the Boston Red Sox.
Project Details
Created for Spring Training Media Day, this motion design package was designed to extend far beyond the shoot, giving the Red Sox a flexible motion toolkit to carry throughout the full 162-game MLB season.
We delivered a suite of 15 custom animation plates spanning in-game moments, social content, and branded loops. Each animation was produced in 5–15 second durations across English and Spanish.
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The lineup and nickname animation templates were built to scale across the roster, with 73 individual athlete name graphics rendered for player-specific content.
Boston Red Sox
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2026