US Election 2024 — a 3D broadcast opener

• ClientAlmashhad TV
• Year2024
• Role3D artist · Motion designer
• ToolsBlender 3D · After Effects
• DisciplineBroadcast opener · 3D animation
• DeliveryOn-air, election coverage

The brief

Election coverage openers have about eight seconds to say three things: this is important, this is live, this is America. They also have to survive being played several times a night for weeks, which rules out anything that depends on surprise.

The build

The sequence is anchored on a cinematic 3D White House and Capitol dome, modelled, shaded, lit and rendered entirely in Blender 3D. Around the architecture, red and blue light ribbons sweep and wrap — simulated as geometry rather than 2D strokes, so they occlude correctly as they pass behind columns and the dome. That occlusion is the entire reason the shot reads as real space instead of a graphic laid over a photograph.

Lighting does the emotional work. The architecture is kept in near-silhouette with rim light, so the ribbons are the brightest thing in frame and the eye tracks them without being told to. Final composite, glow, grade and pacing were done in After Effects.

Decisions worth naming

• Red and blue, but not the flag. Party colour without the literalism of a waving flag, which dates instantly and reads partisan.
• Camera on a single continuous move. No cuts inside the opener — one sweep keeps the sequence feeling live rather than edited.
• Render budget spent on the ribbons. The architecture can be simpler than it looks; nobody studies the White House in an eight-second open, but everyone follows the moving light.

Why Blender

For broadcast turnaround, Blender's advantage is not price — it is that modelling, simulation, shading and render live in one file, so a note at 6pm does not mean a round trip through three applications. On a news schedule that difference is the project.

Next: Menna Wa Fena S2 — a title sequence made entirely with AI →