A Blackhawks Championship – Brought To You by Navistar Defense

Tonight our beloved Blackhawks take to the ice to face Nashville, beginning a month-long bid to bring Lord Stanley’s Cup back to Chicago for the first time in 50 years. (The very idea of the Music City having a hockey team is, of course, preposterous.. but that’s another post.) So here at Manning, we’ve spent the last few weeks scraping the bottom of the creative barrel trying to think up a way to show our support.

Our first idea was to grow playoff beards. But aside from Doug (who’s apparently been in playoff mode continuously since 1982), the rest of us are prevented from doing so by either genetics or a sense of self-respect. So the brainstorming continued until we had this Ah Ha! Revelation:

Make a client pay for it!

In all seriousness though, our friends over at Navistar Defense are also hard-core Blackhawks fans and have been sponsoring the famed National Anthem all season. They approached us about doing an animated advertisement for the scoreboards at the United Center, and we were more than happy to oblige.

This was a little bit of uncharted territory for us, and the unique dimensions of the scoreboard made the work a bit of a challenge, but we think it came out pretty well!

Navistar Defense Blackhawks Animation from Patrick Mouser on Vimeo.

Simulation of how this animation will look in the United Center

A shot of the animation at United Center 4/16/2010