Year
2026
Client
Baltimore Orioles
Category
Live Event / Stadium Content
Product Duration
5 Weeks
The Baltimore Orioles needed a pregame activation for their brand new LED video board system at Camden Yards. The concept: a dignitary pushes a button and the entire stadium comes to life. The centerpiece was a 3D animated Oriole bird flying across every display in the park, ribbon boards wrapping the upper and lower decks, the main 4K scoreboard, and auxiliary screens throughout the venue. Each board had different dimensions, different resolution constraints, and a playback system we'd never worked with before. The event date was Opening Day 2026. There was no backup plan.
The first week of this project, nothing got designed. The entire week went to technical discovery: reading Daktronics spec sheets, learning the Ross Tessera switcher pipeline, mapping aspect ratios for every board section, and figuring out which codecs the playback system could handle. The specs demanded 1920x1080 per section, ProRes 59.94 delivery, and files that wouldn't choke a switcher running multiple sources simultaneously. Every design had to accommodate a 16x9 safe zone for captioning and leave room for sponsor logo placements. The creative brief said "make something amazing." The hardware said "make something amazing that reads from 300 feet away and doesn't break the switcher." That first week of spec work felt unproductive. It was the most important week of the entire project.
The bird animation needed to feel like a single continuous flight across physically separated displays. That meant designing camera moves that could be sliced into per-board renders while maintaining the illusion of seamless motion. The 3D bird model was sourced and evaluated immediately for rig quality, UV textures matching the team's specific orange, and feather geometry that held up at stadium scale. Backgrounds pulled from actual Camden Yards photography, referenced against other MLB parks (Padres, Phillies, Mariners) but built to feel distinctly Baltimore. Leadership notes came in during testing week requesting the animation cut from 40 seconds to 25, a repath of the bird's flight on the scoreboard, and color adjustments to match team standards. Final delivery included ProRes 4444 alpha versions for every board section so the Orioles' in-house team could composite over their own backgrounds.
Final assets were approved on March 25, one day before Opening Day. The last fix was a missing element on the right field board, caught during live testing, turned around same day. We got the approval email. The bird flew at Camden Yards on Opening Day 2026 in front of a full stadium. The project covered the main video board, upper and lower ribbon boards, the right field wall, third base ribbon, and auxiliary displays. Five weeks from kickoff call to a live event with zero margin for error.
