Chameleon: High Rollers
Animated Trailer
The second season of Chameleon investigates the stranger-than-fiction tale of what happens when a check-kiting informant, an FBI undercover agent, and a group of Las Vegas businesspeople all pretend to be something they're not – money launderers.
I created the below trailer while at Sony Podcasts for the second season of "Chameleon," named Vulture's #2 True Crime Podcast of 2023. I was given 14 minutes of audio and a $500 stock budget (which is very little compared other video projects of this scale) to create a one-minute animated trailer that the client wanted to "resemble Oceans Eleven".
In addition to creating a script and editing the audio myself in Premiere Pro, nearly every static and animated element was created by hand. I created the Las Vegas strip blinking neon signs in Adobe Illustrator, and in Photoshop I designed every map, government form, and scrap paper seen on the crime board. I also used Cinema 4D to animate the end card from the original layered podcast cover art, using a camera to zoom through a 3D space and used a combination of Cinema 4D and Red Giant trap code for the dollar bills blowing across the screen. From start to finish I created this trailer in 3 weeks, and it remains of my favorite videos I've ever created.
Trailer Highlights:
More from Chameleon
Season 3: Wild Boys
I designed this cover art for season 3 of the podcast Chameleon: Wild Boys.
In the summer of 2003 two young boys emerge from the British Columbia wilderness telling an incredible story. They claim is this their first contact with society, and a small Canadan town rallies together to house and support them. But the boys have a secret that 20 years later host Sam Mullins seeks to uncover.
Season trailer – designed, animated, and edited by me.
Trailer Highlights:
Audiograms:
I created three animated cinemagraph templates in After Effects, using footage from the trailer as well as animated the static cover artwork. For each episode I used the looping cinemagraphs in conjuction with audio from the show and added closed captions and an animated waveform to create the short clips to promote upcoming episodes across organic social.
Season 6: Gallery of Lies
The most recent season of Chameleon chronicles the rise and fall and potential rise again of one of the most powerful figures in the global art market – German art advisor and dealer Helge Achenbach. In 2015 Achenbach was convicted of defrauding his friend and client Berthold Albrecht, an heir to the Aldi supermarket fortune, to the tune of about $20 million.
Cover art created by me. New Chameleon wordmark and branding, also by me.
