Arena motion graphics, built for game night.
In-arena LED content designed and animated for the Detroit Pistons across five NBA seasons: sponsor activations, fan prompts, theme nights, and hype packages across more than 45 Daktronics displays at Little Caesars Arena.
Game-night graphics have one job: move a whole building at once. The center-hung has to read from the upper bowl, the ribbon boards have to carry the same idea in a completely different shape, and the sponsor prompt has to land before the timeout ends. That is a different discipline from motion design for a screen in someone's hand.
Doozy Crew has designed and animated in-arena content for the Detroit Pistons for five NBA seasons across more than 45 Daktronics LED displays at Little Caesars Arena, each with its own resolution, aspect ratio, and brightness. The work covers sponsor activations like the Kroger T-Shirt Toss and Little Caesars Pizza Toss, fan prompts like Honor a Ball Kid, and features like Pistons Alumni, all built to the season's theme.
Design and animation happen in Columbus. Previews are reviewed on screen with the team's game presentation staff, and deliveries land in the formats the control room ingests.
In-house game presentation teams are built to run the show, not to design and render 45 screen variants of every new sponsor package. A studio that already has the LED pipeline, the templates, and the season's visual language can turn a new activation around without pulling the control room off its own work.
Doozy Crew's pipeline was built on this volume. Each piece starts as a static design in Adobe Illustrator, is animated in After Effects (with Cinema 4D for 3D elements), previewed on an Unreal Engine model of the arena so the team sees it in place before it goes live, and exported to every display's native specs.
How we work.
Brief + season theme
We start with the season's theme, the sponsor roster, and the display map: every screen's resolution, aspect ratio, and position in the building. Style frames lock the look before animation begins.
Static design
Each prompt, activation, and feature is designed first as a static composition in Adobe Illustrator, built around the theme with bold type and clear hierarchy that reads from the far seats.
Animation + preview
Approved designs are animated in After Effects, with Cinema 4D for 3D elements, then previewed on an Unreal Engine model of the arena so the game presentation team can see every screen in context before game night.
Multi-aspect delivery
Final renders are exported to each display's native specs, from the center-hung to the ribbon boards and fascia, in the file formats the control room ingests. Looping files, alpha overlays, and stingers included as the package calls for.
- Sponsor activations, fan prompts, and theme-night packages
- Hype packages, player intros, and timeout features
- Every piece rendered to each LED display's native resolution and aspect ratio
- Looping seamless files for ambient and pre-game states
- Alpha-channel overlays for live video compositing
- Unreal Engine in-arena previews for approval before game night
Recent arena motion graphics work.
A single sponsor activation or animated prompt starts in the low thousands. A full broadcast-style hype package with 3D elements and licensed music might be $25K. A multi-screen LED package covering a full season is six figures. We quote based on the number of pieces, screen count, complexity, and delivery formats, fixed-fee after the kickoff call.
Common questions, quick answers.
Have you worked with an NBA team before?
Yes. Doozy Crew has designed and animated in-arena motion graphics for the Detroit Pistons for five NBA seasons at Little Caesars Arena, across more than 45 Daktronics LED displays.
Do you need to be on site?
Not for most packages. Design and animation happen in Columbus, previews are reviewed on screen (including Unreal Engine renders of the arena), and files are delivered in the formats your control room ingests. We travel when a package calls for it.
How do you handle 45 different screen sizes?
Every piece is designed for the primary display first, then adapted and rendered to each display's native resolution and aspect ratio rather than stretched. Our pipeline was built for that volume so a new sponsor package doesn't mean 45 hand-made exports.
Can you work inside our existing brand and season theme?
That's the normal case. We work from the team's brand style guide and the season's theme, and build each package so it reads as part of the same system across the building.
What formats do you deliver?
Whatever the control room ingests: per-display renders at native specs, looping seamless files, alpha-channel overlays, and stingers. We confirm codecs and naming with your game presentation team before the first delivery.
Do you also do venues outside basketball?
Yes. The same pipeline applies to any arena, stadium, or venue with LED displays, and to broadcast and event graphics that need to match in-building content.
Got a project worth making?
15 minutes is enough to know if we're a fit. No deck, no slides.