School traditions are expressed through everything from chants and songs to landmarks, mascots, and shared memories. For IAMSTATIC, the challenge was to bring those elements together in a way that felt specific to each school while maintaining a consistent visual style across the project.
Rendered with the help of Garagefarm, the studio created more than 200 unique assets representing 16 schools for the SEC’s It Just Means More campaign. Buildings, symbols, typography, traditions, songs, and local references were assembled into visual worlds, designed to feel immediately familiar to the people who knew them best.
A creative partnership shaped over decades
IAMSTATIC was founded by longtime creative partners whose collaboration began in high school and continued through art school. After building their careers together across agencies and studios, they developed a broad understanding of the industry from several perspectives, along with an instinctive sense of how the other person thinks.
“Decades of collaboration have created an instinctive creative shorthand between us, and is the foundation for IAMSTATIC.” - Dave Greene, founding partner of IAMSTATIC, alongside Ron Gervais
That shared history allows the studio to move between design, motion, animation, and technology without treating any one discipline as its defining feature.
Starting the project from the idea outward
When a project begins, the team first asks what the client needs, why the work is being created, and how the story might become more meaningful or unexpected. Exploration and research remain important, but the software follows the concept rather than producing it.
“We try not to fall into the trap of sitting with tools first to generate the idea.” - Dave Greene
Once that is set, IAMSTATIC chooses software based on that idea rather than complexity. TyFlow supports fast, artist-friendly effects, while Unreal Engine has helped the team preview installation spaces in VR and prototype internal game concepts. But at the end of the day, the studio notes that ultimately, each tool is simply a means of creating images, and the best choice depends on the project and the artist using it. Thus, they like to keep exploring with an open mind.
Building 16 schools from history and tradition
The SEC campaign required IAMSTATIC to create a coherent visual system without reducing the individuality of the 16 schools. More than 200 assets had to bring together an eclectic mixture of buildings, props, typography, mascots, chants, songs, and local references.
The team established a few compositional rules to hold those elements together, often using large architectural forms as anchors and arranging smaller objects around them. Typography also became part of the composition itself, helping organize each frame rather than simply labeling it.
Research gave those compositions their meaning. IAMSTATIC investigated the history, stories, landmarks, and cultural connections surrounding each school, collecting references in a shared Figma board that became a map for the project.
The board helped the team account for every requested element while also finding relationships between them, creating room for smaller references and Easter eggs that would resonate most strongly with viewers already familiar with each school.
Making every frame carry the spirit of a school
The visuals needed to remain recognizable across different sports and seasons, so IAMSTATIC could not build them around one temporary event or a single team. Instead, the artists treated each scene as a broader collection of the objects, places, words, and traditions that give a school its identity.
“We felt the responsibility to make sure even background objects had attention and care given to them. [...] We wanted to ensure that every frame felt like a poster or collection of the spirit behind each school.” - Dave Greene
Some references were more difficult to represent than others, such as the “Wooo Pig Sooie” cheer, associated with the University of Arkansas. A building or mascot could be modeled directly, but a song or chant existed primarily through sound, rhythm, gesture, and the energy of a crowd. Even so, the studio still found ways to incorporate it effortlessly.
A project realized through collaboration
For IAMSTATIC, the campaign became a culmination of ideas developed throughout the studio’s history. The studio also credits the relationship between IAMSTATIC, IAS, and the Agency, as the project became a complete expression of the studio’s creative development over the years, strengthened by the close collaboration between everyone involved.
IAMSTATIC considers its relationship with the people commissioning the work one of the most important parts of the creative process, because understanding what matters to them shapes every decision that follows.
“It’s not just a delivery of an animation, you are making relationships as well.” - Dave Greene
Rendering with GarageFarm.NET as a technical ally
As detailed scenes move toward completion, rendering becomes closely tied to schedules, workstation availability, and the speed at which artists can review their decisions. IAMSTATIC has worked with GarageFarm.NET since the render farm’s early years and values the ability to reach people who understand both the technical problem and the production surrounding it.
“GarageFarm feels like a team member. I’ve never felt like I couldn’t call on them for help.” - Dave Greene
The render farm’s human support also became especially important when one scene from the project began taking much longer to render than expected. IAMSTATIC could not locate the cause, so, with the studio’s permission, the GarageFarm.NET team opened the file and identified the problem directly.
“Having someone be able to help debug a problematic file, or even catch issues before you, is truly invaluable.” - Dave Greene
Having also used other render farms for client projects, IAMSTATIC has come to value simplicity, functional job management, competitive pricing, and fast access to a real person.
“When in a pinch it is more than just rendering frames. In all of our projects, we like that we can rely on Garagefarm not only as our render farm, but as a technical ally with any render issues that we might encounter.” - Dave Greene
Keeping the studio visible as the tools change
IAMSTATIC expects the next few years to bring significant changes in the tools and systems available to artists. The studio noted that Ebs and flows is what keeps things interesting, and scary, and also sees AI as another creative tool, and expects its influence to be felt strongly across production workflows. Yet as those systems become available to more people, the co-founder believes the real distinctions will come from the ideas, relationships, and personal choices behind the work.
“Authenticity and connection with people are the real things to watch for. When the tools are equal to all users, there needs to be more than just the final output.” - Dave Greene
Maintaining control over rendering remains an important part of preserving that identity. Camera lensing, light, materials, and composition must still feel grounded in IAMSTATIC’s visual language, even when the results move into unfamiliar applications or emerging workflows.
The It Just Means More campaign brings IAMSTATIC’s creative philosophy into full view, showing what can happen when strong ideas, thoughtful collaboration, and the right tools work together. The project is also a perfect example of how a team, or even an individual artist, can bring buildings, chants, and shared memories to life, without losing the meaning that made them recognizable in the first place.
Right now, IAMSTATIC is preparing to announce a new project that will expand both its team and its offerings, opening the door to new formats, new collaborators, and more stories led by the idea first.
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