Capturing the Split Seconds Between Victory and Defeat

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Capturing the Split Seconds Between Victory and Defeat

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

It was the summer of 2016, and Derek Watkins, then a graphics editor at The New York Times, was staring down a challenge.

How could the newspaper provide coverage of Olympic events in record time for readers?

Mr. Watkins and other graphics editors decided upon what would eventually become a winning solution: a

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, generated in a matter of minutes. Since the 2016 Games, members of the Digital News Design, Graphics, and Research and Development teams have created tiny, animated visualizations of Olympic events in swimming,

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, skiing and

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.

“They looked like 2-D sprites,” Eden Weingart, an art director on the Digital News Design team, said of the earliest versions of the simulations. In each Olympics since, she and her team have built upon that initial idea.

This year’s track and field and swimming visuals have been a hit on

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and

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. Tiny swimming figures, now in 3-D, change strokes between laps in the medley events and race to video-game-like sound effects. On a track, animated runners break out of starting blocks and pump their arms, and viewers can see exactly when in the race they pull ahead or fall behind. Take

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on Sunday by five-thousandths of a second: It was hard to see on TV, but in the Times visual the Lyles avatar helped demonstrate to readers how he out-leaned the competition at the finish line.

In a recent interview, Ms. Weingart shared the most challenging parts of creating the visualizations and what she and her team are planning to do next. These are edited excerpts.

How long does it take to create a visual?

We all watch the race together on a video call or in the office. Immediately after a race, the Olympic Committee publishes data on all the athletes’ times. Our team built an internal application that could customize and modify 3-D elements that react to the data.

When an event happens, we plug that data into the app, which generates animations. We make sure the animations match what we just saw happen, and that all the times and the results are accurate.

The whole process can take around 15 to 20 minutes. We try to be pretty quick.

What have been the biggest challenges?

A big challenge was creating a character that would be generic enough, but that wouldn’t look weird. We definitely skirted the uncanny valley a few times.

Some races also have to be sped up 10x to fit into a minute. For instance, the 800-meter swimming freestyle lasts for about eight minutes. As much as people might enjoy these animations, they’re not going to watch them for eight minutes. But we also don’t want to speed it up so much that it doesn’t look like swimming — the swimmers’ arms would look like propellers.

I’m so impressed with the level of detail. The swimmers even change strokes in the medley.

Each Olympics, we build on top of what we did last time. For the Tokyo Olympics, the little swimmers didn’t have feet. They looked like little foosball people — their arms moved through strokes, but they had no legs to kick.

When we did the figure skating events for the Beijing Olympics, we discovered that we could give the model legs, feet and more joints, and it didn’t look weird. Then we thought, “We can definitely have them do a backstroke-to-breaststroke turn.”

What has it been like to see the reader feedback?

It’s really cool to see that readers and viewers are savvy and know that this is motion design and animation, and that there are people behind it. They’re saying things like, “The designers deserve a gold medal.” I’ve seen a couple of comments like, “This is A.I.,” but most people seem to recognize that this is a craft-heavy thing. It’s really encouraging for us.

The

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when a swimmer touches the wall has been particularly beloved. Who gets credit?

We worked for the first time this year with a team from Audio — led by Dan Powell — that makes original sound for “The Daily” and other Times podcasts. We met with him and told him we wanted it to feel kind of like a video game. I mentioned the little sounds from Nintendo Switch and the footstep noises from Animal Crossing as references. At first we thought we might do splash sounds, but then we realized that keeping it more abstract worked better.

For the music inspiration, we shared the victory themes from Final Fantasy VII and Mario Kart, but then we said, “Put all of that in the world of the ‘Challengers’ soundtrack.” The Audio team did an incredible job.

What’s on your wish list for future Olympics coverage?

There are a few running events we don’t currently cover, like relays and some of the longer runs. It would be really fun to animate the baton pass. As far as swimming, we’ve been able to get most of our wish list items done. But for the next Olympics, we’ve also been talking about creating different outfits based on the swimsuits they wear, or adding a world record line like the one you see on television.

If you could do these for one Olympic sport you haven’t tackled yet, which would you choose?

Gymnastics would be amazing, but it’s just so complicated. I’d love to see a little pommel horse or a little balance beam, though that would be a ton of animating!

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