AMC: The Walking Dead

Overview

FormatPage Grabber

PlatformDesktop + Mobile

EngineGreenSock

AgencyUndertone

I built this for AMC's The Walking Dead series premiere. The brief called for something that felt cinematic, not like an ad. The solution: a horror-toned narrative sequence with atmospheric haze, character silhouettes emerging from darkness, and a final tune-in card. The entire experience runs on a single GreenSock master timeline with nested sub-timelines per scene.

Part of the entertainment vertical that also included HBO and History Channel campaigns.

How It Works

~2s

Atmosphere

Page Grabber expands. Dark background with atmospheric haze sprites looping. Series logo fades in.

~4s

Reveal

Character silhouettes emerge through the haze with staggered GreenSock entrances. Each character uses independent opacity and position tweens.

~2s

Tagline

Season tagline and key art transition in. Atmospheric sprites continue running behind all foreground elements.

End State

Tune-In

Premiere date, network logo, and CTA fade up. Click-through tracks via the ad platform SDK.

Engineering

Timeline Orchestration

GreenSock with nested sub-timelines per scene. Callbacks between scenes manage DOM state transitions: showing/hiding elements that belong to different narrative beats.

Atmospheric Sprites

Haze and fog effects built as sprite-sheet animations. CSS background-position steps through pre-rendered frames, layered behind characters using CSS z-index stacking.

Character Entrances

Each character has a unique entrance vector: direction, scale, and opacity: timed via GreenSock staggerFrom to create compositional depth.

Platform Lifecycle

SparkFlow SDK manages impression fire, viewability measurement, click attribution, and auto-close timeout to protect publisher content.

Engineering Decisions

The Walking Dead brand is built on tension and dread. A fast-paced showcase would feel tonally wrong. Slow reveals and atmospheric buildup match the show's identity.

CSS blur filters look synthetic. Pre-rendered fog frames from the show's VFX team give authentic atmospheric depth that matches the on-screen aesthetic.

A 4-scene narrative needs precise sequencing. GreenSock's nested timeline support lets each scene be authored independently and composed into a master sequence.

Horror relies on immersion. A 300x250 banner can't create dread. Full-page format commands 100% of the user's visual field: matching the show's cinematic scale.