Creating Assets and Compositing my Title Sequence

For my title sequence I created the assets in Adobe Illustrator, to emulate a graphic, vector based style. I used the book as reference when creating the assets for my title sequence, remixing and repurposing what I deemed the most memorable and thematically relevant visuals from the comic. Most of the imagery used in my title sequence was from the short story The Nesting Place, the one I have chosen to adapt, however for the sake of diversity I chose to adapt imagery from some of the other stories too. Using the pen tool in Illustrator, I constructed the assets needed for my project using the imagery in the book as reference.

My Title sequence was composited in Adobe After Effects using vector-based assets created in Illustrator. After Effects is ideal for compositing sequences of 2D motion graphics as it's user interface is very similar to Photoshop. The aesthetic of my animation is more in keeping with motion graphic title sequences rather than traditional full animation, with emphasis on the arrangement and composition of imagery.

The layers in my project are generally organised in the order in which they appear sequentially in the animation. As there is a lot of motion in my title sequence, with movement of the camera, I enabled motion blur in order to achieve a more natural filmic look.

One of the most immediately recognisable pieces of imagery from the book is the blood-red full moon which is why I decided to start off my title sequence with it. The prologue of the book also contains this imagery accompanied by a snowy scene with a hooded blue figure making their way through a blizzard, so I decided to combine these two elements to create the opening shot of my animation. I wanted to give the impression that the hooded character was making their way through a blizzard in the opening shot, so I animated a character whose hood blew in the wind in Photoshop before importing it into After Effects as footage. This is one of the only assets in my project created in Photoshop, and that is non-vector/raster based.

Most of the environmental effects featured in my title sequence were created in After Effects using the effects filters. The snow in the opening shot and the water dripping in the cave derive from preset effect options in After Effects, though initially I did consider creating the individual assets in Illustrator separately.

Originally, for the cave shot I included a light sweep on the main character's lantern, however my tutor did not feel it fit with the aesthetic of the title sequence as a whole. Upon reflection, the light sweep does stand out amongst the composition. That coupled with the poor way in which I implemented it and the effect the sweep of light had on the edges of the frame led me to scrap this idea for the final animation.

The main character in my animation has a number of different models requiring different degrees of mobility. Probably the most animated of these is the first model of the character falling. For this I created the model in a separate composition, animating the limbs using the puppet pin tool. In order to give the illusion of falling I also used puppet pins to animate the hair blowing in the wind as the character descends. The model of the character in the cave was also complex and animated using the same method, however with more facial detail. I also used puppet pins on the hair of the character to simulate secondary action in order to give the movement of her head more believability.

During the early stages of compositing my title sequence I was considering straying away from my animatic when the camera zooms in on the character's pupil before it turns into an apple with a bite taken out of it. This was because I was not aware you could import Illustrator files directly into After Effects and up until this point i had been importing the files saved out of illustrator as PNGs. These appeared too blurry when zoomed in properly so I opted for a different method of transition between scene with the lantern illuminating the camera with a blinding white light. However, most of my peers found this transition jarring and not in keeping with the style of the sequence up until this point, which was a single continuous camera move. So, I instead opted to go by my storyboard and imported the Illustrator file into After Effects, retaining the layer sizes and reworked the animation so that when I zoomed into the character's face for the transition, the assets didn't get all blurry. It worked and the intended effect is, in my opinion, stronger than the compromise I almost ended up going with.

One of the biggest problems I had with my animation came to fruition when it came to render it out in After Effects. The image buffer size was too large for the project and as a result kept crashing when it came to rendering out my animation. To amend this I used the college computers and rendered the project off the native disk rather than my external hard drive, as I was told this may be one of the factors causing it to crash. Still, the final render did end up taking a lot longer than I would have hoped thanks in no small part to me overloading the project files. In the future I will be sure to work on my After Effects projects in smaller, much more manageable chunks in order to bypass this frustration.

Overall I am satisfied with how closely my final animation follows my animatic, however I do wish that I could go back and simplify the graphics and colour palette somewhat. I feel that while I do think my animation effectively mimics the stylings of the book, I would have liked to incorporate more textures, maybe creating my own from found objects such as newspaper clippings or cardboard cutouts. Another area I feel I could have improved upon given more time is the typography, which I feel could have had some more creative application and placement within the scenes, making use of distortion and perspective a little more. I did apply a drizzle effect to the text which appears in the cave to reflect the water dripping from the rock, however I feel this effect kind of passes by a little too fast on screen and I would have liked to experiment with those sorts of motifs a little more in my title sequence. The last shot of the girl standing in front of the door in the middle of the woods was also a little static requiring a little more animation next time. I feel that it would have been improved had I shown her walking through the door or by showing something, a creature maybe coming out of it, and as it stands the last shot falls a little flat for me.

Designing the Type and Title Card

Typography plays a large part in title sequences. Displaying the names of the people who worked on the project is the primary function of a title sequence, so ensuring the text is not only easily readable and aesthetically pleasing is a major priority when considering type. For my title sequence I created my own font in Illustrator, modelled off the font used in the 2007 French anthology film 'Peur(s) du noir' or 'Fear(s) of the Dark' as it translates in English. 

The title sequence for this film is simple and minimalistic relying entirely on the typography and the accompanying soundtrack to communicate a grim, dreadful mood. What appeals to me about this typeface is how it is simultaneously uniform and modern and at the same time distorted and edgy. It reminds me of the typefaces used by Saul Bass on posters for Hitchcock films such as Vertigo and North By Northwest. While my title sequence is of a different genre, I feel that it is appropriate to borrow a few stylistic tropes and devices from people like Hitchcock, whose often described as being the 'master of suspense' in order to lend an air of dread to my title sequence.

In order to create my own Saul Bass-inspired typeface I created each individual letter as a vector in Illustrator before rearranging them into the order of words and exporting them as PNGs to be imported into After Effects. The type in my animation abides by the same black, red and white colour scheme most of the rest of the title sequence follows, with the names of the people in the credits highlighted in Red for emphasis.

The title card I created incorporates this colour scheme as well as the key imagery of an apple with a bite taken out of it. I went through several variations of this design before settling on the final design with the text inside of the apple. I chose this because the apple provides a red background for the text which allows for the white and black heading and subheading respectively to stand out and be highlighted.

Sound in my Title Sequence

Title sequences, by their very nature, rely on sound just as much as they rely on image to communicate the intention of the show in a short timeframe, which is why I decided to put some thought into this aspect of the titles early on in the pre-production in order to design around the audio cues and ensure a harmonious audio/visual experience.

The first step I took after coming up with my storyboard was to create an appropriate soundscape which fit the tone of the book I was adapting. For this I needed to isolate a short 30-second snippet of a song with a grim, moody tone, which went through peaks and troughs, roughly following the structure of having a distinctive beginning middle and end. For this I considered a number of songs from a variety of artists. 

Sycamore Trees by Jimmy Scott

As my title sequence was for an adaptation of a book with a distinctly woodland setting I thought about incorporating part of the Twin Peaks soundtrack into my title sequence, with lyrics referencing Sycamore Trees, often nicknamed 'ghost trees' as I thought this might tie in to my story thematically, however I opted not to use it as I found the song to be overly long and not right for the tone.

Spider Monkey by Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man

Another song I considered for my title sequence was Beth Gibbons 'Spider Monkey' as I felt the meandering instrumentals would flow with my title sequence very well. The song also goes through several stages of rising tension which felt would lend an air of excitement to the title sequence. However, while I was a fan of the instrumental and the lyrics did fit the theme of the book to some extent, I found editing it down to a 30-second chunk near impossible and abandoned the idea in favour of 'Danny the Dog' by Massive Attack. 

Danny the Dog by Massive Attack

This song was ideal as it is fairly long with a heavy emphasis on thumping drums and drawn out piano chords which lend a sense of dread, which is something I am hoping to instil. However, due to the slow pace I was forced to edit the song down, condensing the individual instrumental verses into three individual 'acts' signifying the beginning middle and end. I wanted the transition from one verse to another to be like acts of a story, with their own distinct moods which evoked a sense of rising tension to some extent.  Elements of the instrumental I feel reflect aspects of my storyboards as well, for example, the echoing violins in the first half of the track give me personally the sensation of falling, which happens to one of the characters in my title sequence.

What was also important was that I end the title sequence with some sort of musical sting in order to punctuate the title and give it significance, as I found this to be something a lot of title sequences do. For this I narrowed the track down to a single moment at 1:11, which my heavily condensed edited version of the track used for my titles will gradually lead into and end on for the stinger moment.

Storyboarding my Title Sequence

One of the most important pieces of pre-production work in the creation of an animation is the Storyboard. For my title sequence I am going for a very specific aesthetic, inspired by the art style of the comic I am adapting, but not emulating it. I want the art style to stand on its own and be more graphic and vector based than in the comic, which is more of a balanced combination of digital and traditional techniques. One of the things I will be taking form the comic is the colour scheme. The cool blues lend an air of mystique and dread to the images and the black and white contrast really enhance this. I wanted red to be there to emphasise an object in the scene such as the moon or the apple, as they are key thematic tokens in the story. 

My title sequence will be presented as one continuous shot with a reoccurring motif of descent, which adds to this sense of dread which I am going for. As Kyle Cooper said, the title sequence should set up an audience's expectations for a story by painting a rough idea of the overall tone the story will take. The Nesting Place, which I am adapting, while suitable for a younger audience, has an overall dark tone, so I want to communicate that in as many ways as possible. The jagged rocks in the cave I feel are a nice contrast to the pointy silhouettes of the evergreen trees and the icicles which hang above the cave, reinforcing a sense of hostility in the environment.

After finalising my storyboard I decided to set it to the soundtrack I had decided upon to create my animatic in order to properly determine the pace of the title sequence and choices regarding editing. Seeing my storyboard in sequence allows for me to see what works and what doesn't, ensuring there is a cohesive flow to the sequence.

Kyle Cooper: Title Sequences

While researching Title sequences in The Art of the Title for inspiration, I stumbled across a few notable designers, most notably Kyle Cooper who has a track record dating back to the late eighties for creating some of the most iconic title sequences for some of the biggest hollywood films of the past 20 years. Cooper's philosophy is that a film's title sequence can be 'an integral part' to the setup for a the context of a movie, setting up the title of the film as well as communicating the names of the people who worked on it, though sometimes they can be treated like a throwaway or an afterthought. A title sequence, Cooper believes, sets up an expectation for the film the audience is going to see, designed to pull the audience in and get them excited for what is to come.

Over his career spanning nearly 30 years Cooper has collaborated on vast array of different projects, from big hollywood blockbusters such as 'X-Men First Class' and 'Iron Man' to video games such as 'Metal Gear Solid'. In an interview for the 2004 documentary 'The Look of Saul Bass' Cooper explains how Saul Bass inspired and informed his work on title sequences. According to Cooper, Bass took what was typically a formulaic illustrative style of title cards in a more modernist, typographic direction.

Kyle Cooper on Saul Bass

These influences really come across in Cooper's design for the 2005 film 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' with it's retro modernist aesthetic that owes a lot to the stylistic trappings and aesthetic of much of Bass's work, from the noir tinged colour palette to the modernist architecture and costume design, however with a more modern approach utilizing 3D space and computer animation.

Cooper is probably most well known for his title sequence to the 1995 David Fincher classic 'Se7en' starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. The title sequence takes us through the demented scribblings of the film's antagonist, setting the dark tone for the film to come with a montage of disorientating close ups, a sort of video scrapbook set to an unsettling industrial score.

Choosing a book to adapt for a Title Sequence

In order to start work on my title sequence, first I had to choose a book to adapt. I decided early on that I wanted to adapt a graphic novel, as this would give me some sort of visual reference as a starting off point and allow me to prioritise interpreting different visual styles. Plus, to my detriment, I'm not a massive reader.

Whilst browsing book shops for graphic novels with interesting visual styles I stumbled across The Wrenchies by Farel Dalrymple, a comic about a comic which provides escapism for an outcast young boy. What drew me towards this book was the visual style, the washed out watercolour aesthetic and apocalyptic iconography reminded me of 'Mad Max' and 'Lord of the flies.' Something about the breakdown of order and anarchic character designs really drew me in. The idea of a band of estranged kids reminded me of 80s films such as 'The Goonies' and 'Lost Boys', and as a fan of that sort of 80s cinematic aesthetic, the book seemed like a real get. However upon finishing the book, I decided while aesthetically very interesting, thematically there was not all that much going on. In the creation of my title sequence I really wanted to explore things on a more thematic level as well as on a more aesthetic one and the this book didn't exactly have it in spades, at least upon my first read. Also, the visual style, while something I do wish to emulate in the future, was a little complicated to adapt into a title sequence in the limited i have to complete the tasks, as I am not all that well acquainted with watercolour paint.

After deciding against adapting The Wrenchies, I looked in the college library for another book, which is where I came across Joe Sacco's Palestine. I had read Sacco's satirical comic 'Bumf' before and the idea of adapting a very politically charged journalistic graphic novel appealed to me greatly. I was all ready to go, however after a word with the lecturer's and upon reflection, the situation in Palestine, which the comic depicts requires nuanced and deep understanding of the wider political and social context, which I do not feel I have the ability to explore in all that much detail in a thirty second title sequence. As well as that, while in the context of the novel it makes sense, Sacco's caricatures of certain sides of the conflict in Palestine can be a little...unflattering. Not wanting to deeply offend any particular groups, I looked elsewhere for material to adapt.

Which is where I came across Emily Carroll's 'Through The Woods', an anthology of illustrated short stories, loosely based stylistically off Grimm's fairy tales. The art style immediately appealed to me, a mix of graphic vector backgrounds with a handmade feel and more traditionally drawn but digitally coloured characters. One of the stories that attracted me in particular was 'The Nesting Place', the story of a young girl visiting her in-laws while on a break from boarding school. The short story explores themes of anxiety and estrangement from the family through almost Lovecraftian inspired horror, though the book itself is fairly tame, aimed at a young teenage demographic, it does not shy away from depicting these horrors in a meaningful context. The story also offers up lots of striking imagery and visual motifs, such as apples and descent, which I feel would really lend themselves well to a title sequence, which is why I have chosen to adapt 'The Nesting Place' in particular for this task.