Designers and Studios - Research

In order for me to start generating some ideas I started to look into some designers and studios and I’ve come across a few that have really caught my eye. The first designer that I looked into and really liked was Michael Riley who created the title sequence for films such as The Back-Up Plan, Kung Fu Panda and Mad Money. I particularly liked the title sequence to The Back-Up Plan, you could see by the choice of colour used that it’s going to be a fun film because of the bright colours. There was no use of dull or dark colours so as the viewer you know it’s not going to be a horror film or a thriller. Also the choice of music is very cheerful yet again implying that the film it going to be fun rather than scary or mysterious. I also liked how the designer would change little bits of the animation so that it would relate to the storyline for example there’s an animation of a police officer blowing his whistle but when the main character looks at him the whistle would change into a dummy, telling us as the audience that the film possibly has something to do with babies. I was interested in the way that Michael Riley has put this animation together and now I want to start creating my own sketches that I could possibly use later in my own animation.

http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/00177-The_Back_up_Plan

'The Back-Up Plan' is distributed by the film company 'CBS Films', and produced by the studio Escape Artists Production and Michael Riley was the designer of this particular opening sequence.

This was actually Michael’s final idea but as a designer he has to give the client options so Michael did many other designs which included:

By having all these options and ideas your able the pick the best or maybe even combine a few ideas together and this is what I will do in order to make my title sequence to the best of its ability.

Kung Fu Panda

Another one of Michael Riley title sequences that I enjoyed was Kung Fu Panda. Michael Riley kept with the theme of Kung Fu. He did this with the choice of music as he picked ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by ‘Carl Douglas’ also the cast members name where written in Chinese in a traditional red stamp look. All these little touches kept the title sequence consistent and it gave the title sequence a theme by putting all these things together.

I viewed the title sequence of Kung Fu Panda on the website ‘Forget the Film Watch the Titles!’ (http://www.watchthetitles.com/articles/0072-Kung_Fu_Panda). You can see by this screenshot how Michael Riley has used the red stamp and the Chinese writing. Also by the uses of the colours red and oranges you can tell that it’s a warm and light hearted film and also a comedy.

Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Jamie Caliri is another designer whose work I found interesting and the particular opening title sequence I enjoyed was Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events. I found this title sequence on the website ‘Art of the Title’ (http://www.artofthetitle.com/2007/12/21/lemony-snicket/). There are many elements to this title sequence that I enjoyed this includes:

·         - The use of layers of animation that overlapped, which gave the title sequence character.

·         - The use of colours which was mostly a colour palette of light grey’s and dark grey’s and black which gives the film a sense of mystery and adventure.

·        -  I liked the use of different shapes used throughout the sequence.

     - I also like how things would transform into other things for example the eye would turn into a Ferris wheel.

Here you can see how the eye turn into a Ferris wheel. 

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