IOW 300.8 | Title sequence design

Entangled Title sequence

Project brief

For this project, students were required to conceptualise, storyboard, design, and animate a title sequence of between 30-60 seconds. Students were given blurbs of selected books that have yet to be made into features. Students had to work in teams of between 2-3 people and conceptualise a narrative and visual treatment for the chosen blurb based on only what is written in their selected blurb alone.

Project deliverables
• 30 -60 second title sequence.
• Comprehensive storyboard.
• Screenshots from your final animation, in storyboard format.
• Conceptual development.

Design strategy

Our strategy for this project was to create a 1970's inspired detective vector-based title sequence. The '70s inspired setting and elements are used because the events of the story take place during this time. While the blurb gives us an idea of what happens it does not specify the exact events that take place, so we as the animators used what we've seen in detective series and movies and applied that same kind of feeling to our title sequence. This meant that we had to allude to the idea of the chase, and playing a game of cat and mouse, whilst also including a sense of adventure and action, and we had to do all this without giving away too many plot ideas. We make use of an orange "line" in almost all the scenes as a way to visually link all the events of the title sequence together and to make the viewer wonder what the significance of said line is. The orange line helps link back to the detective and mystery concept we based our title sequence around. The line helps create the name of our title sequence in the final scene and ties everything together. It is also only in the final scene that the viewer realises what the orange line was for and they are then able to understand the significance of said line.

Conceptual development

The blurb for Caterpillar Seas, Written by Rob Fridjhon

Initial concept

Refined concept

The main concept is for the viewer to "experience" what is happening on the screen. The camera movements and transitions between scenes make the viewer feel like they are in this world as the actions unfold.

Throughout the animation, there is an orange line that appears in various scenes and helps create transitions between different scenes. It is only at the end of the animation that these lines connect and make sense.
The last scene of the animation reveals everything that the viewer would have seen happening on the screen when in actuality these were just the pictures on the pinboard that are connected with string.

It is not clear where the pinboard is located, however, it is clear that the board is being used to collect evidence and map out the whereabouts of certain individuals. (This is done through the use of familiar imagery found in already existing crime dramas.) It is also not revealed who the pinboard belongs to, this is left up to the viewer to determine.