Initially when I conceptualised this idea in my head I wanted to create something playful and enjoyable for the audience to watch. I gained inspiration from many cartoon-like opening sequences, in particular, the ‘Art of The Title‘ title sequence and started to visualise my ideas by sketching them onto paper and later creating then in Illustrator. This follows the Ambrose and Harris, Design Thinking method as it is the research and ideating steps. This allows for me to plan out my next steps for the opening sequence in an orderly manner ensuring for success.
Another beginning stage included creating a story board. This was a very critical step that allowed me to visualise all my ideas and create a meaningful storyline to follow. I also included small written descriptions of any motion techniques that I wanted to include. This was to prevent any of my animated ideas to be lost.
As expected, when prototyping these scenes, I came across a miner issues that needed to be iterated. This was due to the overall layout of the scenes being placed in an order that was unlike most opening scenes, which can overall confuse the viewer. This is when I included beginning scenes to introduce the production company.
My technological skills are proven throughout creating the films opening sequence, as I became more confident in controlling my illustrations as time went on, in particular, the shadows. This included changing their opacity, speed and motion blur. The more I implemented my designs and animations in this project, the more I learnt and valued each step and process.
However, there were also some moments where I struggled a lot in implementing the vision I had in my head. This was strongly proven when creating the flying food scene. I had originally planned for the food to fly onto the screen and freeze, then fall into the bowl in the next scene. This was proven to be more difficult than expected and I dedicated many hours trying to figure out how to provide this. I resolved this issue by including a basket that the food go into and eventually is flipped for the food to fall out of. I overall, liked this idea more as it makes more sense and is visually interesting to watch.
I was also struggling with showing secondary movement in a way that was believable for the eye (Shaw, 2016). The only way I managed to include this was shown in two scenes where I zoomed and changed the scale of the objects. I have now learnt that there is a 3D camera option that is much more believable and I am excited to learn more about it in future projects. Overall, there weren’t many changes or technological struggles that I discovered during the process of this film.
Here is the finial opening sequence:
References:
Ambrose, G. and Harris, P., (2016), ‘Design thinking: Coleção design básico’, Bookman Editora. https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=N0BLDQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=ambrose+and+harris+design+thinking&ots=35nH4I8jhA&sig=7BRe3KmHSoxYQ7JyUUSLXCHORZ4#v=onepage&q=ambrose%20and%20harris%20design%20thinking&f=false
Hoshino, Y. and Hoshino, J., (2001), ‘INTELLIGENT STORYBOARD FOR PROTOTYPING ANIMATION’ IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, vol. 1, pp. 96, https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings-article/icme/2001/11980096/12OmNCcKQPr
McCausland, S., (2017), ‘Ratatouille’, Artofthetitle.com, https://www.artofthetitle.com/title/ratatouille/
Shaw, A., (2016), ‘Design For Motion: Fudamentals and Techniques of Motion Design’, New York and London: Focal Press, pp. 293-305
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