Title Sequence Breakdown: Hasbro Pony Edition 2: Electric Boogaloo

After the modest success of Hasbro's first attempt to bring their My Little Pony franchise to the tween/teen girl market, the highschool girl pony-girl-people are back! With guitars!

                                 Presenting My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks.

The glam-rock elements abound in this one.

"Rainbow Rocks" is brought to us once again by the fine people at DHX Media Group of Vancouver, Canada. The movie itself is what you would expect. They're high school girls, in a battle of the bands in order to take down the forces of evil. The whole thing has a strong sense of Hasbro wanting X, Y, and Z in it to sell toys, and the people working on the movie trying to make the best thing possible with what was given to them.

Should you run out and see this movie? No, not really. It isn't horrible by any means, but I don;t see anyone in this class going to see it. However, there is one part that I feel is worth a mention, and that is the opening title sequence.

This movie has a rockin' title sequence! But I don't want to just tell you, I want to show you. So strap in, grab something to take notes, and let's get to it!

This is the whole thing, in full. Sorry in advance for the potato quality of footage I was able to get, but it should work just fine to dissect this.

First thing I want to look at is this transition. It focuses on an object that then is used in a wipe. It's organic, not too static, and though you can't tell in gif form, it syncs with the music. On top of this, the font choice is good. It's not totally static, but it's moving slowly enough and on a fixed track making it easy to read.

This next part highlights what I feel is one of the strongest parts of the sequence, which is the fact that it has these transitions that take their time and don't have text to them.

This part has a fun animated bit. Her going out of frame, then popping back in impossibly fast has a cartoony squash and stretch feel. The lightning strike and changing color is well timed and uses a gradient, which shifts with the character.

The actor titles have full animated wipes as well. The flash of white on the guitar is a good  palette cleanse into the next color and scene.

The next two title wipes have a continuity to them. Something is happening, and we're seeing it happen in between titles. Also note the sparkles on the nobs. This is an over the top 80's style battle of the bands movie, and oh does it relish in that fact!

This transition is nice, but the main thing I want to point out is the animation and its timing. The dog bites down on the bone in real time so to speak, but afterwords things slow down. It creates a neat effect that the other characters have been doing as well.

When we transition to the other set of characters we get another transition that takes its time to look good and build atmosphere. The transition from guitar neck to rainbow looks good, and is a creative use of the elements we've seen used so far.

Lastly, we get the movie's villains. The way they're introduced here sets them up well. We see that the two don't get along so well, and that their leader pushes them around. The way she pushes through them, and her title does the same to theirs is a creative way to show off her character in the title sequence alone. 

I for one, was impressed with this. Much more impressed than I thought I would be. I decided I wanted to know who was responsible for it, so I did some digging and I found a guy called Tony Cliff . I ended up shooting him and email, and he responded!

This whole thing has inspired me to go at things with increased vigor. Finding something great and unexpected, reaching out and making contact, the whole shebang. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I'm nowhere near quitting!