Opening Credit Animations - Game of Thrones

In recent television shows, opening credits are becoming more and more animated rather than sequences clipped together of the actors and such. TV shows like Mad Men, Jessica Jones, and House, are well known animated opening sequences. One of my favorite animated opening sequences is Game of Thrones. The opening is two minutes long, in which it is shot from a raven's-eye view, scanning the map of the fictional land (Westeros) in which the show takes place. As the title sequence unfolds, it shows a 3D model of the cities rise from the ground. Portraying the buildings made from thousands of gears instead of brick and stone, like a clock had emptied itself and started to build a city with its pieces. The credit is runned by Angus Wall, and his company The Rock Paper Scissors, Group. What makes the opening sequence so incredible, is that it is always changing. The credit follow the storyline in the show, in which the map is always changing revealing what is going on with the war, reflecting the twisting plot. I thought this idea was genius when I first heard of it. The amount of time and effort that goes into just the opening theme is impeccable. If you have no yet seen Game of Thrones, I highly recommend checking it out, and pay close attention to the opening sequence, it reveals much more then you realize. 

Game of Thrones Opening Sequence

Last weekend, I saw the last two episodes of season four of Game of Thrones in IMAX, with an exclusive preview of the next season. Clearly, I'm a big fan. The second the title sequence came on, I became filled with excitement (even though I've seen the episodes already). The opening sequence is so captivating and beautiful that, in that IMAX, I honestly would've been content watching it on loop for two hours.

The opening grabs the audience and educates viewers. It's a huge map of the entire world of Game of Thrones, and moves from place to place.

The creative director, Angus Wall at Elastic, wanted to keep the opening sequence feel very true to the world of the books and show. Since it's an unsophisticated place, everything is made out of natural materials. Dealing with the problem of maps being flat and a camera moving around this flat space, they decided to make the world a sphere. In an interview, Wall says, "I quickly realized we were still going to shoot off the map. So the next thought was, what happens when you put two bowls together? You have a sphere. Next question was “how is it lit?” And obviously, If you have a whole world inside a sphere, what would be in the middle of that sphere? The sun! Or whatever the light source of this world is."

Once the shape of the world was figured out, they started with concept art. The details are astounding.

"If you’re going to create a world, in order for it to feel legit, you have to have this fractal sense of detail. There are dust motes in the air when you’re passing through, and all the cogs have a logic to them."


They then planned out the sequence and blocked the big moves. Once they had their final concept art and everything planned, they gave it to the model makers working in Maya.


I'll leave you with some inspirational words from Wall: "But you can’t be afraid. You can’t be afraid to start over if you have to start over. At the beginning of every job you’re starting over. You’re facing failure every time you go out. But you can’t live in the place where you’re saying, I better not try this because I might fail. Because then you’re not going to succeed either."

Game Of Thrones: Opening Sequence

One of the more impressive opening sequences that I've seen is the opening to Game of Thrones on HBO. I've seen other people post the opening video but here it is again for people that haven't seen it.

The opening goes through the map of the world. The producer of the opening sequence said they wanted everything to look organic and full of nature. But they also wanted to mirror the complexity of the world and the show. Here is a video about the making of the video.

Sean Kinnear

The television show opening I chose to use for the first project is from the series American Dreams.

It was one of those shows that I would always look forward to watching every week and was very disappointed when the series was cancelled. When we started working on the opens on Wednesday, it made me wonder about what went in to creating the open as well as visual effects in the show.

Sean Kinnear is listed as visual effects crew on 36 episodes of American Dreams (the most out of any other crew listed). I decided to search for him on Internet Movie Database and felt surprised by the information I found. There never seemed to be a large audience of American Dreams viewers, at least out of my friends, and it was cancelled because of low ratings, so I was sort of expecting to see their crew working on small projects I'd never heard of. However, Sean Kinnear boasts such credits as visual effects for Soul Surfer and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

To me, it's proof that no matter where you begin in the industry, you can climb the ladder. From a show cancelled after only 3 seasons, with unnoticeable visual effects to the untrained eye, to a movie that earned $125,017,327 in the United States on opening weekend alone and is very obviously filled with beautiful effects, is certainly inspiring to all media-focused individuals our age.

Art of Film Title Design

What makes you able to recognize a movie or TV series right from the start? The title sequence/opening. Opening sequences have the ability to set the viewers expectations and set a tone as viewers immediately begin judging a work as soon as the title sequence is displayed. I have seen openings before that have completely turned me away from viewing the rest of the work. This website gives a pretty good overview of how title sequence design has changed through the decades.

The site brings up the ultimate importance of a well designed title sequence during the times of silent films. These original titles were developed through the use of white lettering over a black background. Along with the title came other slides with text to help viewers understand what is going on within the piece.

Title sequences sure have come a far way since than. The use of multiple programs and a team of professionals to create what makes it to the screen today. The website includes great examples of different opening title sequences. For my first project I will be recreating the Brady Bunch opening sequence. I plan on using previous video projects for the source material for this project.

Project #1

After thinking about our first project, I spent a lot of time on YouTube trying to find the best opening sequence. I found a lot of good ones and I started to break down the elements in my favorites.

My favorite and most realistic was Modern Family. I'm not sure if the length is too short tho.


My second favorite and a little bit more complex would be the Dancing with the Stars intro. I think I could do it, but I'm afraid it would not look as glamorous.



My other favorites were the intros to Saved by the Bell and The Brady Bunch. Both use motion graphics but not as "clean cut and edgy" as they TV is produced now.







Help me decide!

Entourage Open

I recently watched the final episode of Entourage and the opening sequence always amazes me, but since working on our name projects in class, I watched it with a new appreciation for editing and motion graphics.



This has given me a few ideas for my own name project. IMDB has listed A. Ty Risby as the Executive producer of the main title sequence. IMDB also lists the full cast and crew of their production, including a few art directors and graphic designers.

This is another Entourage related video that students made using After Effects.