'Six Feet Under' Title Sequence

I was recently brainstorming for my final animation project and wanted to look into the creative process. I wanted to see what goes into making a title from nothing but still creating something that centers around a main idea. I watched the 'Six Feet Under' sequence for inspiration and it lead to storyboarding and looking into artist Danny Yount's work. He explains his creative process and how planning ahead is key to animation and creating titles. Each shot must capture the mood of the show and stand alone as a beautiful composition. We talked about composition and framing but storyboarding and coming up with alternatives and backup plans are necessary when creating a title sequence. The sequence refrains from using actors and the ambiguity of the characters and emotional shots create a sense of sorrow and darkness. The font and titles are simple but the composition of the shots is amazing and truly draws the audience in to the main theme of the show in a dark yet beautiful way.

WATCH YOUNT'S TALK BELOW

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Titles

So after seeing a few posts about opening credits, I tried to think of any other opening title sequences that really stuck out to me in the past. The opening titles from Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Robert Downey Jr's in it) was the first one I came up with.

Overall, the movie itself was just okay (I had a really high fever when I was watching it, so maybe my judgment was skewed), but I thought the opening titles were really cool. I liked the orange cut-out theme, with the camera moving through the cut-outs to make it 3D, and you can definitely make a title very similar to this using the camera tool in AfterEffects and images that you can zoom past/pan around, etc. In one of the Basic Training videos, Andrew actually teaches you how to make a title sequence where you see one layer of text and zoom past it in 3D space to get to another layer of text. The KKBB credits seem like a more complex version of that, with some line/texture animations thrown in. I really like the camera tool on AfterEffects, and I'd like to use it in my title project, but we'll see how that goes. I've been trying a few ideas and I haven't really been satisfied with any of them so far.

Back to the video- I just looked into the background of it a little more, and apparently the creative director behind the movie is Danny Yount, who has also done title design for Iron Man and storyboarding for Across the Universe. The style of the credits is along the lines of Saul Bass' style.