Kyle Cooper- Title designer

Hey everyone. So Last week when we were showing our progress on our name designs Chris mentioned to me that my design reminded him of the title sequence from Se7en. I had never seen Se7en or its opening title,  but I did know that my creative "idol" if you will, Kyle Cooper, designed that sequence as well as American Horror Story. AHS's title design has been one of my largest inspirations and really captures the style that I've always had and admired. So here is a breakdown of Kyle Cooper's Se7en title sequence and a link to the AHS titles.

http://www.empireonline.com/features/david-fincher-fight-club-opening-credits/p1

An interesting thing about Kyle is that he enjoys doing things on film or in the camera by going out and shooting things and then compositing them on the computer as opposed to building every effect in CG.

Here are the first titles I had seen by him and continue to inspire me:

How Do You Create a Two-Headed Woman?

Judging from conversations that I have had in class, I'm figuring people know about the new season of American Horror Story: Freak Show. This is the fourth season of the captivating and creepy show created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. This season is centered around a freak show in Jupiter, Florida in the early 1950's. Freak Show has a cast full of recognizable faces including Jessica Lange, Angela Bassett, and Kathy Bates. Characters in this show include a bearded lady, an incredibly creepy clown, and a two-headed woman (played by Jessica Lange). Lang does not have two heads so to make that happen, the show has to use a bit of movie magic, aka special effects.

An animatronic head was made for this effect and it was secured to Lange by a harness. The heads are designed to match as best as possible . She doesn't always use the animatronic head though. Every time there is a shot of both heads there is a split-screen effect used. This process involves Paulson acting like each head with the other head not in use being dubbed in through a green screen type apparatus. This doubles the shooting time, but the effect is executed so well that you can believe that it is real while watching it. This split-screen effect is also taken into account by the costumers. The lines and patterns must be simple so that the split-screened takes can go together. This show does a great job of making you feel like everything is real, even when you really know that it isn't.

Creepy Old Photos...Come To Life!

Hi there,

Now that it is officially October I have began my search for the scariest,  most haunted stories, movies and media the world has to offer. During my search I came across this truly creepy set of animations by Droga5 art director Kevin Weir. He takes real black and white photos, that are creepy enough to begin with and animates them into a truly haunting visual experience. Don't believe me? Take a look below!

Eery doesn't even begin to explain it! This is an incredibly creative way to not only showcase animations skills, but also scare a few people along the way. 

The artwork here, while legitimate old-time photos, reminds me a lot of American Horror Story (Which premieres tonight!). This technique would be really exciting to play around with. Manipulating the past to frighten the future is definitely an intriguing concept! 

                                 
                                    

I hope I didn't scare you too much! After all it's all just created by a man sitting at a computer. Head over to http://www.kevinjweir.com/ to check out some more of Weir's work.

Until next time,

Alex

Motion Graphics inspiration

I found a site called Motionspire.com, which provides a showcase of videos that you can look at to get inspiration. You can search the videos by category or date, and even click on the links that will send you to the creative site.

One of the sites I was led to is called Prologue. This company specializes in visual effects and design animation. They have done a bunch of animations for different commercials, films, and television series. You can search their site and see everything that they have been involved in, but even cooler, they show you graphics that essentially show a "storyboard" of their video. One of the ones they have is American Horror Story.

Check out these sites because they could be very helpful when looking for further inspiration in the future.