Opening Credits - Game Of Thrones

While trying to come up with the title sequence I wanted to recreate, I had a lot of ideas and options to choose from. After watching multiple opening credits, I decided I wanted to recreate the Game of Thrones title sequence. It is personally my favorite show and one of my favorite opening credits, I think the animation of the maps and realms in the opening sequence is fantastically done. This is the show opener for the first season:

 So instead of trying to recreate the animation of the maps and realms, I would like to do a title sequence showing the characters and scenes from the actual show. I would also like to play around with effects such as fire and ice since they have significant meaning to the show. I think the special effects and a dark and contrasted color palette would really make a good show opener. I would base my opening credits on this fan made version I found. The opening credits would also be for Season 1.
This is the fan made version:

Think with Portals, not Safety

So I stumbled across this video while looking to purchase a replica of the Aperture Laboratories' famous portal gun from the critically acclaimed video game series Portal. Portal is a first-person puzzle-platformer released in 2007 by the Valve Corperation. At first it was a bundle package but then later it was released as a standalone game with additional features as well as a port to the Mac OS X.

This video was created Portal fan and Minnesotian Jason Craft. After studying Visual Effects and Motion Graphics for a few years at The Art Institutes International Minnesota, he now works as a compositor for a company called Ghost Productions, a 3D medical animation studio in promotional marketing, surgical technique, and surgeon and patient education. Janson made this video a few months ago and has been tweaking it ever since to get it just right. Using a combination of Maya for modeling & lighting, After Effects to composite, and some more other software.

Public access to professional grade software has really been a great asset to movie-making fanboys as well as people movie-watching fanboys and allows for user created videos like this one and many more. Check them out!


 

Re-Imagined Title Sequence

I'm a big fan of the British TV show QI and I saw this animation that was tweeted by the host, Stephen Fry. It's a title sequence for the show that was made by a professional studio. They didn't make it for any reason except that they are fans of the show and thought that the existing titles could be improved on.

The titles they made are good, but what interested me most was the idea behind it. First of all, it's cool that professionals still have time to make things just for fun. Also, it's fantastic publicity for the studio. Although there's no chance the show will change their titles, Studio Tinto got their work noticed by lots of people. Stephen Fry has over four million followers on Twitter.

Making fan made stuff for free might be a good starting point for new animators trying to get their work seen. It's also important to remember that social media can be great publicity.

So here's Studio Tinto's version of the titles.


QI Title Sequence (Re-imagined) from Studio Tinto on Vimeo.


And the show's official titles. I actually like this one better, but that might be because I'm so used to it.

Star Wars Uncut

My friend recently showed me this video; it's a complete remake of Star Wars: A New Hope in 15 second intervals by fans. It was directed by Casey Pugh and even won a Primetime Emmy for interactive Media. In 2009 she called out for fans of the franchise to send in a 15 second shot or animation of the favorite scenes and she pieced them all together. The fan-made video, 2 years in the making, recreated the movie through live action, flash, stop motion, 3D animation, video game graphics, Lego's and more. As it gained popularity, it came under scrutiny for copy-right infringement, but it's loyal fans have claimed it just enhances the value of the film by showing how much it really means to people.

I haven't watched the whole thing (over 2 hours) but just skipping around you can see how the film is able to almost seamlessly transition between animation and live action by staying true to the story line. Each section, especially the animation and stop motion intervals, show people's interpretations of both the movie and of media. The video ranges from kids with paper beards taped to their faces to some really impressive animation and effects.