Spyed a post on Cool Hunting by Seth Baru where the motion graphics artist flags an American site called Forget the Film, Watch the Titles (created by the SubmarineChannel, a non-profit production and online distribution platform, for motion graphic designers and interactive artists)
Forget the Film, Watch the Titles, created in 1997, is essentially an online collection of stand out film title sequences categorised into four sections spanning a couple of decades…. its worth a look for those seeking inspiration for their next motion graphics or film title sequence project.
Above is the title sequence from Thank you for Smoking (created by Shadow Play) an opener that plays with the thematics of the film it belongs to quite nicely. It is included in the collective of clips archived on Forget the Film, Watch the Titles.
Another site, Art of the Title is also dedicated to all things motion graphics and opening credit sequencey.
The Boston Globe recently did a piece on the Art of the Title blog : noting “Artistic, sophisticatedly crafted credit sequences at the beginning or end of films too often pass by viewers unnoticed, according to Ian Albinson, creator of the blog “Art of the Title”…..”There’s a new breed of designers coming out; they are seeing sequences like little movies in themselves,” Albinson says. Integrating graphic design, animation, and live-action footage, they create effects like the hand-drawn imagery of a Sunny-D toting title character in Juno and the morphing ink splats that open The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. “Thousands and thousands of layers come in to the final piece from all different sources,” he says of such mini-masterpieces.
And here is a handful of online spaces devoted to the art of title design …..
7 beautiful Title & Credit Sequence Designs
Juno creating the title sequence on Flickr
It might be time for a similar sort of project to Forget the Film,Watch the Titles, here – storehousing some of the fantastic local title designers working in our industry – like Belinda Bennetts (who also lectures at AFTRS in between her feature film projects)….
image – Juno title art contact sheet by ShadowPlay