WIP

Here are all the elements that made up the first scene in the titles. All the ones that were hand drawn, that is. The ship was animated separately in Flash and then tracked in. The clean up (or, in this case, mess up) was done by the delightful Justine Waldie, Assistant animator supreme and Queen of the wobbly line. By the way, the last bit is not the final composition, it's just my comp with everything in it's proper place.

WIPMermaids from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

The garish colours were necessary to allow the compositors to colour key on any specific hue and pull a matte from it, should it be required. Usually we just used a specific blend mode, like "overlay" or "soft light", to effect the paper-tone ever so slightly.

Big Zoom

I blogged before that some of the backgrounds had to be insanely big to facilitate zoom ins and still satisfy the 2000 pixel screen resolution for cinema. Here is a zoom into the Title map to show just how detailed every part of the map had to be...

BigZoom from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

Terra Firma...

...and 70% not so firma. Here is the title sequence map and the "4 corners of the globe"

The Bounce

And here is my slap-comp of the bounce at the end of the Title sequence... I was particularly pleased with the Easter-Island scene, I just drew a single turnaround of one statue and then rearranged them in "Flash©" and bounced them around like in a giant game of skittles...

Tryptich from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

Too saucy...

There is a scene at the end of the titles, just before the rats do "riverdance" when the pirate ship knocks down a merman, that adorns a label of one of the maps. Here is my first rough animation of that scene, where I added a mermaid for extra lovelyness. However, it was deemed too saucy for the movie and looking at it now, I agree, but you can't blame me for trying...

merman from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

Hold your horses

When I first got the story board for the USA segment, I envisioned the stage coach being pursued by the pirates, and the cavalry intervening. As it turned out the posse chasing them away was a mixture of cowboys 'n indians (forgive the political incorrectitude) perhaps doing so as rival stage-coach-robbers. Here, however, is a first, much bouncier coach, albeit without driver.

HorseCoach from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

Poseidon post

Here is a slap comp I put together of the Poseidon scene to let the compositors at Aardman know where I wanted to go...

PoseidonMockup2 from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

Good ol' US of A

Ok, the DVD is out, so I suppose I can blog some actual scenes, without someone getting upset. Here are some Designs for the most involves scene in the Titles, the Cowboy and Indian one. I'll be posting how I put that one together next... so hang in there...