The titles

Sorry for the long silence...
Here is the Title sequence.
This sequence was the only one initially planned to be in 2D.
The other 2 sequences crept in while we were waiting for this one to get approved at the storyboard stage.
Once again,
I whited out all the stuff I didn't animate, just so you know...

Pirates Title Sequence from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

Lighter than air.

Towards the end of the Film Darwin and Capt'n go in search of the QV 1, in a pedal powered dirigible, not too dissimilar to the one I take to work on days when it isn't too windy. The following video is a compilation of digital line tests that either did or didn't make it into the final version of this scene. The final comp is at the end of the video. I've greyed out the stop motion bits, that were not my stuff by typing: This is not my stuff" over them. Just so you know...

ZeppSmall from Felix Sputnik on Vimeo.

Papervortex

In the final version, the map creases up into a vortex, when the island sinks. We were trying to retain a decent amount of stiffness so it looked like paper rather than cloth. Here is my mockup, done in photoshop, to indicate what level of angularity we were looking for. Then some poor bloke had to sort out how to do it for real...

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.