MAIN ON END TITLES:
Our team at Perception collaborated with Marvel Studios on their newest film, The Marvels. The Marvels details the cosmic adventure and team up between an unlikely trio, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). Our team was brought in to conceptualize several elements for the film, from futuristic holograms to designing the retro-inspired Main on End title sequence.
REFERENCING THE '70S
Upon watching The Marvels, our team immediately resonated with the idea of this film feeling like a rock-n-roll space opera. We were drawn to the retro influences throughout The Marvels and decided to base our title sequence in those vintage vibes. As we began mapping out our initial designs, we turned to 1970s sci-fi illustrations from artists like Mike Hinge, Kilian Eng and Mœbius, along with Heavy Metal magazine covers from the 1980’s for inspiration. These references ultimately played a key role in developing our design language, choice of colors and composition for the sequence.
TRANSITIONS
Early on in the process we knew that dynamic transitions from shot to shot would be integral to keeping the excitement and momentum of the sequence rolling. As we were drawing our illustrations and mapping out our animations, we explored how each frame could move and transition into one another. This exploration process gave us the space and opportunity to come up with transitions that were both unique and felt naturally flowing.
TYPE
To further emphasize the retro aesthetic, our team began exploring various typefaces to utilize throughout the sequence. We landed on two typefaces which perfectly aligned with the '70s feel and complemented each other visually - Marvin Visions and ITC Busorama. We elected to color these typefaces with a vivid shade of yellow as a callback to classic '70s movie titles and poster text. Marvin Visions was also used to make the main title at the end of the sequence.
DETAILS :
To create this sequence, our illustrators began drawing each of the illustrations in Adobe Photoshop, referencing storyboards and our specific color palette. As the illustrations were coming together, we began conducting motion tests with animated textures that we felt added depth and character to these drawings. We used textures from Cinema 4D’s native noise maps while also creating our own custom grunge maps in Adobe After Effects using the Boris Fx Sapphire Plugin suite. Later, when most of the illustrations were ready, we transferred everything into After Effects. We brought in all of the Photoshop files with their layers and spread them out in the z-space to place the elements throughout the scene with precision. We took all of our illustrations from the frame lockups and separated out the layers in Adobe Illustrator, bringing it all into After Effects in order to move individual layers around in z-space. For the overall animation style, we knew we had to create everything for a stereo workflow. In After Effects we separated every layer in z-space for our left eye and right eye cameras. We also wanted a constant camera movement happening so we could feel the 3D space in stereo at all times.
It was an honor to collaborate with Marvel Studios on so many brilliant aspects of The Marvels, including the illustrative end title sequence. Our title sequence takes the audience on a non-stop roller coaster ride through the infinite cosmos, revealing stunning imagery composed in unexpected ways!