ART of Title Research +Sunbeam short

I was scrolling around the art of the title website, I recalled how I had discovered the animator by the name of Sally Cruikshank from a title sequence she made.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/madhouse/

I’ve decided to look into the creators of other title sequences. I thought it would be good research.

One such animation director which led me to an interesting source of was Ric Machin. He directed the animated opening for the film Who’s that girl?, starring Madonna. The sequence itself was nice, but it wasn’t what entirely intrigued me.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/whos-that-girl/

What did intrigue me was what inspired the director below, work done by another animator called Paul Vester, who directed a very colourful, retro cartoon inspired short called SunBeam. They both used to work in a London based studio known as Speedy Cartoon’s. Which did a lot of work in advertisement.

https://vimeo.com/47898871

In terms of what I like about this short are its bold colours, its combination of different mediums and the dripping paint visuals. It’s very much inspired by retro cartoon designs from the 30’s/40’s for the animated characters. Even down to the incredibly awkward and offensive stereotypical designs of black people.

Cue an awkward tug at the collar.

I just like the dripping animation and the image of the golden stairs being painted into existance, it’s a surreal image and I like how it follows the narrative of the song.

I can see that dripping animation working very much with the lyrics:

I can't help it, I can't help it, if I cry,

I remember that you said goodbye.

It would be like with tears dripping on the screen.

I might experiment with watercolour backgrounds just to see what result I get and if it looks good, once again I do like that spilt paint aesthetic.