True  Blood Main Title Sequence
Client: HBO
URL: http://www.d-kitchen.com/project.php?p=128

DK Credits:
Creative Directors: Matt Mulder, Rama Allen

Live Action Direction: Rama Allen, Morgan Henry, Matthew Mulder, Matt Clark, Tevor Fife

Designers: Rama Allen, Shawn Fedorchuck, Ryan Gagnier, Matthew Mulder, Camm Rowland, Ryan Rothermel, Jacques Broquard

Compositor: Ryan Gagnier

Editor: Shawn Fedorchuck

Producers: Morgan Henry, Kipp Christiansen, Keir Moreano

ECD: Paul Mattheaus

EP: Mark Bayshore

Studio: Digital Kitchen
Creative Director: Matt Mulder
Lead Designers: Noah Conopask, Cody Cobb, Ryan Gagnier
Animatiors: Ryan Gagnier, David Holm, Pete Kallstrom, Matt LaVoy, Dayvd Chan
3D: Cody Cobb, Igor Choromanski, Gordana Fersini, Thiago Costa
Editor: Dave Molloy
Producer: Jill Johns, Colin Davis
Executive Producer: Mark Bashore

Digital Kitchen: The Company Titles

Source: motionographer.com

New work is often posted in waves, and such is the case for recently featured Digital Kitchen. Their title sequence for mini-series The Company is a beautifully atmospheric piece that shows DK’s diversity of style and sensitivity to subject matter.

I asked producer Colin Davis a couple questions about the project, and he supplied some nice details:

Technique:
The technique was a hybrid of procedural and hand-done cell animation. Technically speaking, this is a mixture of 3D animation with both procedural (2D + 3D + Hair + Ink + Particles) and hand drawn cross-hatching. All the rabbits were hand-sketched — we literally took every other frame (12fps) into Photoshop and drew on top.

Timeline:
The whole main title process lasted from August through early June, but for the final product shipped, the hard-core production lasted about 12 weeks.

DK’s attention to detail and love of the craft is obvious. Oh, and the typographic choice of Caslon was a nice, classic move. For a show about the CIA, they could have gone an entirely different route, opting for more of a Mission Impossible sans serif, something that screams “THIS SHOW IS ABOUT SPIES!”

Emmy nominated in 2008.