FX - Legion Titles
AND/OR
I was tasked with creating a 15s title animation for one of your favorite episodic shows or films. The source can be from any era, it doesn’t have to be contemporary. The piece should be expressive of the content of the show and give the audience an opportunity to transition from “normal life” into the world of the show.
Music: Son Lux - Sleep
delirium
Legion is about a man who has schizophrenia and so his perception of reality is very skewed. He has delusions of controlling things with his mind but it turns out he actually can. The tone of this show is "mind bending" and the structure is based on his mindset throughout the show.
To compliment this, my concept is called "delirium". This is an exploration of multiple environments where an ominous red light triggers the distortion of reality. Much like in the show, this red light signifies a psychotic break or delirium.
mixed media
Mixed media was an important part of this project. I wanted to utilize film and 2D alongside 3D to achieve the final look. Film allowed me to capture instances of this delirium with multiple people.
treatment
I utilized multiple displacement and blur maps to achieve the final treated look. I wanted to distort and edit the footage to push that idea of insanity. I also believe that a variable frame rate would fit the feeling of coming in and out of reality, so whenever 3D isn't present the frame rate switches to 12 fps.
The use of motion blur was also very important in this piece. The initial plan was to stabilize the footage as this is an effect that takes place in the show, but my method of stabilization took away the energy in the footage so I decided keep the "shaky cam" result.
storyboards
final frames
timelapse
While working I decided I would like a timelapse of me working for additional processes. Here you can see a glimpse of my workflow bouncing between C4D, Houdini, and After Effects. Both time lapses are around 2 hours in real time.
compositing
Post processing was a large part of getting this project to it's final look. I used both Nuke and After Effects for compositing. Using Nuke to animate the lights, convert the color spaces from ACES to SRGB. And After Effects for final color adjustment and timing.
Nuke was a huge help for this project. In Redshift for C4D, there is no way to export a post-processing pass. So recreating them in Nuke to react to the lighting passes themselves was very important for the final to be achieved.