What Are The Odds? part one

A little while back we were asked to create an opening animation for a short film.

Shot on super 16, the piece was about two mathematicians in New York for the weekend who happened to bump into one another at dozens of landmarks.

That gives three things that need to be conveyed in the titles: New York, math, and romance.

We came up with a few design styles. We liked all of them, and shared with the producers at On The Leesh.

This was drawn by Phil Marden. He was illustrating a weekly column for the New York Times Metro Section. His work as some of that New Yorker elegance combined with retro sensibility that is somehow mathematical.

We've worked with him on a bunch of projects, and thought this look was a good direction.

I did something which, surprisingly, wasn't awful.

This is brush pen. I would've colored with cel-o-tak if it was the old days or for physical presentation (little dab of the airbrush for cheeks).

"Just Bulbs" is what makes it New York. And Ricky's. This was before the Bank/Starbucks/American Apparel/Duane Reade era of Manhattan city planning.

Matt Stoddart also worked up some characters.

A rough sketch is above.

Here's a fuller sketch.
And a cleaned up ink. It's a nice drawing -good line, clear characters. May have been a little tough to animate.

Ultimately, we went with characters that Brian designed.

Here's a first rough. You can see the retro head on the side. We were drawing inspiration from M. Sasek's This is New York.

This was the first step in this process. Next, we storyboard then hand the material off Ed Smith to make it good. These will be detailed in future posts.