Title sequence for

“big dreams: tiny houses”

title sequence

The title sequence for “Big Dreams: Tiny Houses” contains the hopes and excitement of people who live in small houses and want to live freer lives.

research

Research has shown that there are so many tiny houses in the world and they are usually not restricted by location. Having less restrict to the location is not only the reason why people live in tiny houses. It also saves up a lot of money and time compare to regular size houses. According to the article most Americans are paying 1/3 or even 1/2 of their income to have a shelter.

There are many types of tiny houses, usually cargo trailer, container, shed, etc.

Through the research, I decided to emphasize the freedom through from living in tiny houses which I thought the most popular reason why people live in a tiny houses.

Initial concepts

concept_01

look closer

I was inspired by the image we see when we do eye test. The house in the middle of nowhere in the image looks very far and small, which make it is hard to estimate its actual size. Just like the house from the image, tiny houses from the documentary is hard to see how big the dream is inside the house unless you look closely.

concept_02

around the world

Having no limits on location is one of the biggest advantage of living in tiny houses. To emphasize that, it shows various beautiful landscapes and shows tiny house simply built on top of it.

concept_03

more than a blueprint

By showing a blue print of tiny house grow and change its form into something else, it represents the potential of tiny house and shows it is more than just a shelter.

styleframes

Me and my art director decided to go with the idea “More than a blueprint”.

first pass styleframes

note

I got caught up in the concept of blueprint too much and was missing the most important theme of the documentary which is “Big Dream”. And the color blue was creating cold and industrial feeling which is not very hopeful.

So I decided to go back and create more styleframes with limiting blue and strengthen the “Big Dreams” by using more vibrant colors and layering photo of landscapes and tiny houses with graphic elements.

style development

Animatic 1st Pass

note

From developing styleframes, I learned that nailing down the style before move onto animation is very important. Also, whether the design is conveying the main idea of the story is very important.

We chose to go with this design because this design more focus less about the process of building a house but shows wide open space of nice landscape which emphasize freedom. And glare behind the house gives magical and hopeful feeling to the audiences.

Selected Styleframe

second pass styleframe

note

Nuke Compositing

Base on the style development, I created more styleframes by limiting blueprint and focus more on the house and landscapes which can represent big dreams.

But me and my art director agreed on using more realistic elements or even use live footage of pin board. So, I decided to do animation test by using live footage base on the styleframes I came up with.

Live footage animation test

I made the animation inside each photos I printed out and composed everything together with using Nuke.

But I ran into some critical problems. The grey pin board was not going well with the feeling of hope and excitement. Also, the texture of pin board and hand held movement was too distracting.

revised pass

Due to the problems I had during using live footage, I decided to go back to styleframes and be more graphic while keeping some of the elements from previous styleframes and animation test.