Brief

Mammoth Media approached me to design a title sequence for their pop culture based trivia app Arena. Our goal was to hype up users before the game started by bringing them into the world of Arena, a retro-futuristic city that’s hopped up on 1980’s octane being taken straight to the dome. A place where you can only find the most die hard of fans willing to duke it out with their knowledge of pop culture.

Process

The city of Arena is inspired by Akira’s Neo Tokyo in the film’s opening motorcycle chase scene. Camera angles were heavily inspired by films such as The Fast and Furious, using different long lens tracking shots to accentuate camera shake, to extreme close ups of cars and their machinery to help put the viewer up close to action. Storyboarding helped pace the action before any animations was put into production which allowed for a smoother process of communication with Mammoth Media and their approval. With our tight deadline, full 3D wouldn’t have fit in our timeframe, so the direction of using a combination of 2D sets along with 3D assets helped speed up the process while still delivering a strong introduction.

Outcome

The world of Arena was once just a list of emotions and collaborative mood boards that is now a realized location that draws the fans as a beacon for battle. Storyboarding also played a major role in streamlining the process to make sure that every shot worked and that no time was wasted.