Main Titles for Playgrounds – The Art Department

A deserted world devoid of any human inhabitants, occupied only by utility droids, trying to mimic the behavior of their creators.

Sava Zivkovic has shared an amazing story of the development process behind the main titles for Playgrounds. What does it take to tell a tale of friendship and love, discovered in the most peculiar places? 

Earlier in 2017, right after IFCC conference, I was approached by Playgrounds Festival organizers, asking me to produce the titles for their new venture – The Art Department.  

Knowing that this time around I’ll have a small time frame of only a month to complete the titles, I dove straight into the concept for this piece. The initial idea of creating something “simple” and going the route of abstract motion graphics intro proved to lead to a dead end, as I was constantly influenced by narrative ideas and the drive to yet again create something that’s story driven.

The concept evolved from one of my weekly warm up renders, and very quickly took its near final shape in the form of previz. The film follows our main character, a clunky utility droid, navigating a deserted world, following his daily programing. A sad depiction of the futuristic world, where these droids roam aimlessly in their solitude, until our hero finds companions on his journey, and furthermore a purpose. Along this journey we are presented with the speaker names, taking shape and form of various highway signs and images. 

Sava Zivkovic 

It all starts with the pre-viz stage, of course. The artists put their rough ideas together to see what works. It’s not about creating storyboards — just some rudimentary 3d animation. 

Being that the world is very similar to that of our own, I used a lot of models from 3D Warehouse to quickly construct various scenes for pre-viz purposes. The advantage of this technique is that it’s extremely fast to set up, and what it offers over traditional storyboarding is the ability to actually animate your cameras in 3d space.

The entire previz process lasted only 2 working days, and the resulting animation follows the original previz up to 95%. Not only that the previz provided a solid starting point with animation, but it also had set the foundation for some of the color choices, that would later come to define the look of the whole piece.

Sava Zivkovic 

Here are some final stills for you to check out:

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Make sure to read the full story behind the title here

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