Sin City Style Intro/Title Sequence

I wanted to try my hand at creating an opening sequence/credits or title animation within After Effects. ‘Sin City: A Dame To Kill For’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqRRF5y94uE) trailer and the credits sequence for the original ‘Sin City’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57bnZY8Nq_g) inspired me to recreate an intro credits sequence with a similar aesthetic and style. 

However unlike the original Sin City credits I wanted it to be much more animated and dynamic in its presentation. I wanted to include dramatic camera movements and 3D moving elements into the scene.

I began by designing some Sin City stylised images and props for the scene in Photoshop. I designed them using my drawing tablet and using real images as a reference:

I made sure to keep each individual element as a separate layer so I could import the Photoshop file into After Effects and have control over the layers.

Next I imported my newly created Photoshop designs into After Effects and set them up ready for a scene I had thought up:

Using the skills I learnt on creating the rain scene I put those techniques to use again in this project to make another rain effect. This time however I tried to make it much more stylised and match the almost cartoonish rain seen in Sin City’s credits below:

I created this effect by replacing the rain particle I made originally into a simple white raindrop shape that I made in Photoshop:

After changing the particle settings for a side on view of the rain, editing the physics values to make it fall differently and replacing the particle model with the new water drop, I ended up with this look:

This was almost exactly a recreation of my original vision for how the rain should look. It fit the black and white stylised cartoon noir look I had been aiming for. However looking back on this I would have created multiple different shaped raindrops and not just the one design to add more variation and aesthetic detail.

I made all the layers into 3D layers so I could move them around within the rain. This surrounded the figure in the rain particles and allowed them to fall around it at different distances from the camera, which gave a great sense of realistic depth to the scene.

Next using green screen keying techniques I picked up from my work on ‘Astro Antics’ and my BBC Food and Farming Awards live brief I keyed out the background of some smoke and blood splat video footage to use as an asset within the scene I was creating. I wanted to incorporate real video footage elements and combine/blend them in with my After Effects credits/intro sequence. I wanted push myself to see what I could mix together creatively.

I masked an area around the smoke to make it look as if it was rising from the gun barrel. I then added a glow effect to enhance the white colour of the smoke so it would stand out against the black background:

For the blood splat I increased the levels and brightness to really bring out a vibrant red colour that would be a good contrast against the black and white.

Now I had all the elements set up in the scene the way I wanted I decided to start adding some camera moves and animation to bring it all to life. I wanted to incorporate dramatic and visually impressive camera movements such as those seen in the film ‘300’ in the animated credits sequence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydgsHiFtnqI) 

To do this I looked at the way in which they used the camera to follow and track certain things and then use them to turn into something else from another camera angle for the next part of the sequence. I wanted to try and create something similar and further my abilities to animate within after effects.

I initiated by having a close up of the gun with the smoke rising:

I then pick whipped the camera layer to a Null object layer so I could easily manipulate the camera within a 3D environment. I key framed the movement of the camera to track down the barrel of the gun to reveal the hand, then gradually get faster as it tracks up the arm, rotating and zooming in then out while doing so to create a more exciting and intriguing movement:

The camera then pulls out to reveal more of the body before zooming back in with a sharp rotation for a slow focus on the face:

Also to give the figure a bit more animation I added a glowing effect around the eyes green iris that fades in and glows brighter as the camera gets closer to the face, then fades out as the camera pulls back out:

To add even more dynamic action I made the camera quickly zoom and rotate out after focusing on the face to reveal the whole figure. This added a great sense of depth to the scene as the camera pulls out through the rain particle layer and gives the impression of moving through a real 3D space:

I then made the camera slowly rotate at the end of the scene to ease out the quick camera pull out.

I still wanted to add even more animation to the scene as I felt the figure lacked a little movement. I decided to figure out how I could create realistic flowing hair within After Effects. I ended up using a simple but very effective technique to create flowing hair.

This was my process:

To start with make a text layer and type in the number 8 at a point in the shot where you want the tip of the hair to be. Then use the pen tool to make the strand of hair shape and have one end on the head and the other end on the bottom of the number 8. Next to have the strand of hair animate you need to key frame it eight times around the number in the direction you would write it by hand to have it loop. The Tip of hair is always tangent to the 8. The rest of the pen stroke must be in such a way that it doesn’t change length. This creates a pretty realistic flowing hair effect.


I then duplicated this hair strand to create a head of hair and slightly altered the key frame movement on each strand for a more realistic effect. I also reversed the key frames on some strands to vary the movement further:

I think the final result of the animated hair worked out much better than I originally thought it would. It worked perfectly with the bold silhouette style I had gone for with the rest of the scene. Although it doesn’t flow as naturalistically as real hair it’s still very recognisable and obvious what it is, and it definitely looks as if it’s blowing in the wind. However If I ever did this again I would spend much more time on key framing the movement and getting the hair to look as natural as possible. I didn’t spend as much time on this as I could have done and it is something I can definitely improve upon in the future.

Unfortunately I never got time to finish the rest of this After Effects animation but everything I’ve done so far can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m26uYVhbjU&feature=youtu.be

I plan on coming back to complete this at a later date to see what more I can do within After Effects. On the whole I thought this project was a great learning experience as I found out new ways to tackle various problems as well gain new skills in key frame animating and timing. The only way I would criticise myself would be that I could have been much more experimental with my ideas and style. I could have pushed myself even further making much more use of 3D layers and space to create really interesting and dynamic shots.