Drawing inspiration from the blocky credits George Mélièsused for his silent films, Randy Balsmeyer, owner and creative director of Big Film Design, collaborated with Martin Scorsese on the Hugo main title sequence. Balsmeyer updated the design into brushed metal lettering to evoke the clockworks in the film, pushed some elements of the titles into deep 3D space, and floated golden stars in front of the screen.
“We ended up with the main title flying from behind the audience into the screen,” Balsmeyer says, “something that all the rules of 3D say you can’t do.”
The left- and right-eye pairs of three-dimensional lettering were created using Maxon Cinema 4D, then brought into Adobe After Effects for final convergence and compositing with 2D elements.
Visual effects company Pixomondo completed more than 800 shots for Martin Scorsese’s 3D epic adventure Hugo. The project utilized 10 of Pixomondo’s facilities to create a global pipeline.
Combining sets, miniatures, matte paintings and digital effects to evoke the look of Paris re-imagined on a 1930s film set, Hugo is a love letter to classic cinema and cinema history, with stop-motion animation, time lapses, morphs and stereo transitions, flipbook animation, and motion-captured and hand-animated CG characters.
“Marty has encyclopedic knowledge of cinema history,” says Pixomondo VFX supervisor Ben Grossmann, “and working with him on a project that used the dawn of filmmaking as a foundation was incredibly inspiring.”
“We ended up with the main title flying from behind the audience into the screen,” Balsmeyer says, “something that all the rules of 3D say you can’t do.”
The left- and right-eye pairs of three-dimensional lettering were created using Maxon Cinema 4D, then brought into Adobe After Effects for final convergence and compositing with 2D elements.
Visual effects company Pixomondo completed more than 800 shots for Martin Scorsese’s 3D epic adventure Hugo. The project utilized 10 of Pixomondo’s facilities to create a global pipeline.
Combining sets, miniatures, matte paintings and digital effects to evoke the look of Paris re-imagined on a 1930s film set, Hugo is a love letter to classic cinema and cinema history, with stop-motion animation, time lapses, morphs and stereo transitions, flipbook animation, and motion-captured and hand-animated CG characters.
“Marty has encyclopedic knowledge of cinema history,” says Pixomondo VFX supervisor Ben Grossmann, “and working with him on a project that used the dawn of filmmaking as a foundation was incredibly inspiring.”
