Motion Graphics: Dickens Phantoms & Fiction

One of the Post Production services on 'Dickens Phantoms & Fiction' was to create a bespoke set of titles and bumpers. Production worked closely with Sky Editor and Motion Graphics Artist Nick Pugh to develop a look and feel for the programme, and here Nick takes us through his approach.

Nick explains, "The brief was to create five second titles and bumpers for Dickens: Phantoms & Fiction giving them a Victorian feel using various posters and artwork from that period as inspiration. There was also the desire to include the growing interest in ghosts, spirits and seances which were becoming increasingly popular in Victorian culture. We explored various options starting with the visual image of the Magic Lantern."

Here is the first concept of the Magic style.

Nick adds, "I created a lens shape using some stock imagery of glass and dust from our own library, and then experimented by sliding in a series of period illustrations. I also added effects to create chromatic aberration and distortion around the edges of the frame, both to add realism and depth, but also to give a sense of the supernatural."

The second version of the Magic Lantern, further developed and with a much darker, more gothic feel

Here is the first version of the darker horror/ graphic design using smoke and a gothic Victorian font.

The only available images were too low-res, so I had to create the signature from scratch as a vector layer. This took a considerable amount of time to get right, trying to match the handwriting style exactly. I then added some glow, slight blurring and some animated noise patterns to blend the text layers in with the smoky background.

A smoky, dark version with a manually re-created signature from Dickens himself, created by the hands of Nick Pugh!

The third and final approach was to use production stills of the four presenters. The most compelling image was a shot of Producer/Presenter, David Harewood, as it had the most dramatic background. Using this as a starting point I then rotoscoped the other presenters and composited them into David's image creating a photo montage of their faces. I wanted to animate them in sequence, so started with an empty room and revealed each face one by one. However, this meant cutting out David from the original image and painting in the empty space behind him, which took several hours to get right. I then added in elements from my smoke design to complete the whole effect. This included the Dickens signature which I had previously created, so I was very pleased that elements from the whole process had made it into the final version.

The final version of the titles.

Dickens Phantoms & Fiction is available to catch up on Sky and NOW.