From storyboard to screen

In this guest post, Popcorn Creative’s Matthew Packwood discusses the production of the graphics for Tony Robinson Explores Australia.

We were commissioned by WTFN, to produce the broadcast brand, full graphics packages for the new series Tony Robinson Explores Australia which premiered on May 3 on the History Channel in Australia. It will also be distributed to the UK. The creative process used a stop animation technique and we executed a comprehensive shoot to deliver opening titles using a modern stop motion animation style of unfolding origami as a style reflecting the host’s story-telling personality supported with detailed animated in-show travel maps. We think the result is bold and entertaining, complimenting the host and appealing to the target audience.

The production process commenced with an undertaking of a comprehensive and collaborative brief with WTFN. It was here that an origami stop animation concept was agreed upon because we thought that this actually depicted how the TVpresenter would/could present his story and was representative of his style of storytelling. We then delivered a presentation of style stills and references to sharpen our direction as a concept board presentation. At this stage, we undertook an initial shoot test (on a high res stills camera), where we integrated some of the elements into the storyboard. Then a 24 style-frame story board was presented which detailed the colour palette, opening title sequence, broadcast brand.

Following this, we developed and presented storyboard #2, which detailed in program maps to facilitate the story telling process. We produced a template version for WTFN to use in the edit and produced a final set of maps. Maps and on-screen graphics made up roughly 50 percent of the project so were significant in overall work.