Flying Heroes
Mar 27 2010
Title Design/ Animation: Feature Film
Audience Alliance
Back in 2008, Spain created their own animated treasure: the feature film "Cher Ami... ¡y yo!". It is based off of the true story of a carrier pigeon, Cher Ami, who successfully delivered a crucial message that helped save the lives of a number of troops.
Well, now that movie is coming to the good old U S of A and is being repackaged with a new title and a new title sequence and I'm in charge of the latter.
Being repackaged as 'Flying Heroes', the producers wanted a new stylistic twist to the identity of the film. Using the convention of discovering and moving into a story book, it was to be a blend of historical World War I and steam punk design.
This posed sort of big question from my design angle: WHY?
I ask this question because I understand the significance of an aged WWI era book, but steam punk is an animal all itself. In a nutshell it's Victorian era science fiction design. An ornamental, yet functional industrialized design that implies time travel and ray guns being run on tubes and valves.
The producers looked at it as more of an aesthetic than the practical reasoning behind a book being mechanical, so I created a concept in my head so the design would feel appropriate, even if it's never mentioned. My justification was that it would have been the hand written log of a WWI ally pilot -- essentially a WWI version of a black box on a dog fighting war plane. It would have to survive a crash. fire. Water. And it would have to be locked to keep it out of the wrong hands!
That is what I needed, and from there created a decayed, 90 year old mechanical book that would come to life before your eyes.
The following clip has the opening title sequence, and the closing sequence of the movie. Patience during the long pause in between!