Comics in Motion

Red Riding Hood, Inception, Jonah Hex, I Am Legend — The Sequence Group, is making its mark in the motion comics industry using CINEMA 4D

Motion comics have been evolving since they emerged as a new type of entertainment more than a decade ago and Ian Kirby has been involved since the beginning. In fact, Wikipedia calls Broken Saints, a Flash-based animated film series released in 2001 that Kirby made in his parents’ basement with a couple of friends over three years, "one of the earliest examples" of motion comics. What is a motion comic? Utilizing a variety of techniques, a motion comic takes an existing comic book property and re-imagines it as an animated film.

Armed with a combination of 2D and 3D animation, visual effects, creative editing, direction, original music and voice talent, the creative possibilities for motion comics are virtually unlimited. Kirby is proving that today with The Sequence Group—his Vancouver-based design and animation company. Sequence still makes motion comics, but their clientele has grown to include heavy hitters like Warner Bros. and Disney (among others). Having moved beyond Flash, they now rely on MAXON’s CINEMA 4D for 3D animation.

Sequence’s latest project is a prequel episode to Warner Bros. feature film Red Riding Hood. Entitled Red Riding Hood: The Tale Begins, it combines live action and advanced motion comic animation. “The line between motion comics and traditional animation is almost indistinguishable with this project,” explains Kirby, adding that the animation style was very unique. “It's a fluid painterly animation with 3D walk cycles, full lip assignment and complex particle systems.” C4D was used in several key scenes, including a dramatic pull back through a dense forest. Painted still imagery was projected onto the 3D geometry of the cabin to give it a texture and feel that integrated seamlessly with the 2D animation.

Sequence has also created a 15-minute HD prologue to the film Inception for Warner Bros. that has been released as a special feature on the film's Blu-ray disc. The prologue opens with a shot of a maze. As the camera moves closer, however, the relatively abstract shape reveals itself to be a city. “The city grows out of a maze and you end up down at street level with the characters,” says Kirby, adding that after the city’s basic shape was created in Illustrator (from the film’s original artwork), it was brought into CINEMA 4D where its spline could be extruded to the correct height. The buildings, which were modelled in C4D in various shapes and sizes to create some natural randomness, were textured in the comic's style and imported into After Effects for final color correction and finishing.

In the film, Inception’s characters use "totems" to determine if what they are experiencing is a dream or reality. West recreated the spinning top totem used by Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) with C4D’s Lathe NURBS tool. Artist Andrew West used Photoshop to texture the totem to resemble the film’s original artwork. Once the totem was adequately prepared, animator Christian Whiticar used MoDynamics to make it spin.

More Than a Trend
Though some have questioned the longevity of the art form, Warner Bros. has believed in motion comics from the start. Kirby remembers when the comic book publisher first approached Sequence about creating animated prequels for Will Smith’s I Am Legend. “We had moved on to doing other things, so I said no at first,” he recalls. But Warner Bros. persisted and Kirby agreed. “It was fun to create those back stories for the film, and that was what really got us back into motion comics,” he says. “It was a new generation. We were no longer dealing with the limitations of Flash. These were full HD animations.”

For Batman: Black & White, Sequence directed and animated 20 award-winning, short-form comics of the famous caped crusader. The series, which was released by Warner Premier on iTunes and Xbox LIVE, took Sequence about six months from start to finish.

Things ramped up quickly after Batman and Sequence began work on Warner Bros.’ Jonah Hex. They had about six months from start to finish to produce 75 minutes of animated content for 7 episodes of the Jonah Hex motion comic, which were released to coincide with the film’s opening on iTunes, Xbox LIVE and video on demand. While working on the project, Sequence's artists focused consistently on the goal of expanding and enhancing the original artwork of Timothy Truman and Sam Glanzman while keeping the drawn page's original integrity intact. Since they had no digital files for Jonah Hex, artists worked off of old film scans. “We gave scans to the artists so that they could break them down into layers that we could use in C4D and After Effects,” Kirby recalls, adding that Sequence then produced original music, dialogue and sound effects to compliment the animation.

The Sequence Group Demo Reel:
www.thesequencegroup.com

The Sequence Group motion comics work:
http://thesequencegroup.com/motion-comics/

Jonah Hex motion comics episodes and clips:
http://www.thewb.com/shows/jonahhex