Sherlock Holmes (2) A game of shadows - credit sequence by Prologue
 

I was impatient to see the second Sherlock Holmes movie by Guy Ritchie, and even if the movie is great, I was impatient it ends to see the new sequence done by Prologue ;) And I was not desepointed... I contact Danny Yount as soon as I can, who kindly answer question about the first 2009 sequence and send me these amazing research phase images with his answers...


The sequence you did for the first Sherlock Holmes movie had a lot of "succes" for itself. On youtube, you can found tutorial to do animation in the Sherlock way... Even myself, as a designer, I get some clients briefs than can be summerized as "we want to Sherlock Holmes effects" ;) On your side, I also see a Vicks commercial for which the brief must have been the same... Knowing that, how did you start to work on the second movie ? Do you share what U2 feel after recording Achtung baby ;) ?

Well, actually I started by doing things that were in the opposite direction - I came up with an idea Ilya Abulhanov worked with me on that involved a 3d chessboard connected to cables and all of these moving boxes that opened up and released all kind of objects from Holme's study - notes, pill bottles, books etc. VFX Supervisor Jose Ortiz and his team made an excellent motion test to prove the concept.

All the producers and the director loved it, but in the last hour they decided to do the same kind of thing again. It was sad at first but once we got going we were able to find ways to overcome repeating ourselves completely. I thought it would be good to have everything painted on this time and to make better use of 3d space. We were also to add more detail to the illustrations and render everything more like real paper.

 

 

Have you some behind the scene images to share ?

Here they come

 

 

Does the movie team, or Guy Ritchie himself, gave you a biref this time or follow you seeing what you have done on the first movie ?

When they decided to do the same kind of things as last, they gave us a brief of making everything look like the magazine TheStrand - a very popular mag that was read by everyone around the turn of the century. It was probably the Vanity Fair or Interview Magazine of the day. I asked one of our producers Kate Berry to find the earliest copy of the original Holmes stories she could find. Luckily, she was able to find an old Memoirs Of Sherlock Homes from @1900 that was in great shape, so we ended up using a lot of that for the page designs. 

 

 

 

Does the team was the same as on the first movie ? Please present us who work on this sequence.

Yes, Alasdair Willson (the original animator) and Lisa Bolan, who was involved in the first concept development process. But Daniel Kim and Jeiko Jongyoon Soh (super talented designer / animators who did a lot of Ironman 2 vfx) were responsible for making all the work look amazing in motion. And Gary Mau who made the main title at the front of the film look great.

This new sequence is more black and white... But the illustration are even more detailed... Can you talk more about this ?

Lisa Bolan made these awesome Illustrations that looked like real etchings and Ke Cao joined in and made many of them as well, including the nice studio logos at the front of the film. The first round by Lisa was more painterly - which were great but in the end we ended up doing more of an etched look, which was a more evolved version of what Chris Sanchez and I pitched on the first film. Lisa and Ke pulled it off beautifully those and had to work around the clock for the 2 short weeks of production to make it al happen. It was a tough assignment for them as many shots were pulled out of the cut sometimes after they would finish them. It was like losing limbs at times but they handled it like pros.

 

 
Thanks again for your inspiration
 
Here come the final version of the sequence & other videos done for the movie :

Sherlock Holmes : A Game Of Shadows end credits sequence from Danny Yount on Vimeo.

 

Sherlock Holmes : A Game Of Shadows studio logos sequence from Danny Yount on Vimeo.

 

Sherlock Holmes : A Game Of Shadows main title from Danny Yount on Vimeo.

 
 
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