Two fine fire melt title reveals open Howard Hawks’/Christian Nyby’s “The Thing from Another World” and John Carpenter’s immutable and Hitchcockian “The Thing,” respectively. In speaking with Krystian Morgan, a 21-year-old from Wales we relearned a thing or two about work ethic, humility and the importance of fresh eyes. Morgan’s title sequence, based on Carpenter’s vision, was created when Morgan was in his final year in university where he studied motion graphics and compositing. His grave atmospherics veer into different territory, away from the effective simplicity of the originals with mutations rising to the fore, all the while echoing 90′s Romanek/Reznor and involuntary quivers of the Brothers Quay.

Model kits and kilts.

ISO Design’s opening title sequence to “A History of Scotland” offers a gathering sense of self and of a scaled Scotland. Using a tilt-shift effect that simulates miniature scale model photography where a shallow depth of field is created by blurring areas of the composition either optically or in post, the title technique nicely captures the spirit of the pioneering Picts.

“My mind rebels at stagnation! Give me problems! Give me work! “ —Sherlock Holmes

Watery cobblestone logos and longitudinal linotype layer, lace and lash Prologue Films’ opening and end credit work for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.

The sequence creative director Danny Yount, a self-taught Emmy-winning designer/director produced main titles for Six Feet Under and The Grid while at Digital Kitchen. He currently resides at Prologue Films and has created titles for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man and RockNRolla.

For our first post in 2010 we revisit the “How We Built Britain” titles with an interview with their creator Gareth Edwards. This was requested by some readers, facilitated by others and now available to all and feels like the perfect way to begin this new decade. Edwards, a truly multi-talented designer/visual effects artist/director has worked for the BBC on numerous productions including “Seven Wonders of the Industrial World” and “Attila the Hun,” this year completes his first feature film, “Monsters.”

A tangle of utility in both architecture and typography offers a fascinatingly structured title sequence for the BBC’s “How We Built Britain” that bespeaks an acquisitive England. The artificial monuments of type seem proportionally sound, the final title card an achievement of engineering.

“As time evolved so did the means of artistically replicating reality, from cave drawings…to engraving, to painting, to photography, and to its (thus far) most convincing form, cinema. In the task of duplicating reality cinema has surpassed all other forms of representation.” —Donato Totaro, André Bazin Revisited

“A fertile tomb where the spirits of ancestors brood over the unbroken seeds of the future.” —Stephen Wright

Art of the Title is going still life and illustration-only for what is perhaps the best credit sequence to try this with. If 24fps is required after reading or if you would like to revisit the sequence before reading on then feel free to pop in your Blu-ray or DVD and skip to chapter 32, we’ll wait for you…

Something beautiful.

Jim Capobianco’s end credits to Andrew Stanton’s “WALL·E” are essential; they are the actual ending of the film, a perfect and fantastically optimistic conclusion to a grand, if imperfect idea. Humanity’s past and future evolution viewed through unspooling schools of art. Frame after frame sinks in as you smile self-consciously. It isn’t supposed to be this good but there it is. This is art in its own right. Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman’s song, “Down to Earth” indulges you with some incredibly thoughtful lyrics and, from the Stone Age to the Impressionists to the wonderful 8-bit pixel sprites, you are in the midst of something special.

A note on type: WALL-E is promoted with an interpunct as “WALL·E” which Wikipedia tells us “is a small dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries in written language.” More inherent, embedded greatness from Pixar…as well as finding Finding Nemo’s Crush the Turtle (see contact sheet center frame).

In a great and successful attempt to preserve our likeness through the lens and canvas of art history, Jim Capobianco, Alex Woo and many others have rendered something epic; art without sublimation and an imprint of hope.