60th Primetime Emmy Nominees for Main Title Design

Posted by Justin Cone

Photo by Mauricio Balvanera

Photo by Mauricio Balvanera

The 60th Primetime Emmy Awards are coming up on September 21st, and it looks like there will be some decent competition among the nominees for Main Title Design:

  • Bernard And Doris • HBO
    Studio: yu+Co
    Garson Yu, Creative Director/Art Director
    Synderela Peng, Designer/Art Director
    Etsuko Uji, Designer/Animator
    Edwin Baker, Designer
  • Chuck • NBC
    Studio: Imaginary Forces
    Karin Fong, Title Designer
    Jonathan Gershon, Title Designer
    Dana Yee, Title Designer
  • Mad Men • AMC
    Studio: Imaginary Forces
    Mark Gardner, Designer/Director
    Steve Fuller, Designer/Director
    Cara McKenney, Main Title Producer
  • New Amsterdam • FOX
    Studio: Pure NY
    Johanna Marciano, Creative Director/Designer
    Wendy Brovetto, Main Title Producer
    Bryan Keeling, Animator
  • The Company • TNT
    Studio: Digital Kitchen
    Creative Director: Matt Mulder
    Lead Designers: Cody Cobb, Ryan Gagnier, Noah Conopask
    Animatiors: Ryan Gagnier, David Holm, Pete Kallstrom, Matt LaVoy, Dayvd Chan
    3D: Cody Cobb, Igor Choromanski, Gordana Fersini, Thiago Costa
    Editor: Dave Molloy
    Producer: Jill Johns, Colin Davis
    Executive Producer: Mark Bashore

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.
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26 Comments

Matt

All very solid work. I really like the ending of Amsterdam, but Mad Men gets the gold – assisted by it being the best series on TV right now (best series in a long time, period). Not too keen on the metaphors being so literal, but still sums up the show as a whole nicely, with great stylistic execution.

Kyle

The main thing I like about all these is that each one is different than all the others. Except maybe the IF stuff. They both have a similar style, but are still pretty awesome.

steve

Great line up. Ive got to go for “The Company” titltes. The apocalypse has never looked so beautiful. DK used a really nice technique in this one too.
Head and shoulders above the rest in my mind.

mark

the company titles are beautiful, i really like.

jameswatt

The company and New amsterdam are very nice. the other ones are nice too, but not very special to me.

tomorrowisclosed

god above the DK sequence is the ‘chefs pasta’. really nice.

filippo

ah ah!
where is Prlogue in this?

ops!
;)

aimandshoot

I can see Prologue’s style copied in mad men’s title… reminds me of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s title..

xpez2000

it seems like these things came out like three years ago…I have seen them so much…profiled in mags and blogs….

these awards are kind of anti-climactic.

boca

The Company, hands down.

joeshmoe

THE COMPANY !

Renkin

The Compagny was made with Particular right ?

Jon

Not from what I’ve heard – XSI particles & hair attached to verts.+ some tricky compositing & good old fashioned hand drawn animation.

JustinMetz

From the gallery of the Trapcode website:

The first clip is the intro for the movie “The Company”. It features a cross-hatch technique that Matt LaVoy and Cody Cobb developed that uses Trapcode Particular to create the look of animated cross-hatched drawings.

justin

Cody and Matt worked like hell to get that look. It wasn’t the result of pushing a button.

Nicolas Alexander

DK came to VFS couple month ago and talked about the company titles for about 20 mins. the final look really was achieved by drawing frame by frame over CG imagery. even the interns over there did some rotoscoping so they could finish he said. they had showed a couple alternate version it was cool.

JustinMetz

@ justin

Oh, I don’t doubt that. I’m some what familiar with particular but I doubt I would be able to get this look myself. They did a great job.

oeuf

BnD, not bad, simple and elegant, iif I had to change one thing I would make the images on the flowers look more like it was projected on the petals. I’m assuminig that was actually done, but the client perhaps felt it wasn’t legible enough.
Chuck, a fun title, Cake music helps make it enjoyable.
Mad Men, I liked the muted palette on this and the graphic quality the black silohette brings, nicely composed frames.
New Amsterdam, photopushes, we’ve all seen it done a million times, and done better than this I might add. Still the one redeeming factor, is not the last shot (as someone prev stated, dude you must be blind), the best part of that title is the opening sequence where the city builds up from “New Amsterdam”. That actually set the tone for the piece and I was hoping to see more of that, but nope, it slowly rolls downhill from there.
The Company, very well executed. Nice etched quality. Nothing more that I can say, than it’s a beauty to watch. I know particular was used in this spot, prob for the etched scratches, but can anyone shed some light on how?

All in all, good work by all, but how come some of the spots list the animators and some don’t? Come on, let’s give credit where credit is due.

monovich

Nominations and credit lists are submitted sometimes by the shows themselves and sometimes by the production companies who made the opens. The whole process can either be very fair to all involved or, perhaps more commonly, very political and inaccurate.

I think The Company was hand-traced over printouts or something like that, which I either read here a while back or heard from one of the guys who worked on it.

Kristy

The Company really stands out for me, like the mix of gloom and fantasy – seems sophisticated

Darrell

The company has a sense of heart. Something missing in design in general these days and for that, I’d give three thumbs up! (My two and the one I keep in a box in the closet). New Amsterdam is a pleasure to watch as was MadMen. All great stuff.

jen

The first and last scene of New Amsterdam are indeed the most successful ones, and apparently they did it all in 2D which makes it even cooler.

The Company does look like particular.

Brandon

I’m going with The Company. Bernard and Doris comes a close second. It was just waaaay too long for me. Mad Men was good; I guess I’m just tired of that style. And to me it doesn’t work as well as something like in Catch Me If You Can. Mad Men distracts from the titles, until the very end. The focus should always try to fall back to the titles; being that it is a title sequence…

Solid stuff from everyone though. It’s gonna be close

uncledrew

only time will tell…will politics win out or will creative ingenuity take the prize. My hope is for the latter in which case “The Company” is the clear favorite. NICE WORK!!!

Joe

Chuck? Seriously?

Those titles are terrible. Loved the show, hated the titles.

Looks like amateur hour…..and from a few years back…..this is why I don’t think of IF when I think of good work…..all the people that made great work there are long gone.

Neuehaus

all great work! so excited! Ill bookmark it over at our place:

http://www.neuehaus.com

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