Holes Title Sequence
Instructor: Alex K Kim
Year: Fall 2023
Movie Title Sequence, Animation
What would you do if you were wrongly convicted of stealing famous sports cleats from a charity? Would you choose jail time or a juvenile work camp? What could you possibly expect? Certainly not a desolate 10,000-acre dried-up lakebed, miles of holes scattered across the land, and poisonous yellow-spotted lizards lurking in the shade. And certainly not a deep, dark secret tied to a wanted outlaw, stolen treasure, and a family curse spanning three generations. This is the story of Stanley Yelnats, the protagonist of Louis Sachar's Holes.
I created a short title sequence animation inspired by the 50 chapters of the book, focusing on the key plot elements that shape Stanley’s journey.
I focused on key plot elements from the book to make the title sequence both recognizable and engaging, whether the viewer is familiar with Holes or not. I highlighted iconic imagery such as yellow-spotted lizards, shovels, a bullet, and the wooden boat named "Mary Lou," among others. Although it had been a few years since I read the book, watching the movie brought back vivid memories of the central plot points, helping me select visuals that were both significant to the overall story and still required context to fully understand.
Using the Procreate Dreams animation app and Procreate for the hand-drawn animation, I then refined the video in After Effects, adding music to enhance the experience. The animated title sequence was inspired by the opening credits of The Good Lord Bird by Studio King and Country, and I aimed for a textured, constantly moving style. This movement was designed to reflect the harsh, sandy environment of the Texas desert in the story, keeping the animation dynamic and immersive. Like the good Lord Bird, I chose to keep a limited color palette and simple siluetes to aviod getting to caried away in unnecessary details.
One major challenge I faced while creating this animation was having the right equipment to complete the project. At the time, I wasn’t very experienced with Illustrator, so I decided to switch to hand animation using the newly launched Procreate Dreams app. I was working on a 7th-generation iPad, which I had been using for all my digital drawings, and I was eager to test out hand animation. However, after working with Dreams for a while, my iPad unexpectedly shut down and refused to turn back on. The program was too demanding for my iPad to handle, causing it to crash permanently. Fortunately, Procreate also had a drawing app for my phone, which allowed me to continue and complete the animation.