While I was in college studying graphic design, I was assigned the task of re-creating a tv show title sequence. Everyone in the class had to choose from 20 popular shows from the 60′s – 70′s era – many of which I had never seen. The title sequence had to be a contemporary interpretation of the original tv show.

I choose The Munsters as my inspiration since I had enjoyed the show as a child. I especially loved all the spooky props and items throughout the Munster Mansion. After doing some “research” (and by research I mean kicking back to watch a few episodes on Netflix) inspiration struck: I wanted to do a spin off of The Munsters. I was in college so it only seemed natural that my idea was to send Eddie Munster off to college!

The majority of my time and work went into hand drawing, digitally tracing and hand coloring the scene of Eddie’s dorm room. I started with the basic furniture you have in a dorm room: floor, ceiling, walls, window, dresser, and shelves. All these items were colored digitally in neutral tones to differentiate these “normal” items from Eddie’s personal items, which were hand colored with colored pencils. The bed, which typically also comes in the set of dorm room furniture was replaced by a coffin because this is Eddie Munster we are talking about! The original character was about 9 or 10 years old, had fangs, pointed ears and a widow’s peak hairstyle and carried around a “Woof-Woof” werewolf doll. In the original show he slept in a coffin so that is why I pulled that into my composition.

Next came the ooky contents of the shelves: a jar of eyeballs, beakers with bubbling potions and a formaldehyde shark. A stack of chained together books lay next to the monster laptop computer on the dresser which has tentacles coming out of the bottom drawer. The finishing touches to this young man’s door room are an acoustic guitar, a sexy were-girl poster and a family photo. Finally add in some bats flying out the window and a gargoyle-ish guard dog (you know, for the trap door) – and this room make-over is complete!

Each of these items were key to introducing my character in the title scene. The idea behind the animation was to scan the rooms abnormal items – revealing a piece of Eddie’s character each time.

Adobe AfterEffects was used to create the animation. The camera tool allowed smooth transitions from one item to another. I used DaFont.com to find a creepy typeface I thought appropriate for the scene.Burton’s Nightmare felt right with its unique curves. I wanted to animate the typography in this opening sequence as well. I tried out a few text effect filters in AfterEffects but nothing felt perfect. So instead I went with a simple fade in/out effect with the type because it was more legible and took less time to introduce. The show would have an aspect of humor and to show that I brainstormed some silly names for each of the cast members – such as Drew Blood and Chewy Backa.

Finally I requested my boyfriend to learn The Munsters original theme song and we recorded him playing acoustically to give the intro an original audio.

Munster College from stefanie Pilcher on Vimeo.

Shortly after I finished the project I set aside some time to play with the image I had created. It felt great to work on something personal while also furthering my AfterEffects skills and knowledge. I wanted to see what kind of animations I could create by using this static single image I had created. Traditionally animation was created by using a multitude of frames per second, each frame slightly different from the one before creating the illusion of movement. These days animation can also be created using technology and digital models in a 3D space. With AfterEffects masks and pieces of my one image cut into multiple layers using Photoshop I was able to create animation.

Using simple shapes I was able to create my first animation in minutes. (Watch the eyeball)

Eye Motion from stefanie Pilcher on Vimeo.

My next idea took much more effort to set on track. After some Photoshop work I successfully cut out one drawer of the dresser and split apart the 3 octopus tentacles. Using masks I was able to choose how and when to reveal the tentacles.

Octopus Drawer from stefanie Pilcher on Vimeo.

While it is not the smoothest transitions, keep in mind this project did not have endless hours devoted to it and was done relatively quickly, done in a mindset where I was more interested in what I could achieve than how seamlessly I could achieve it. However, I do not think this imperfection takes away from the project, the animation style is different from traditional methods and this gives the movie a unique style.

Contact GDBD Design today if you are interested in creating a project that uses animation, motion graphics or Flash!

Tags: AfterEffects Animation, How to make AfterEffects animation, how to use AfterEffects masks, motion graphics, The Munsters, The Munsters remake, The Munsters title sequence, typography animation