North Hollywood creative agency Aspect follows up their work on the 2019 Shazam! feature with this whimsical illustrative treatment for the end credits of director David F. Sandberg’s sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods.

Aspect CD Jon Berkowitz: “For this sequence, David engaged us to reprise the idea of traveling through a book and following one of the favorite characters from the film. In this case, that character is Steve a sentient pen the characters use in their hideout.

“Steve writes down literally everything the characters say. So in our sequence, we get to witness Steve traveling in and around a magical tome in the Shazamily’s hideout. Steve writes many of the credits. He also completes or amends several of the animated illustrations.

“While David knew that he wanted the book to be filled with magical illustrations, he wasn’t sure what the content of the images should be, nor did he know how the images would move or present themselves. This was the first design and production challenge.
 

“We worked with a Houdini artist to craft a book that would give us the ability to procedurally adjust the number of pages an animation could flip through and also adjust the thickness and rigidity of the pages.”

 
“Our in-house writing and design team begins these types of projects by writing hundreds of options for the drawn vignettes. Several rounds of the written beats are presented and then refined in collaboration with David. Once the filmmakers have approved this list of vignettes, they are presented to the studio producers for final approval.

“We are then able to find our extraordinary illustrator, Ross MacDonald. He took our approved written beats and under the creative direction of Senior AD Jacob Gilbreath, CD Brad Colwell, and myself, began to thumbnail the various vignettes.

“These thumbnails were then edited together into an animatic and presented to the filmmakers and studio. Some refinements were made to these layouts and once approved, Ross finished each illustration and delivered them as layered Photoshop files.

“Another creative and production challenge was the CG book itself as we wanted to have total control over it. We worked with a Houdini artist to craft a book that would give us the ability to procedurally adjust the number of pages an animation could flip through and also adjust the thickness and rigidity of the pages.”
 
 

 
Client: Warner Bros.
Feature Director: David F. Sandberg
Feature Editor: Michel Aller
Post Production Supervisor: Tricia Miles

Production: Aspect
Sr Art Director: Jacob Gilbreath
Creative Director: Brad Colwell, Jon Berkowitz
Sr Producer: Crystal Deones
Illustrator: Ross MacDonald
Lead 3D: Diego Sefarian
Animator: Kimberly Tang, Mark Rakocy, Lauren Kim
Coordinator: Joslyn Jenkins
Head Writer: David O’Rourke
Writer: Andy Lauwasser, David Cassada