The last days of ptolemy grey Main Title Sequence

Creative Direction

Design

Illustration

“That’s how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side of a closed door that he’d lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.”

— Excerpt from Walter Mosley’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

What does the world look like in the mind of someone experiencing dementia and generational trauma, living a brief moment with clarity and purpose?

We were given the opportunity to direct and produce the main title sequence for The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, a limited series on Apple TV+. Based on the acclaimed mystery novel by best-selling author Walter Mosley, the series stars Samuel L. Jackson as Ptolemy Grey, a 91 year old man who suffers from dementia and temporarily regains his memories through an experimental drug in order to solve the murder of his great-grandnephew. Inspired by the idea of memories as noisy secrets locked behind a door, we envisioned this title sequence as an illustrated journey inside Ptolemy’s chaotic mind where fragments of his memories are rendered as unfinished sketches. Agitated, rough charcoal strokes reveal pieces of the image, whether it is something based in reality or one of his dreamy visions. These sketches oscillate between lucidity and ambiguity as certain areas are missing or effaced as if drawn by a delirious hand that wants to understand reality.

DESIGN STUDIO ARISU

CREATIVE DIRECTOR + LEAD DESIGNER ARISU KASHIWAGI

ILLUSTRATORS RIAD, THOMAS CIAN, ARISU KASHIWAGI

PRODUCER ANNA KIM

ANIMATION STUDIO R79 DIGITAL

ANIMATION DIRECTOR + LEAD ANIMATOR ERIC DEMEUSY

3D ANIMATOR BHAKTI PATEL

CEL ANIMATORS MIKHAIL PAKHOMOV, STEPHANIE SIMPSON

ANIMATOR CODY COURMIER

EDITOR RACHEL AMBELANG

R79 DIGITAL PRODUCER DMITRY FITISOV

COMPOSER CRAIG DELEON

Sequence breakdown + structure

Weaving together key visuals and hallucinatory passages from the story, we travel through a surreal montage that navigates Ptolemy’s inner struggle and longing to grasp a reality where his past collides with the present.

To establish the sequence as a journey through Ptolemy’s lifetime of memories, we structured the storyboard in a symmetrical arc, opening with Young Ptolemy’s eyes and ending with Old Ptolemy’s eyes while bookending the sequence with a flying robin, a symbol of the character Robyn who helps retrieve his memories. As the door to his memories opens, the robin guides us into various visions from childhood into adulthood: fishing with his uncle Coydog, the fire, his wife Sensia, and watching the sun at Lake Altoona. Portraits sketch on the three critical people who shape his destiny: Coydog who gifts him his life’s mission (Ptolemy’s childhood), Sensia who is the love of his life and deters him from his mission (Ptolemy as a young man), and Robyn who helps him remember and fulfill the mission (Ptolemy’s old years). Key visual metaphors – truth and justice (lantern), violence (gun), regeneration (syringe + droplet), legacy (treasure box + coins), and love (hands) – are woven in as essential themes from the story. The sequence ends on Old Ptolemy with the robin, reappearing from the intro, flying into a future full of freedom and hope.

Color + Light

We used a limited color palette consisting of earthy sepias with an accent of yellow, Ptolemy’s favorite color. After discovering that our first pass in pure black and white looked too stark and lifeless, we added warm undertones overall to create a sense of nostalgia. Light is a key element throughout the sequence. It appears as a reflection in the iris, sun, a lantern, fire, and more symbolically as the beacon leading Ptolemy to the truth.

Animation

In collaboration with charcoal artists, Riad and Thomas Cian, and animation director Eric Demeusy and his team at R79 Digital, we brought our storyboard frames and illustrations to life through a hybrid of cel animation and 2D/3D digital animation. Animated textures and sketch-on transitions gave the illustrations constant movement, much like memories that form and slip away, never staying still in the brain.

One of the challenges was figuring out which sections should be done by cel versus digital animation given the time constraint. In the end, we drew all the elements in each shot by hand, scanned them in, and digitally comped layers in Photoshop, making sure that there was enough separation between the strokes for the animation team. We also wanted to make sure not to rely on effects, filters, or textured photography, and it was important that each frame feel like a physical drawing that was breathing in digital space. For example, our animation director Eric Demeusy and I discussed not using CG blurs to show something that is blurred (i.e. the candlelight in Coydog’s lantern or the shadowy figure behind the gun), but rather, the blur would be illustrated within the design frame as abstract strokes.