Rattling Stick director Daniel Kleinman and the motion crew at Nexus Studios tear into the printed quirks of mid-century crime paperbacks in these opening titles for Shane Black’s new action heist thriller Play Dirty on Amazon Prime.

Daniel Kleinman: “One of the challenges was to create a modern sequence while keeping true to the soul of this nostalgic illustrative style, not always using the same media and then making it all animate. I hope the outcome feels fresh and new as well as acknowledging the history of the golden age of pulp illustration.”

From Nexus Studios: “Inspired by traditional craft, such as oil painting and halftone printing, the titles evoke the look of 1940s-70s crime paperbacks, complete with visible brushstrokes, misaligned colors, and shifting paper textures.”
 
 

 
Client: Amazon MGM Studios

Production: Rattling Stick
Director: Daniel Kleinman
EP: Johnnie Frankel
Production Manager: Stuart Butterworth

Animation: Nexus Studios
EP: Jo Bierton
Producers: Jo Bierton, Sami Goddard
Production Manager: Edith Chappey
Studio Lead: Bethany Levy
Art Director/Designer/2D Animator: Margherita Premuroso
Designer/2D Animator: Lorenzo Varisco
Concept Artist: Signe Cold
Typography Designer: Hust Wilson
2D Animator: Marylou Mao, Emma Ehrling
FX Animator/2D Clean up: Denise Dean
2D Motion Graphics Artist: Robbie McKinstry, Simon Eves
2D Motion Graphics Artist/2D Animator: Nina Skryabina
Lead Compositor: Jesse Richards
Compositor: Rob Ward, Andrew Khosravani, German Diez
Editor: David Slade
Assistant Editor: Andrea Zantiras
Resource Manager: Zachary Goldman
PR & Marketing: Bruce Bigg, Esme Harvey Otway, Sophie Spalding

Music: Alan Silvestri