Only Murders in the Building show runners John Hoffman and Jess Rosenthal came to us at Elastic for an illustrative title sequence / love letter to NYC and true crime. It was important that the sequence evoke a Hirschfeldesque sophistication and glamorous lensing of “The Arconia,” a fictional, classic, upper westside apartment building that would serve as one of the characters of the series and our title sequence, a vehicle through which various mysteries are concealed and eventually revealed. The team worked to create a stylistic 2D approach informed by the physics of 3D light and shadow. The designs embraced the lighting and atmospheric phenomena you witness when you walk in NYC: steam from rooftops, manholes, water towers, projections of tree shadows on buildings, camera obscura, glimpses of the sun through small apertures, urban details reflected in windows during the day and the colorful mosaic of those same windows by nightfall. We illustrated the 3 heroes, courtyard characters, and architectural details. They were then nested in 3D scenes with elements along with cell-animated the character motion. The final sequence is a continuous camera move that explores "The Arconia” in a time-lapse journey from day to night. We begin at street level during the day, rise up to reveal the main cast, then up to the roof for sunset, as we reverse down through the courtyard, we reveal title, then out to the street again, a bookended shot of the opening, but much has changed, sunlight has been replaced by flashes and strobes of police beacons as we reveal our 3 heroes again in a very different scene. Each sequence contains Easter egg clues so viewers can participate in the whodunnit.