Node Fest is Australia’s leading motion design event, held annually in Melbourne. It brings together designers, animators, and digital professionals from across Australia and New Zealand to celebrate creativity, share insights, and foster collaboration.
Never Sit Still was invited to craft the 2024 opening titles, with the challenge of creating something fresh while celebrating our unique approach to design led motion. With our background in typography and graphic design, our intent was to showcase our signature style while also highlighting the importance of R&D in our process. To make things even more ambitious, we wanted this piece to be narrative driven to tie everything together.
The story centres around a character navigating the daunting and chaotic creative process, illustrating the emotional and mental toll of striving for originality. As their experiments become more and more haywire, we visualise their unraveling state of mind through a “brain cam” that distorts and deteriorates. The narrative builds as the line between reality and thought blurs, leading to a crescendo of madness. Following this frenzy, the character has a breakthrough — letting go of overcomplicated ideas to embrace a simpler, earlier design with fresh clarity. This resolution highlights the value of recognising when simplicity holds more strength than complexity.
Credits
Event — Node Fest
Client — Yes Captain
Animation Studio — Never Sit Still
Music & Sound Design — Smith & Western
Composition — Scott Langley
Trumpet Performances — Dane Laboyrie
Trombone Performances — Nigel Crocker
Saxophone Performances — Scott Langley
Selected clips from the title sequence.
This story was brought to life by an original jazz score from Smith & Western, produced in collaboration with renowned musicians. Their dynamic performances brought an extra layer of energy and depth, perfectly matching the piece’s mix of chaos and clarity.
Styleframes.
Motion exploration.
Breakdown.
A combination of techniques from cel, to 2D, 3D and combining them together.
We had a lot of fun pushing typography animation to the edge, creating visuals that were deliberately chaotic and borderline unsightly, to encourage the audience to think about what “good design” really means, and to reflect on the messiness and beauty of experimentation.
Look development.
Event.
Storyboards.