Since I have the first part of our story, I wanted to have an introductory screen to our world because as a child I would always look forward to the painted episode titles in my favourite cartoons like Ed, Edd n’ Eddy or The Powerpuff Girls- and more recently as I’ve been watching Batman: The Animated Series for the first time I’ve become infatuated with their noir-inspired title cards (hence the vignette and chiaroscuro aspects).
I created this title screen in Clip Studio Paint for a progress presentation and I liked it, but after playing with some different layer modes and changing the hot scarlet with a deep purple background to a cold blue on black, I realised the blue variant would be more representative of the colours of our underworld. I also found it had better contrast and was more readable. Although I originally made it for that presentation, I liked it so much I decided to use it for the final sequence.
Examples of chiaroscuro title cards from Batman: The Animated Series