Galactic zoom-out one of three Emmys nods for Aust firm

That's the opening title animation for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem designed by Australian firm Antibody, run by Patrick Clair and Raoul Marks.

Their mother of all zoom-outs has been nominated for Outstanding Main Title Design, one of three nominations for Antibody at the awards in September.

"It doesn't show the whole universe," explains Clair.

"It just shows the journey from down at an atomic level to the nearest star but that's actually an extraordinarily long way."

Antibody's recent work actually makes up half the field of nominees in the Title Design category, with nods also for Amazon Prime Video series Fallout, and Silo from Apple TV+.

"We feel very lucky, it's a great time for television, everything has kind of come roaring back after the strike, and lots of great shows are being made," Clair told AAP.

It's actually the second round of Emmys for 2024, with last year's awards delayed by the writers' and actors' strikes and held in January.

Back in the heyday of linear television, the opening credits were a chance to grab the popcorn, find the best spot on the couch and remember what happened in last week's episode.

In the era of streaming, they have become a showcase for computer-generated imagery or CGI, films-within-films that can even be more memorable than the programs they introduce.

Antibody has quietly collected 15 Emmy nominations over the last decade, and two wins, for the HBO series True Detective and Prime's The Man in the High Castle.

While the likes of Naomi Watts and Elizabeth Debicki made the headlines in Australia for their 2024 Emmy nominations, Clair and Marks arguably have a bigger audience than either actor - they are even behind the molten-gold animation that has introduced every episode of Netflix's The Crown.

The inspiration for this well-known sequence came from viewing rough cut scenes of a young Queen Elizabeth II on the day of her coronation.

"They had this very sacred, beautiful ethereal quality and that's really what inspired the way we rendered the crown," Clair recalled.

"You feel the weight of the colonial history that's gone into gathering the jewels, you see its construction almost appearing like prison bars."

What the showrunners have developed in terms of words and drama, it's Antibody's job to translate into visuals, he said.

The music is important too - in the Fallout titles, for example, a futuristic wasteland version of Los Angeles becomes darkly comic when set to a big band jazz tune.

Happily for Clair and Marks, they are usually granted a huge amount of creative freedom to make their animations, with pitches based on discussions, script readings, and viewing unfinished episodes.

"If you've got a flying robot, what you actually see is a man in green tights running around holding the robot, so you have to use your imagination a little bit," Clair said.

His first credits for a high profile program were in 2014 for HBO's True Detective - but before that, there was this sequence for The Chaser's War on Everything on ABC TV.

That an Australian company can design for global streamers shows how much the internet has opened up the world - Antibody has grown to have staff in the UK, US and France.

Its early days were shaped by a huge technological leap, as the popularisation of graphical processing units, originally developed for gaming, made it possible to create very high quality CGI very quickly.

The next wave will be the impact of artificial intelligence, said Clair, who expects the impact will be profound.

The 76th Emmy Awards will be held in Los Angeles on September 16 (AEST) while the Creative Arts Emmy Awards run over two nights on September 8 and 9 (AEST).

Australian Associated Press