'Life Is Short. Have an Affair.' Ashley Madison Documentary Drops on Netflix

Last week, Netflix dropped a three-part documentary which slid into the top ten faster than you could slide into the DMs. Ashley Madison, a dating site dedicated to enabling married  folk to meet and have an affair, gained notoriety in 2015, when it became subject to a data breach. Millions of users, each of whom had been promised total anonymity, had their  personal, financial, and sexual details leaked to the general public, causing mass chaos (and divorce) across the globe. 

Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal recounts the tale, with animation and motion design by London-based studio, Blind Pig. Working closely with Minnow Films, the team worked  on the 2D title intro animation and graphical elements throughout. These include composited dating carousels, headlines, recreated social media interactions, website interactions, on screen computer interactions and titles. 

Christine Peters, 2D lead on the title intro, comments, “From the beginning, orange was a key colour, with Saul Bass and ‘Catch me if you Can’ being references for the intro  animation. Composition and character design played a huge part in foreshadowing the scandalous nature of the content that follows.”

Sean Cooper, animation lead on the project, adds, “We were fully invested in creating an  iconic and sophisticated look and feel, paying particular attention to how our custom  pastel colour palette would work with the beautifully shot and graded footage.” 

Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal is out now on Netflix.