Astrobiology animated editorial illustrations

This is a series of animated editorial illustrations around the theme of astrobiology (the search for life).

I was inspired by the approach of Aquila magazine, a science magazine for curious kids. Each issue of Aquila is built around a particular topic and every article explores different facets of that topic. They use a lot of illustration and combine that with puzzles and activities. So, inspired by their visual and playful approach, I decided to generate my own editorial topic around astrobiology, and I imagined a series of GIFs that could be used on social platforms to promote a magazine issue on that same topic. Every week during that issue’s life cycle, we’d roll out a new GIF, and use that to talk about the article it pertains to, get people excited.

I created the style frames in Affinity Photo, then rebuild those entirely in Moho with some tweaks and additions, so I could rig and animate them, add “boil” and give them a more hand-made look.