Final project for a Domestika course taught by Richard Mehl about the colour theory of Bauhaus designers Josef Albers and Johannes Itten. We had to create a museum poster for a fictional exhibition about illusions generated by their teachings. These illusions include the use of colour relativity to trick the eye into believing there are more or fewer colours in the image than there really are. For example, in the rings image, the thin rings inside the big rings are supposed to look like the opposite colour, even though they’re actually an entirely separate shade of grey. Then in the folding image, there’s an illusion of transparency created with different shades of colour rather than with blending modes or opacity changes.

I somehow decided this exhibition would take place in an art museum floating above the hexagonal cloud formation on Saturn’s north pole. Given that location, the museum would be nicknamed The Hex (the basis for its branding, seen in the upper-right corner). That location also influenced the design of the shapes and their colours. And yes, the dates of the exhibition take place in the future (and even on some impossible dates…maybe there’s a wormhole involved…).

I wanted to study the designs of evocative book covers, then see if I could reproduce those designs myself, and add to them with little moments of delight to create animated cover reveals. I hope to eventually do more “editorial” animations based on book quotes, similar to TED-Ed videos. For now, I’m starting small and experimenting with style and technique.

This is student work. I’m not affiliated with the original creators.

Paper texture by Kyle T. Webster.

About the book

A cookbook that teaches the fundamentals of how and why specific flavours come together in a dish. Also a Netflix series.

Book credits

• Written by Samin Nosrat
• Illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton
• Cover design by Alvaro Villaneuva
• Published in 2017 by Simon & Schuster

I wanted to study the designs of evocative book covers, then see if I could reproduce those designs myself, and add to them with little moments of delight to create animated cover reveals. I hope to eventually do more “editorial” animations based on book quotes, similar to TED-Ed videos. For now, I’m starting small and experimenting with style and technique.

This is student work. I’m not affiliated with the original creators.

About the book

Scifi epic about space revolutions, psychic witch cults, giant worms and hallucinatory narcotics.

Book credits

• Written by Frank Herbert
• Cover design by Jim Tierney
• Art direction by Adam Auerbach
• Published in 1965 by ACE / Berkley / Penguin Random House

I wanted to study the designs of evocative book covers, then see if I could reproduce those designs myself, and add to them with little moments of delight to create animated cover reveals. I hope to eventually do more “editorial” animations based on book quotes, similar to TED-Ed videos. For now, I’m starting small and experimenting with style and technique.

This is student work. I’m not affiliated with the original creators.

Additional credits

• Canvas texture by Olga Thelavart
• Wall texture by Mona Eendra
• Glitter paper texture by Katie Harp
• Ink splash footage by Mixkit

About the book

12th Century mystical parable in which the birds of the world go on a perilous journey to find the elusive Bird King.

Book credits

• Written by Farid u-Din Attar and translated by Sholeh Wolpé
• Jacket design by Jaya Miceli
• Bird art from Pergamon Museum on Google Art Project / Wikimedia Commons (original creator unknown, 17th Century)
• Published in 2017 by W. W. Norton & Company

Final project for the Domestika course “Expressive Typography in Motion using After Effects” taught by Mat Voyce. The assignment was to create a kinetic typography animation based on a simple phrase. I selected the NASA slogan “Work the problem,” made famous during the Apollo 13 crisis.

To capture the NASA feel, I used the colours from NASA’s own brand guidelines. I also used the typeface Nasalization, which was created by typographer Ray Larabie as an homage to NASA’s “worm” logo. Finally, I imported blueprints from the Apollo mission (available on the NASA website) for the looping background. In After Effects, I added adjustment layers and effects to reproduce the vintage film reel look, imagining this as an educational film discovered in the NASA archives. For that reason, I also used an aspect ratio of 4:3 like old Super8 film, including the rounded corners from the frames on the actual film stock.

Final project for the Domestika course “Microanimations in 2D in After Effects” taught by Modik Studio. We had to create a series of micro-animations featuring related four characters. The course brief was about circus characters such as a strongman, an acrobat, a contortionist, and so on. But I’d recently read Full Circle by Alex Ross, and also the Jonathan Hickman run of Fantastic Four. Since those four characters resembled the archetypes in the circus theme, I thought they would be a great fit for the project.

I didn’t draw the Fantastic Four much in my teen years, so I had to do some exploration to figure out my interpretation for the characters. I wanted them to be defined by geometric shapes. One of the inspirations were the end credits of the Pixar film The Incredibles, which uses a stylized and angular character style. Some of that inspiration can be seen in the initial design for Invisible Woman, but I didn’t stick too closely to that style, and ended up make the characters a bit softer and less angular. However, I tried to give each character their own shape language and silhouette.