YCN Syfy – Posters

YCN Syfy – Applied Example

An example of my motion graphic as a sidebar advert on youtube.

https://vimeo.com/132729840

YCN Syfy Final Design & Animation

As you can see I have added elements of the compass idea for this final design, and filled in the outer ring with stars, to better represent space. The lines shooting out from the centre are meant to show routes and travel lines to certain destinations “among the stars”. That was the thought behind them anyway, inspired by the grid lines from the star charts. In the animation I made all the various layers spin around the centre, including the stars. I think this successfully conveyed space travel, with the stars moving behind the spinning compass really making it clear. I chose to make it white on a black background since the stars needed to be white on black, but also simply because I think it looks better. I added the line “What will you explore?” in direct reference to the design, and also to the array of varied science-fiction entertainment the channel has in it’s library. Click the link below to see the animation.

https://vimeo.com/132729839

I am pleased with this outcome and I will be proceeding to create some promotional examples with it, such as web-advertisements seen on sites like “youtube”, and posters.

YCN Syfy – Idea Development

I have chosen this design to carry forward, with inspiration from star charts and the sci-fi artist “Sparth”. It is quite neat and clean cut, like some of Sparth’s more simplistic work. I think it will work well as a vector graphic/animation. I still plan on featuring elements of the compass design, so I’m hoping to successfully merge the two together.

YCN Syfy – Research Development

I wanted to find a way to factor the “sci-fi” element into my designs, and since I have chosen to look at space exploration I decided to search up some star charts. The top image is of an ancient Chinese star chart that can be found in the “Suzhou Museum” in China. These caught my eye as being quite clean but also random, being circular grid shapes with numerous stars and constellations scattered within them. I would like to adapt this design into my own work for this project as I feel it looks interesting and strongly conveys space exploration.

YCN Syfy – Initial Motion Graphic

After scanning in my chosen design I drew over it with the pen tool in illustrator, making sure to keep each piece that I wanted to animate on separate layers. Once done I then imported it into after effects to animate it. I wanted to animate it in a way that would convey travelling, so to start with I made the compass pointer rotate back and forth. This looked okay, but I wasn’t happy with the rest of it being static, it looked a little boring. So I made the circle segments spin, which improved it a lot. I made them spin extremely fast to show speed, making use of ease-in/ease-out keyframes to show acceleration and to add a sense of weight. For a start I feel this was successful, and I am going to to build upon this idea possibly towards a final outcome. Click the link below to see this animation.

https://vimeo.com/132439617

YCN – Idea Development

As mentioned previously, I decided to begin by looking at sea navigation. The brass nautical compass/sun dial is a very interesting looking object to me, with all the separate arms and layers to it. That design is quite ornate and visually pleasing, so I decided to base a sketch on it, which I later plan to animate. My current aim for the project is to create a promotional campaign with posters, web advertising, and possibly a short tv advert, so the connected idea/design linking them together has to be visually pleasing and interesting. I want to think of a way to make the “space” aspect of it more clear, so sci-fi fans can understand and appreciate what they are looking at.

YCN Briefs – Syfy Research Mood Boards

 

I chose this brief as I am myself a fan of science fiction. Not exactly the most die hard, but it is one of my favourite genres. The brief asks that I promote the Syfy channel’s “passion” for sci-fi, to make them more respected and relevant among sci-fi fans. To do this, I want to focus on possibly the most common theme of sci-fi; space exploration. Many of the greatest and most beloved sci-fi TV shows and films share this theme, such as “Battlestar Galactica”, “Star Trek”, and “Star Wars”. Below is three mood boards we have been asked to complete.

The visual approach:

As the theme I want to develop is space exploration, looking at star charts and maps was a no-brainer. Space exploration shares many parallels with sailing and sea navigation, which is why I included the nautical compass in the top-right. I also included a piece by surrealist H. R. Giger and a few pieces by sci-fi artist Nicholas Bouvier, aka “Sparth”. These are pieces I like the look of, and wish to get inspiration from.

Syfy Channel:

This mood board features various images of the shows Syfy has produced and aired, battlestar galactica being their most famous one by far.

Target audience:

When thinking about the target audience I came to the conclusion that sci-fi lovers are often fans of good entertainment in general, so I picked various images from things not necessarily related to sci-fi, like critically acclaimed tv shows, comics, videogames and technology.