Geomancy (and Its Signs).

Genome Circuitry

So, I have quite an otherworldly wound on my arm.  Not only did it leave a large patch of my skin strangely hairless, it cut out a pattern that seems to belong in some science fiction representation of human DNA.  But not entirely.  It also resembles an abstract understanding of a circuit board.  Probably the strangest part of it all, however, is that what little it bled was not blood...

It bled ink.

Altered Perspective.

Another linework sketch for possible graffiti art. This time, went for some Phantogram fan art. Just let my imagination run wild while listening to Voices (and Nightlife and Eyelid Movies). It’s straight crazy, but I think I could pull it off on a wall with some practice.

(I really like the idea of graffiti being a coded language of sorts, where only the artist, and the people who know how he or she works, can read their letters. Kinda what I was striving for here.)

“Stellar System.” (AKA “Crying Wolf.”)

Taking the expoart idea and doing it bigger.

Black. White. Wacky.

Inspired by Red Bull F1 Racing's crazy test livery at Jerez.

Black Sun. Another slight deviation from the norm.

Escape Real Life

It’s that feeling you get far past the noon of night, when, as your day comes to a close, things begin, at last, to make sense.

It’s that urging that, if you could just grasp that feeling and hold its heart close in your hands, staying up through the dark and into the second day, you could achieve everything.

It’s that hastening of sleep which fights that urging, telling you that everything can be left for the morning.

It’s that pleading in the back of your mind; it begs you to push past the hastening, for in the morning, nothing will be as clear as it was in this moment.

  And yet, every night, you always give in, knowing that real life will not forgive your whims.

And every morning you await the end of the day; you await that clarity and the chance to try again, assuring yourself it will be different this time.

  Define insanity.

  Then… turn the music a little louder and put on a fresh pot of coffee.

Rift.

(Or Chopstick.)

Main Title Design: Lesson 3.

For this assignment, we were tasked with creating six narrative frames with typography using only a limited set of 40 images. The film is a documentary about the Apollo mission. I used only 6 of those images, in my effort to create a set of modern minimal titles.

Instead of going for the sepia-faded, old-film look, I really wanted everything to have a strong black level, to make it feel more modern, (perhaps more like how the movie Gravity made me feel about outer space). However, I didn't want to completely do away with a nod to the past, to the "Golden Age" of space exploration, so the opening frames are very warm as the sun breaks around the edge of a hidden planet. It evokes a more mysterious energy, more like a sci-fi movie, speaking to discovery and unknown worlds.

As we begin to pan across the planet, we see the Command Module hanging in orbit around the planet. It's moving towards us slightly, even as we pan further to the left of it. As it grows larger in our field of vision, preparing to pass by on the right side of the screen, the camera pulls back through a window, and we realize we are in the Lunar Module, seeing through the eyes of one of the astronauts.

The camera pans away from the first window, settling on the smaller "approach" window. At first the view through that portal is blurred, focusing instead on the numbers on the glass. But once we move beyond that glass, the moon is passing by, filling our vision, until finally, we settle on the final frame. This last shot mirrors and inverts the first frame, contrasting the warm glow of exploration and expectations of 1960s space exploration with the colder, harsher reality that is outer space.

As for why I chose the "side" view of the moon, instead of putting it at the bottom of the shot... simply put, it's not a view we see as much in film and other media. And the truth is, there is no up or down in space, so the views aren't grounded in the planet's surface being beneath your feet.

The font is "Impact Label Regular." I chose it in an attempt to replicate the old-style label machines that created the raised labels for technical systems and buttons back in the 60s and 70s. The font also evokes the feel of classified documents, riddled with black redaction marks. The Apollo missions were all part of the space race and NASA's battle with the Soviet Union (not to mention the strong undercurrents of the Cold War). The science and research documents behind the rockets and computer systems were highly classified materials, and so I wanted to make sure to include an homage to this atmosphere.

(via Homework - 3. A Controlled Experiment)

@ashthorp

•Never Normal•

Another small peek at the first chapter. Plus a new abstract design.