Project Name: Three Spheres
Client: Personal Project
My Responsibilities: Design, Animation
Music: Ocean of Tears (Instrumental) by Caroline Polachek
Three Spheres was one of the first Design Projects I was assigned to do in School of Motion’s Design Kickstart course. This project was initially a series of six frames that I recently decided to animate into a sequence.
Challenge
“Animate a series of frames I designed several months ago…
… Make sure you keep it mysterious, cool and fitting for the opening sequence of a sci-fi thriller!”
The Set Up
Storyboard
Here are my building blocks. These are admittedly quite simplistic looking frames - there’s nothing special about them. This project was early on in the course - I was still learning about hierarchy and arrangement.
The Brief
In the original Brief, the “client” mentions that this film is a Sci Fi thriller about three mysterious spheres that float in the sky. They move about in an alien manner, they hold some kind of secret and mystery about them.
The main character is fascinated by the spheres and must uncover the truth behind them.
My job is to design and animate an opening credits sequence for this movie.
Design Decisions
Inspirations
I knew that I wanted this sequence to be cool, eyecatching and full of cool transitions. I thought over some intro sequences that I love.
The first half of this title sequence for Dr. No (1962) is incredible and yet so simple! Just a grid of basic shapes - but they still manage to entice the viewer.
This opening for Jojo’s Bizarre adventure has some really interesting 2D moments and changes of perspective. I wanted to bring some kind of crazy Faux 3D energy into my project as well.
For the music - I wanted something that reflects the mysterious energy of the project. The first artist I thought of was Caroline Polachek. Her general vibe is very mystical. This song really encapsulates it. I found an instrumental version of the track to edit with.
Transitions
Once I set up all my frames in After Effects, my next challenge was figuring out the transitions. For a Motion Designer - transitions are gold.
In Design Kickstart, instructor Mike Frederick mentions that transitions are about changing the hierarchy in some significant way. He argues that the most interesting transitions are made from playing with Figure-Ground relations. In other words - positive and negative space. What was the foreground in one scene becomes the background in another.
I felt my first frame sequence didn’t have enough of these transitions so I altered it! This added so much character to my work.
Movement & Overall Look
I opted for a Posterized framerate of 12fps for certain segments and a full 25fps for certain moments in the video. (If I was starting this project from scratch, I’d use 24fps instead of 25fps for my comp framerate. It was quite the oversight 😥)
The jumps to 25fps were specifically for moments that I wanted to emphasise. Certain moments and transitions.
I also used a slightly split RGB channel to give it a slight distorted look. Additionally I added the Optical Compensation effect to distort the image just for the transitions. This definitely had to be subtle - I didn’t want to overdo it. I think there was enough to keep things interesting without annoying the viewer.
Here’s an earlier version!
Final Touches
Textures
My first attempts at this project felt a bit too flat, so I tried to apply some Textures. I half remembered Ben Marriott’s excellent tutorial on adding Noise and Grain to circles in After Effects to make them look like Spheres. This one has more detail in it - but the fundamental idea was the same! A radial gradient gives the illusion of a spherical shape. Paired with a texture and you have yourself a very interesting looking element!
The texture added a lot to my overall look. They now actually looked look spheres. We’re closer but we aren’t quite there yet. I went one step further. The texture I was using was a rectangular PNG. If I animated the PNG moving, I can create the illusion of the sphere spinning!
Sacred Geometry
This is meant to be a Sci-Fi but my favourite Sci-Fis get all freaky and throw in some Sacred Geometry diagrams from mystics of the past. This was a decision I made late in the game with help from my buddy Doug Choi who is a super duper Motion Designer. His advice was that my video looked pretty empty and needed a subject!
The Best Example here would be from Neon Genesis Evangelion. Famously, they had no idea what the iconography meant - they just thought it was cool. Isn’t that enough?
You can see the diagrams below which both depict the Tree of Life. It is an old Kabbalah symbol that maps out the divine emanations of God and the spiritual ascent of humanity. If you’ve ever seen the show these screenshots come from, you’d understand that they still hold meaning.
Interestingly and more relevantly for my project, the first three spheres represent the Divine Realm of God. So that’s more than enough reason to use it in my work.
I’ve always been interested in Mathematics and beautiful geometrical patterns. Plus - I love a bit of religious mysticism. Luckily I found a book - Quadrivium - that goes into detail about how they mix together. It also reminded me of the Holy Trinity. Three circles in any religious symbol is enough for me!
In the book, Quadrivium, the author Miranda Lundy, describes how the Circle is a symbol for Oneness and Unity. If you like this stuff - get the book! (not an affiliate link but, Miranda - I am down for affiliation if you want!). Also check out Neon Genesis Evangelion! It is such a freaky show that takes you on the most insane journey into the human psyche!
I hope you enjoyed that little dive into the Three Spheres piece I made. It was designed by School of Motion for their Design Kickstart course. If you want to learn more about it or want me to give you an in depth rundown of it - shoot me an e-mail!