Neon Genesis Evangelion Title Sequence Redesign
GENESIS
In order to raise the game of our design skills, Desmond DuItBetter, Granger Eltringham, Zach Hixon, Katherine Monday, and Lauren Kittle teamed up for the most epic collaboration to redesign a title sequence and branding multimedia for the TV series: Neon Genesis Evangelion.Being able to work with more people means there were lots of room for exploration of new visual language and amplification of existing ones. Some of these mediums explored are the crazy 3D fractal software Mandelbulb, microscope videography, DeepDream artificial intelligence image transfusion, shooting live-footage, After Effects animation and compositing and so on.
Evangelion is the gospel of the Kingdom of God where the angels are not harbingers of death but rather agents of rebirth. The angels are the corrective forces and the higher powers of the universe must intervene definitively to put an end to the failure of humanity. The final establishment of the Kingdom of God can only be realized through the demise of humanity.
The opening sequence will be a vision of the catastrophic end of the world through the lens of the angels. It will mark the end of an old world and the emergence of a new. The new world is the Kingdom of God as Adam and his children see t.
The structure of the narrative is guided by biblical events and archetypes featuring visuals pertaining to angels, technology, color spectrum, and light.
GENESIS
“The sun will be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes” (Joel 2:31). Evangelion is the gospel of the Kingdom of God where the angels are not harbingers of death but rather agents of rebirth. The angels are the corrective forces and the higher powers of the universe must intervene definitively to put an end to the failure of humanity. The final establishment of the Kingdom of God can only be realized through the demise of humanity.
The opening sequence will be a vision of the catastrophic end of the world through the lens of the angels. It will mark the end of an old world and the emergence of a new. The new world is the Kingdom of God as Adam and his children see t.
The structure of the narrative is guided by biblical events and archetypes featuring visuals pertaining to angels, technology, color spectrum, and light.
The title sequence is built around the Hero’s Journey formula.
• Ordinary World|distraught & reluctant youth
• Call to Adventure — Shinji is called to action immediately to fight aliens by order of his cold and dictatorial father
• Refusal | Driven by guilt to save the world
• Supernatural aid — Evas (giant machines)
• Mentor — Misato
• Crossing the first threshold —(Docking bay & fighting the 4th angel and going berserk / Once having transversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous where he must survive a succession of trial.
• Ordinary World|distraught & reluctant youth
• Call to Adventure — Shinji is called to action immediately to fight aliens by order of his cold and dictatorial father
• Refusal | Driven by guilt to save the world
• Supernatural aid — Evas (giant machines)
• Mentor — Misato
• Crossing the first threshold —(Docking bay & fighting the 4th angel and going berserk / Once having transversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous where he must survive a succession of trial.
PROCESS — HOW WE DID IT
The bread-and butter for this project was the Adobe Creative Suite. We would do most of the compositing (sometimes even designing) in Adobe After Effects. We would Trapcode Form and Particular to generate particles and ambiguous fluid forms. There was also an exploration of a 3D fractal software called Mandelbulb to generate a cross-shaped fractal that relates to the biblical symbolism in the TV series. We also made of Cinema4D to model and animate mechanical models seen in the title sequence.Check our the video for the compositing process in After Effect.
PROCESS— Exploring the wonderful microscopic world.
Using a setup of a Canon T2I with adapter attached to a microscope, connected to 4K monitor to see visuals in full clarity, our team ventured a videographic journey into the infinite and infinitesimal world of our observable reality. The specimen we used were: dead moth, a living caterpillar, a ower, red thread spool, drillbit, Space Fidgit – a cosmic color-changing disc toy from the ’70s and ’80s.
DEEPDREAM GENERATOR — Powering designs through Artificial Intelligence
We are ushering a new age when artificial intelligence is become an inherent tool of the world. It is not something to demonize about but rather it indicates a shift in how technology becomes even more integrated into digital production. Using Google DeepDream Generator, I was able do style transfers from source images into my selected image. This technology does pose the question: is the result of the AI-created image an original? Does the IP belongs to me or the original source
SOCIAL & MOBILE TREATMENT
In order to echo the visceral response from the series, we put quick cuts of microscopic footage and type to arouse curiosity and urgency into a social media format. We also designed vector characters adapted from Angels from the TV series using Adobe Illustrator and After Effects to remind viewers of significant iconography.
