HEMLOCK
GENESIS
This spring, film director Natalia Marty reached out to the Desmond Du It Better with an exciting brief. She had an amazing experimental short film about a girl who is addicted to nature but is deathly allergic to it — and wanted to craft a title sequence tailored to her narrative that explored themes of nature, isolation, and liberation.
CONCEPT — Infinitesimal beauty within
In the film Hemlock, the eponymous heroine is trapped by her father in a room filled with plastic to protect her from allergic reactions to any form of biological nature. How I diagnose this scenario are the themes of beauty of nature that corrupts the flesh; much like condition Hemlock experienced.
PROCESS — Fractal Fever
Undertaking this project requires getting out my comfort zone; that means LEARNING SOMETHING NEW!! I decided to learn Mandelbulb, a 3D fractal software, that allows me create mad-looking fractals using mathematical equations. Below are some work-in-progress renders and the Mandelbulb software in action!
TYPE ANIMATIONS — Type is important
For this project, I animated the typographic reveal that best suit the project: a burn-on effect to echo the visceral emotion of the flesh-devouring nature.
DEEPDREAM GENERATOR — Powering designs through AI
For the title logo, I thought what if I transfused typography with artificial intelligence. Using Google’s Deepdream Generator which is capable of using its own knowledge to interpret a painting style and transfer it to the uploaded image, I transfuse, transform, and transmute my Mandelbulb renders into white type on black background. The results are stunning as you can see below. Instead of seeing AI-enabled tool as replacing the artist, we need to remember that it is a tool to help us do the most mundane and time-tedious tasks; thus allowing us artists to only create without worrying about the technical side.
FINAL DESIGNS
THANK YOU.
