On October 3rd, we were briefed on the university-led project in collaboration with Blink Industries through a presentation given by Ben Lole. The task was simple enough: create a 5-15 second animation of Blink Industries’ logo, acting as an ident for the company to post online. We were also given full creative freedom over what to create and how to create it, as long as it contained the logo in some fashion, which was a very exciting opportunity.

Looking for inspiration, I checked out some videos online showing MTV‘s old animated idents. I found that some of my favorites were the ones that told short stories with their visuals, like an artist painting the logo on the spot, or a man getting his hair cut in the shape of the logo. I tried applying that logic to my work, and started thinking of how Blink’s logo could be visualised in a creative manner.

The main imagery is obviously a flag, with the letter ‘i’ acting as a flagpole. This made way for a few ideas (a country flag, a pirate ship, etc.), and the one that stuck with me the most was the “moon landing” shot, with an astronaut placing a flag on a newly reached planet. I love creating concepts based on space, so this idea immediately caught my interest. I sketched a few ideas down on a whiteboard, allowing myself to make simple, erasable drawings without thinking about them too much.

The idea started off simple: just an astronaut planting the Blink flag into a planet, with a hologram projector forming the “Industries” part of the logo. Realising that was a very simple idea, I started thinking of what else I could add to it. I wanted something that could relate to the “blink” of their logo: as fun as the flag is, it doesn’t really give much of a meaning to the name. Making the planet resemble a floating eyeball seemed like a cool idea, so I sketched it out a few times: it looked a bit gross (poking a stick into an eye isn’t very pleasant imagery), but I liked the core idea, so I kept it in mind for later.

I also considered making the astronaut have a big eyeball for a head, treating them more like an alien. It seemed like a fun character design, so I used that basic design moving forward.

I also started thinking of the framing for the shots: after a few ideas, I decided that the most satisfying one was starting off with the astronaut planting a tall flag and activating the hologram, before panning up to show the logo.

With the core idea down, I started thinking of the thumbnails and storyboarding needed for the animating to begin. I thought of making the planet have rocky eyelids on the top and bottom, so as to not make the flag sticking into it not look gross.

Starting off showing the planet, the camera would then zoom into the astronaut, as it plants the flag into the ground and extends it up to outside the frame. After a kick to the projector, he would pose and let the camera move up to show the formed Blink Industries logo, with the backdrop of space and stars.

However, this is where I started wondering over my character design: would it be redundant to have a big eye as both the protagonist and setting? To test it out, I drew a new character besides my previous design: a simple alien. I also drew a quick thumbnail test on Storyboard Pro.

I thought about these changes, and eventually spoke about them with Rosa Beiroa: she believed having them both be eye-themed didn’t seem redundant, and if I was going to make the protagonist an alien, I should make his design a bit more interesting. As of now, I’m not sure which direction I’ll go in, but I do like the eye-based design.

I also mentioned how I’m uncertain over how simple my shot choices are, so I might experiment with other layouts over the next week. Still, I feel I’m going in the right direction, and I’m having a lot of fun with this idea. I’ll do my best to create as good a project as possible.