HEMLOCK
Creative Direction: Desmond Du
Design & Animation: Desmond Du
Type Animation: Zach Hixon
Created: 29 May 2019
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
— Exploring the wonderful microscopic world.
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
What good would it be to do this project, it is always to collaborate with a peer, and tap into their specialty. For this project, I enlisted my trusty type dude Zach Hixon to animate 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 Artificial Intelligence
For the title logo, I thought what if I transfused iy 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.
