NEON GENESIS EVANGELION TITLE SEQUENCE REDESIGN

Creative Direction: Desmond Du
Producer: Desmond Du
Design & Animation: Desmond Du, Zach Hixon, Katherine Monday, Granger Eltringham, Lauren Kittle

Created: 29 May 2019

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 ampliflcation 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.

CONCEPT

Humanity is redeemed and liberated through its demise and destruction.

“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 de nitively to put an end to the failure of humanity. The nal 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.
• Ordinaryworld|distraught&reluctantyouth
• Call to Adventure — Shinji is called to action immediately to ght 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 rst threshold —(docking bay & ghting the 4th angel and going berserk /Once having transversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously uid, ambiguous where he must survivive a succession of trial.
Berserk — Crossing the threshold / madness / su ering
Visuals: Saturation of the color red, blood, the red uid of the EVAs.
Light — Vision of the God & divinity / destructive power / revelations Visuals: Flames, explosions and cross-shaped energy explosions as grandeur of sublime. Visceral / Raw response is achieved through biomorphic form, visuals that reference the mind & the body, nerves, copulation, connection, trauma, severance, release, pain, and death. Tactile visuals with tension. Psyche – marked by scratchy lines
Biomorphic — Life in essence
Visuals: Mandelbulb fractal, microscopic imagery
ANGEL- Majestic cleanse – Sublime
TYPE
For credits using mono typeface that allows for FUI Integration.

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. The specimen we used were: dead moth, a living caterpillar, a ower, red thread spool, drillbit, Space Fidgit – the cosmic color-changing disc toy from the ’70s and ’80s,

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

— Powering designs through Google’s Deep Dream generator.

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. Below are designs of my lPepper’s Ghost box.’s oculus in its original vector design, lasercut form, deep-dream translated visuals.