Yet again spending more time making fun posters than actually applying for design jobs. Still, it’s a very enjoyable way to waste all of my time.

Personal Project. In an attempt to re-familiarise myself with illustrator after a short break, I decided to create some poster designs based around EAs Video Game ‘Mass Effect’. The outcome was a contemporary take on the wartime propaganda of the early 20th century, taking inspiration from both their style and tone. Anyway, it’s a pretty drastic change from my usual work, but it was nice trying out something new to shake things up a bit.

A sequence of abstract images based upon the birth, growth and decay of stars.

The night sky may seem still, constant and unchanging, but in reality the stars, planets and galaxies above perform a never-ending dance choreographed by gravity and the fundamental laws of the universe. An elegant and complex series of orbits, spins, twists and turns in the ballroom of the universe. Everything that exists is a participant in this great, whirling and relentless dance. A maelstrom of movement in an eternal cosmic ballet.

Encased by thousands of interlocking sheets of ice, Europas fractured surface is an intricate web of criss-crossed cracks and converging trenches. A complex and ever shifting pattern woven by the hand of gravity and the violent nature of the moons own geology.

Orbiting Saturn, the frozen terrain of Enceladus is a world of icy canyons and colossal craters. From within the moons core, water bursts forth to the surface, forming gigantic plumes in the sky above. These continuous eruptions surround Enceladus with spectacular ribbons of shimmering water and ice.

just doodling away.

The universe is filled with sound and celestial music. Every planet, every star, every object that hangs in the night sky emits its own unique song in the language of radiowaves. Modern technology allows us in to listen to this cosmic choir and decypher its various chirps, crackles and static whisper. A hidden language that reveals to us the secrets of the night sky.

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night”

Continuing on from my final year brief, I’m trying to draw parallels between familiar concepts and the world of astronomy. This piece looks as the similarities between the life-cycle of living creatures with the processes and stages involved in the formation of stars. Despite the difference in life-span, (several billion years. give or take) Stars develop in ways that mirror that of organic life, having a distinct birth, infancy, adulthood, old-age and death. These images are trying to convey this by attaching these stages to the corresponding phase in a butterflies natural life-cycle.
To give you a brief overview, Stars are born when huge clouds of interstellar gas called ‘nebula’ condense and collapse under their own gravitational pull. As the cloud collapses, its core becomes more dense and rapidly heats up. Eventually the gas will ignite and fusion occurs, giving birth to a new star. From here the star will burn for several billion years, using up its fuel and raw materials in the process (Our own sun is about half-way through this process). Over time, the star will start to shed its outer levels as it fuel supply starts to run out and its density decreases. During this phase it will expand to several hundred times it original size and slowly strip off excess materials and gas, eventually leaving a small ‘brown dwarf’ star burning at its core. (If the stars big enough, it will instead go ‘supernova’ , releasing all of its energy and materials in a violent explosion) In both cases, the star ‘dies’ and only remenants of its existance remain. The gas expelled from this process however will then go on to become the raw materials that will eventually condense and ignite the next generation of stars, starting the whole process all over again in a never ending cycle of death and re-birth.
There’s really a lot more science about it, but that’s a vague attempt at describing the process. It’s 02:03am and science/the ability to think is beyond me right now so it’s the best I can do under the circumstances.