Chasing Reality (Poster, Motion)
Mentor: Tyrone Drake
Our conception of ethics is bound in time. Whether we move from intention to action, or action to consequence, time is unidirectional. We visualize time in many ways, always moving forward. A stopwatch ticking off its discrete micro-units; the sun rising and setting to mark the passage of a day; a photo album in which images mark the advancing age of ourselves and others. But what happens when we change our conception of time?
Chasing Reality explores our conceptions of reality and time. The project is inspired by Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking philosophy, which explores existential, ethical, and epistemological themes. Chasing Reality is divided into 3 Acts: a 10 poster series, a motion piece, and a spatial piece.
Chasing Reality explores our conceptions of reality and time. The project is inspired by Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking philosophy, which explores existential, ethical, and epistemological themes. Chasing Reality is divided into 3 Acts: a 10 poster series, a motion piece, and a spatial piece.
Act 1: Chasing Reality
Typographic Narrative Poster Series
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Typographic Narrative Poster Series
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Act 1: Chasing Reality introduces time as a fourth dimension and alters the viewer’s conception of reality. The poster narrative series mainly focus on transcending time and space and give the illusion of entering another dimension or reality. The straight lines slowly evolve into more abstract shapes and gradients towards the end, hinting that reality is falling apart.
Visual Development Concept
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The colors and graphical elements used in the narrative series are inspired by the tesseract structure in Nolan's film Interstellar. The tesseract is a "hypercube": while in this structure, you can perceive all dimensions and see every moment in the past, present, and future.
Act 2: Into the Rabbit Hole
Motion Animation
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Motion Animation
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Act 2: Into the Rabbit Hole tells the story of falling into the abyss and trying to get out of a dream. The viewers will feel like they are falling into a rabbit hole where things get more and more chaotic, and they eventually lose the sense of time in the end. This motion piece mainly uses black and white colors, with lines that gradually become more chaotic towards the end, enveloping the viewer into a black hole as the lines fill up the whole space.
Act 3: Collision
Public Spatial Series
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Public Spatial Series
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Act 3: Collision is where dreams and reality collide, and uses the idea of tearing paper as if the viewer breaking through the dream and reality space. The spatial series uses only black and white colors to make the narrative stand out. The graphical elements are converted to black and white with a high contrast. Since black and white are inverted colors, the series plays with the idea of inverting spaces.
The paper tears on the left and right posters are inverted colors, which represents how reality and dreams have switched over time, and you are now struggling to figure out if you are still trapped in a dream or traveled back to reality. The middle poster represents a wormhole that interconnects dreams and reality.
The paper tears on the left and right posters are inverted colors, which represents how reality and dreams have switched over time, and you are now struggling to figure out if you are still trapped in a dream or traveled back to reality. The middle poster represents a wormhole that interconnects dreams and reality.