project 3000.
what is this?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if the world ended itself, only to rebirth and start all over again? 'Project 3000' is exactly that. In one of my fictional writing classes, I came up with this concept for a Bildungsroman story where one of the two main characters is a time-traveler who never ages, never dies, and never discovers why the world is stuck in a hard reset after the year 3000.
While she's stuck in this infinite prison of a timeline, she collects stories, papers, findings, and puts them all in this notebook. For my Title Sequence Capstone Project, I played on this idea of the world repeating itself but also introducing a multi-verse layer to it. Most things never change but rather are re-altered in a slightly different font. The time traveler's notebook is my Title Sequence! It encapsulates her confusion, anger, and pessimistic take on what's happening and why it's happening to her.
I had so much fun creating my story and letting it completely flourish into this collage/graphic design masterpiece. If you would like to learn more about how I did this project, scroll below.
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Step 1. The Materials
Since my main character is a time traveler, that means she's seen, felt, and truly experienced the world as a whole. She is a collector of many things; pictures, posters, postcards, whatever she can get her hands on.
So, creating an eclectic style means I would have to use 'found' materials for my project. The local thrift store over by Loyola's campus, Green Element, was the perfect place to find everything I could use to collage. I found so many old books and photos that were perfect for this project!
Besides thrifting, the only other items I needed to buy was a notebook, hot glue sticks, and clear tape. These elements would add to the craftiness of the character's journal.
Step 2. The Collaging
After collecting all of my materials which includes books, poems, cards, posters, etc., I'm ready to sit down and collage. I wanted each piece to represent some sort of boredom and anger. These needed to be pieces that show she wanted time to pass but also feel really angry at the world. Asking "why me?" over and over again can make anyone go through a number of emotions, and that's something I knew I wanted to portray in my book.
There's a sort of anger she holds towards everyone, let alone the world, that I loved exploring. Her opinions, her notes, her whit; these are all elements that make up her and her personality. Showing her emotions in collage forms without actually seeing the main character portray them in the title sequence is so interestingly beautiful.
Thoughtfully collaging each piece to make my character feel whole did take about 6-7 hours in total, but I'm extremely happy with the range of emotionally I believe I perfectly captured for a character who doesn't know why these things are happening to her.
Step 3. The Filming
To film this book, I tabbed every page and numbered them 1-20 in a random sequence because I wanted the pages to go back and forth from each other. The character's timeline isn't linear, so I felt the pages flipping in chronological order would not fit the journey of our character.
Once tabbed, I had a room light stand and phone prop set up in one of the art rooms at Loyola. Since I recorded this sequence with my phone, I needed a stand that could give a birds eye view of the book and also lay horizontally.
Setting up my recording station was super easy, and I was soon ready to hit 'record'. I let my phone record for at least one minute per page because this would guarantee I have more than enough footage to work with. Flipping the pages without showing my hands was the hardest part, but I made sure to have extra-long tabs on each page to grab and flip from.
I did a couple takes for this project because I wanted the footage to be as high quality as possible. I knew during editing I would zoom into certain sections of each page, and capturing that detail was a huge make or break.
Step 4. The Editing/Execution
Editing my project took just as long as the collaging, maybe even longer. I used both Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects for this project, but mainly relied on After Effects for my quick fonts, fast jumps, and timely zoom-ins. Premiere helped me cut down my audio as well as my original video from 20 minutes to 5 minutes which was plenty of footage for backlog and timing my zooms or cuts.
For my font choices, I had this idea of using all 7 uniquely different fonts at the same time and creating this "controlled chaos" throughout the video. Sometimes, there's only one font if the collage has a lot of elements. But other times, the fonts would go crazy, especially in the open pages of the book I intentionally left blank for text. Sometimes, my text would stay in a particular area feeling like it's meant to be typed on the page, and other times my font would shift and make the viewer question why the text occasionally bounces around.
The last element I wanted to include in this project is the idea of a multiverse. Does my main character relive in our version of Earth, or does it sometimes change into an alternate reality? This is where an AI element comes into play. For example, I have an image of what looks to be the Eiffel Tower, but how it can look into a world that's 2D, rustic, whimsical, the list goes on.
Turning all of my AI images into really short videos to then add on top of my physical polaroids alludes to the idea that my main character has already photographed these landmarks multiple times. It's not her first time seeing these cities and definitely not the first version she has seen either. I believe adding this element or "controlled chaos" gives my fictional story more meaning.
Final Thoughts
This has been by far one of my favorite projects I've ever done. It's entirely what I stand for as a creative and I'm so proud of myself for creating such a unique and beautiful project. It perfectly encapsules how much I learned in the graphic design program as Loyola and I'll always remember how amazing this department is.
From the beginning of this project, my professor couldn't have been more pumped about my project. I remember pitching this to him and after my research he goes, "Can I work on this with you because holy crap this sounds amazing!"
After showing the class my project, they were in awe. I had so many of my peers compliment my work and even some asked questions about my fictional character. My professor gave me a glowing recommendation for an internship I ended up landing because of how impressed he was with my project.
This project allowed me to be weird; to take risks I normally wouldn't take for a class, and it let me grow as a creative. I learned why aesthetics and mood boards are important to follow, why doing something "because it's cool" isn't an acceptable answer, and how intent drives purposeful content.
graphic design.
