Graphic Design
Illustration, editorial, animation and infographics: work from my studies and practice in which design itself is the tool.
3D animation · Team project · Cinema 4D
An animated short about a cactus who falls in love with a rose. Made by three of us in Cinema 4D. I modelled, rigged and animated the rose and the hand, and did the sound sync for both cuts.
The finished short, 1:38 min. Worth turning the sound on.
My role
Modelling · Rigging · Animation · Sound sync
Tool
Cinema 4D
Team
Group 17, three people
Made
2022, animation module
What I did
Kaktusliebe was teamwork. So it stays clear which parts are mine, here is my share, exactly as the film’s own credits list it:
Modelling the rose
Animating the growing rose
Modelling the hand
Rigging the hand
Animating the hand
Animating facial expressions
Animating cactus and rose
Sound sync for story reel and short
From storyboard to story reel
Before anything was modelled we had to answer one question: what actually happens in this film? We developed the story together, drew the storyboard frame by frame and annotated every shot.
That became a story reel: the drawings cut to the timing of the finished film, already with sound. It let us test the flow while changes were still cheap. Pacing, cuts and the punchline were settled before a single character existed.
Storyboard: every shot drawn and annotated.
Story reel: the same drawings cut to the film’s timing, with sound.
The bloom in wireframe: deliberately kept broad so it can deform.
The rose: fewer details, more movement
I started the rose as a drawing, using the rose from Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland” as a reference. Modelling it exposed the real problem: a rose bush is made of many small leaves and branches. Lovely to render, but very hard to animate cleanly, and every correction costs time.
So I reduced the character: one bloom, one stem, two leaves. The leaves take on the role of arms. That didn’t just make the rose faster to build, it made her playable at all: she can wave, turn away, sink into herself.
“A character that has to move needs fewer details, not more.”
The hand: construction and rigging
The hand grew out of a single box: extrude, subdivide, pull out the fingers, adjust the proportions. Then came rigging: placing a joint skeleton and checking the weighting until every finger moves on its own.
Both were new to me. I worked through them with tutorials and carried each step over onto the character.
The process in fast forward: from the first box to the finished rigged hand.
Joint skeleton inside the hand, every finger individually controllable.
The finished hand, rigged and posed.
Result
Finally the work of all three of us was brought together: cactus, rose, hand, environment, lighting and camera. I also did the sound for the story reel and the short, matching music, effects and picture to each other.
The starting point: the cactus and the still bare rose on the windowsill.
The rose comes into bloom.
Facial expressions carry the whole story.
Editorial · University project · InDesign and Krita
A 24 page magazine about Bahia Street, a Brazilian NGO for girls. The concept, every illustration and the complete layout are mine.
Cover of the 24 page magazine.
My role
Concept, illustration, layout, artwork
Tools
Adobe InDesign, Krita
Scope
24 pages, written in English
Made
2022, editorial design module
Why this magazine
In 2017 I spent a year teaching at Bahia Street in Salvador. After school the organisation gives girls a place to do their homework and extra lessons in art, sport and English. Its stated goal is to break the cycle of poverty through education.
When the editorial design module came up, I did not just want to document that year, I wanted to give the organisation something back. That is why the magazine is written in English: Bahia Street can use it for their own outreach.
The contents page: children’s drawings
I built the table of contents from children’s drawings made in Krita. They hold impressions I gathered while I was with the girls during breaks and lessons: skipping rope, hopscotch, reading at the table.
The deliberately childlike line has a reason. A magazine about a children’s organisation that looks like an annual report puts the adults in front. These drawings put the children in front.
Table of contents, left page.
Table of contents, right page.
Skipping rope in the yard.
Hopscotch with coloured numerals.
Rita, the director. I took her figure from the organisation’s logo so she stays recognisable throughout the magazine.
From report to diagram
The director, Rita Conceição, gave me a written account of how Bahia Street came about: several pages of running text, chronological, full of years.
Instead of cutting it down, I rebuilt it. A road winds across the spread and carries nine stations from 1996 to 2010. Each station got a drawn house and a drawn group of figures. You see at once what the text only makes clear after several paragraphs: the organisation had to move repeatedly before it could buy a house of its own and renovate it.
“Nobody remembers a year. A house that changes, they do.”
The spread “The building”, 1996 to 2010.
1996: the first rented rooms.
2004: the run down house, up for sale.
2010: the same house after renovation.
Colour and frame: two generations
For the background I painted a brush pattern that recalls art classes and craft sessions, in strong, bright colours.
For the two portrait sections I deliberately chose different frames. The current students got the colourful, playful border. The alumni got gold, because Bahia Street gave them the chance at a different future. The frame carries the message before you have read a word.
“The girls”: the current students, colourful border.
“The alumni”: the former students, gold frame.
The whole offer at a glance
Bahia Street does more than tutoring: meals, school supplies, uniforms, outings, healthcare, university exam prep. As a list inside running text, that breadth would have disappeared.
So I drew eight pictograms to one shared system, each on a painted colour disc, and arranged them in a ring around the child figure. The figure in the middle is the actual point: everything around her exists for her.
The eight services as a painted pictogram system.
The finished page “What your help can do”.
Result
24 pages, designed single handed from the first sketch to print ready artwork and written in English so the organisation can use it. The magazine explains who Bahia Street is, where the city of Salvador comes from, how the house came about, who studies there today and how you can support it.
“Salvador da Bahia”: painted maps instead of stock photography.
Back cover.
Photo story · University project · Photography and Photoshop
A two page photo story in the register of teen magazines. Direction, photography, cut outs, compositing, copy and layout are mine.
Page one: “The internship”.
Page two: the cancellation and the ending.
The finished double page. Click to enlarge.
My role
Concept, direction, photography, compositing, layout
Tools
Adobe Photoshop, DSLR camera
Scope
Two pages, fourteen panels
Made
2021, image editing module
The story
It tells the story of my own internship, which the first lockdown ended one day before the flight to Brazil. Three characters appear: me, my colleague Kilian, who got me the placement, and the boss.
Across fourteen panels the arc runs from anticipation through the first news reports and growing worry to the email on the day before departure. It ends on no drama at all, just a quiet line: “Shame, I really did enjoy that first week.”
In front of the bedsheet: the shoot
For the shoot I hung a white bedsheet in my room. The reason is purely practical: against an evenly lit background, people cut out cleanly in Photoshop without hair and edges fraying.
I directed, set the poses and took the photographs myself. Most scenes exist in several takes, some differing only in body angle, so that when compositing I could match where each person was looking. The offices in the finished pages are royalty free photographs I picked by style and colour temperature, so every panel seems to play in the same building.
The opening pose, still in the bedroom in front of the sheet.
The handshake with the boss. The multi person scenes meant briefing and directing friends.
“You are winding me up.” This beat also exists in several takes.
Hand to the cheek, brows raised. A close up that works on expression alone.
Expression as the narrative device
I read through several photo stories and adopted how they tell things. What stood out was how theatrical and exaggerated the faces are. The reason makes sense: a panel has no sound, so the mood has to travel entirely through expression and posture.
I followed that. The poses are deliberately larger than life, so each panel carries its emotion without explanatory text.
“A panel has no sound. Whatever it does not show does not land.”
The background
Plain white behind the panels felt too empty. In other photo stories I noticed that a scene usually sits behind the page as well.
I chose a blurred photograph of a corridor: pleasant colours, no distracting patterns, and a fitting subject, since the story plays out in an office building.
Motion design · Client work · Animate, Illustrator, After Effects
A social media Christmas greeting for the startup eduTec. One week, vertical format, 15 to 30 seconds, and explicitly not boring.
The finished reel, 9:16, about 25 seconds. Worth turning the sound on.
My role
Concept, storyboard, illustration, animation, edit
Tools
Adobe Animate, Illustrator, After Effects
Scope
One reel in 9:16
Made
2022, client work for eduTec
The brief
eduTec builds a learning app that helps students and apprentices prepare for final exams. The company gave me their style sheet, images of their mascot EdGa, a few sample images and cleared music. The greeting had to stand apart from the usual Christmas posts and was allowed to be cheeky.
So I started from the situation the app’s users are actually in. Shortly before exams, a lot of people find it hard to let themselves take a break. That became the idea: not “Merry Christmas” as the message, but “take a break”.
The storyboard
Nine panels, drawn in Krita. A woman sits over her notes, collapses forward in exhaustion, jolts upright, collapses again. Then Christmas is suddenly on the table: a present, a tree, cookies, a candle. EdGa leans into frame from behind and gives a thumbs up.
The running gag of collapsing carries the opening seconds without a word being spoken. That was the condition for a reel most people watch with the sound off.
The complete storyboard, nine panels in Krita.
EdGa in his Christmas costume. The mascot came from the company as a fixed requirement.
Animate first, then the scene change
I built the opening animation in Adobe Animate, my first time with the program. Having worked across the rest of the Adobe tools, a few tutorials were enough, and Animate gave me the control to realise the storyboard exactly as I had planned it.
The plan was to bring the line “Take a break, it’s Christmas time” up over the last frame. It did not work in testing: even with the background blurred, there were too many patterns behind the type. Rather than enlarge or darken the typography, I introduced a scene change and drew my own Christmas decorations in Illustrator, giving the text a calm surface to sit on.
“When type stops being readable on an image, the image is usually the problem, not the type.”
Adobe Animate, the vectorised opening scene on stage.
Bauble garland, drawn in Illustrator.
Presents and fir branches for the closing frame.
After Effects, composition 1080 by 1920, about 25 seconds.
Assembly in After Effects
In After Effects I animated the Illustrator graphics, placed the text and the closing frame, and put the opening animation in front of it.
Finally I arranged the music so its accents land on the movements. I picked the track myself. For the subject, one with bells fitted.
What I would do differently today
Looking back, three graphic styles sit side by side in the reel: the Animate scene, the Illustrator decoration and the supplied mascot. On future projects I would settle on one style earlier and absorb the given assets into it, rather than placing them next to each other.
Background image: Freepik. Music: “christmas-corporate-for-video-long-10796” by Daddy_s_Music via Pixabay.
Infographic · Team project · Illustrator and InDesign
A large format infographic about growing, producing and selling tea. Developed as a team. Every drawing and the typesetting are mine.
The finished poster. Growing on the left in green, consumption on the right in brown.
My share
Illustration and typesetting
Tools
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign
Team
Group work, shared concept
Made
2024, infographic module
My share
We agreed the subject areas, the audience, the colour scheme and the typography together. Turning it into visuals was my part:
Research into what the machines used in tea production actually look like
Sketches and final artwork for every graphic in Adobe Illustrator
26 illustrations, from hand picking to the fermentation oven
Typesetting and arrangement of text and graphics in Adobe InDesign
From structure to arrangement
We gathered material on tea processing and then had to decide what was allowed into the picture at all. That took several sketches before a structure held up.
The journey of the tea runs across the sheet as an arch: growing on the left, processing along the arch in the middle, consumption on the right. The two feet of the arch stand for the two production routes, orthodox hand picking and the mechanical CTC method. Follow the arch alone and you have understood the process without reading a paragraph.
The structure on white, with placeholders for the parts still missing.
The same arrangement with the first colour concept. Dark on dark read badly, which is why the poster ended up going a different way.
Colour as content
For the colour scheme we chose greens and browns, because that is the gradient of the tea leaf itself, from fresh leaf to finished brew. The graphic runs from green to brown left to right, so the colour tells the process too.
The typography is split in two as well. The first half carries a script face whose curves recall plant tendrils. The second half uses an antiqua standing for the pot and the cup the tea ends up in.
#004700
#008200
#00AD00
#00C601
#5C3C00
#9C6500
#C27E00
#DB8F00
26 drawings
For every stage of processing I researched what the machines involved look like, drew them as sketches first, then built them in Illustrator: wire baskets for withering, rolling machines, the fermentation chamber, the drying oven, the sieving plant.
Each graphic exists as its own file and is linked into InDesign. That kept corrections possible right up to the end without touching the layout.
The InDesign document. The links panel on the right shows the 26 placed Illustrator files.
Result
A poster that tells the journey of tea from plant to cup in a single image, covering growing conditions, countries of origin, harvest seasons and the two production methods.