lbella | REMiniscence

REMiniscence

The story of an alien robot who crash landed on Earth, and how you can help her.

REMiniscence was my capstone project that I worked on from 2019-2020. It's an interactive project about dreams and memories. I wanted to make my capstone project something engaging that the audience could directly interact with and immerse themselves in. I wanted to encourage interaction and the spirit of creation.

Since over the years I've grown really fond of making dreamy or surreal projects, I wanted to brand a project with a specific identity that conveys concepts like "dreams," "weird," and "whimsical."

I also wanted to incorporate my various skills into one large design project. Initially aiming to bring in my illustration and storytelling but also ended up incorporating motion graphics, video editing, character design, merchandise design, and concepting.

It was already not easy from the start but having to deal with a global pandemic right before the end of my capstone journey made about 100 times worse. There were many things that I had originally planned that I immediately had to pivot and revamp but somehow, I got it all finished.

REMiniscence is an interactive project revolving around the story of Remi, an alien robot who crash lands on Earth while on a very important mission. She learns that human experiences can provide fuel for her to get back home. The audience can help Remi on her journey by telling her their dreams and helping visualize the dreams for Remi to teach her about Earthlings.

The Beginning

Even from the very first iteration of the project I knew my 3 keywords and I wanted to stick to these themes of "dreams," "weird," and "whimsical."

(Pages 14-15 from Behind the Clouds: The Full Process Book)

I did a lot of market research in the very beginning of the project to see what the ages, genders, and interests were of anyone who seemed even a little bit interested in my capstone. I asked my classmates, I asked my closest friends, I asked people on social media. I also made sure that with this survey I asked for dreams and if any creatives wanted to contribute to the project.

(Pages 34-39 from Behind the Clouds: The Full Process Book)

Originally my capstone was a completely different beast where I wanted to make an anthology comic with some kind of audience interaction. Slowly over time the project changed dramatically and turned into an audience interactive dream project.

Once I settled on that concept I was prepared to pick out a name and get started on the branding.

Coming up with the name for the project wasn't that easy either, but after doing naming exercises and landing on "REMiniscence," a lot of things started to click for me. I went full speed ahead doing logo sketches and font tests for the wordmark.

(Pages 42-45 from Behind the Clouds: The Full Process Book)

(Pages 52-53 from Behind the Clouds: The Full Process Book)

(Pages 50-51 from Behind the Clouds: The Full Process Book)

The Middle

It took me a very long time and many iterations to get to this logo that you see today, but at some point it clicked that this wasn't a typical brand identity for a business and more so an identity for a creative collective's project.

Around this time was also when I started to consider making a mascot for this project, and that's really when the story of Remi began.

By the time I had finished my first semester working on my capstone, I was completely drained and exhausted. For the past several months at that point, even back before my senior year officially started, I had been thinking about my capstone nonstop. It was all consuming, I couldn't think about anything else. I was constantly thinking about new ideas, running them by other people, making new sketches, letting my ideas get WAY too ambitious, and on top of that going through big critique sessions where I presented my project multiple times to all my peers and professors and at that point, kept getting a lot of feedback I wasn't happy to hear but definitely took into consideration to make the project better.

By the time winter break started I almost felt physically ill just thinking about this project. I was well overdue for a break where all I did was just hung out with friends and played video games for weeks straight.

Little did I know, taking a break would be exactly what I needed to advance my project further. I ended up sketching ideas for an alien mascot to represent this project and it was like I was reenergized instantly to work on this project again.

Initial mascot sketches I created during winter break.

New logo sketches I made after I got inspired to create a mascot.

(Pages 64-67 from Behind the Clouds: The Full Process Book)

Ever since I was a child, I loved reading. Getting lost in new and different worlds was my favorite pastime for many years. In recent years I've discovered that I love storytelling and have developed the habit of writing down any idea I had in mind for a story, especially if I thought it was a stupid idea. I now have a great collection of stories and ideas that I can look back on and incorporate into different projects. This practice of mine is what initially sparked my senior studio idea and over time I managed to refine this project into its own little story.

An excerpt from my artist statement written for the digital capstone exhibition.

The End

Once I settled on a mascot design it was like everything fell into place. Remi, the mascot, could be a mascot, a symbol/logo for the project, there could be a story based around her and her journey and all of it was extremely fun to work on.

I wanted to make an alien character that also wasn't scary. My project was already kind of strange and had sort of a multi-layered concept that took me a while to explain at the time, so I wanted Remi to look alien but completely approachable and not ominous and creepy.

I had to go through multiple poster and illustration designs before I settled on the final one that had the ideal mood and aesthetic that I could carry onto the rest of the project.

Initial poster designs

Work In Progress sketches and initial painting of the newer direction I went into after some feedback about making it more approachable.

The final poster design that helped me set the mood and tone for the rest of the project.

My 3 poster series I illustrated and designed so that each panel works both together and separately. Each of these were hung up around campus.

(Pages 86-87 from Behind the Clouds: The Full Process Book)

A solo illustration I made of Remi trying to communicate with an Earthling, but they can't understand her.

REMiniscence is the story of Remi, an alien robot who crash lands on Earth while on a very important mission for her home planet. While she's stranded on Earth with no fuel and no idea how to get around, she discovers that human dreams and experiences have enough energy to power her ship. The REMiniscence Project is the collection of these experiences that Remi can use as fuel to return home.

Mockups of sticker designs I made with the intent to pass out at the physical exhibition.

REMiniscence is an interactive project about strange dreams and weird memories. It's a project in which the audience can submit dreams and can also help visualize the dreams for Remi, who has no clue about how things work on Earth.

The main website is a way for the audience to submit their dreams to the project. The accompanying zine collects some of the art responses and their accompanying dreams and presents them in a printed format.

My goal with REMiniscence was to create something that others could immerse themselves in, that can encourage interaction and the spirit of creation. Something that, unbeknownst to me when I started this project in 2019 would end up becoming really needed in these unprecedented quarantine times.

Continued excerpt from my artist statement.

You're probably wondering why I keep mentioning that I wanted to "encourage the spirit of creation" with this project. Well the zine that I originally wanted to make titled: The Captain's Log, didn't exactly turn out as planned.

I had a nice group of 10 artists that I either knew or word got around to them from my personal social media about this project and they said they were available and interested while they filled out the dream collection survey. By the time the deadline for everyone's artwork came around only 2 out of the 10 people responded.

I had a total of 40 dreams and I had already thrown out the idea of illustrating them all myself due to time it would take to do and time until the spring semester was over.

And then once the pandemic hit, there was no way I felt comfortable reaching out to the other people who were most likely panicked and anxious about their health and their families' health and the future at the time. I know because I was the exact same way once lockdown happened.

So I had to make a very hard pivot and at the last minute. I had to turn it into a social media campaign where the instagram account for my project now became a hub for people to look at the dreams posted on the account, see other people's artistic responses that got posted, and hope that it inspires more people to join in and send their artistic responses to me. And it actually worked pretty well for something that was very small and very last minute.

A solo illustration I made for Remi and also posted on the Instagram.

Stickers that I actually printed and would've LOVED to hand out as freebies if we had a physical exhibition, but I got to repurpose this design for January 2021's Sticker Club

A preview of the zine titled; The Captain's Log.

This would've been the cover illustration for the zine if we made it to that point.

Snippets of social media posts. More can be found on the project's instagram.

The Full Process Book

The following is the complete digital pdf documentation of my year long journey working on this project. It discusses all my stumbles and struggles, little victories and massive triumphs. All of it designed by me, of course.

I know I sprinkled some excerpts from this book throughout the project page but if you're interested in reading the full story of REMiniscence front to back with all the context, feel free to read my 100 page journey.

Graphic Design

There's lots of things I love about graphic design, but I have a heavy lean towards brand identity, logo design, and motion graphics.

Virtual-K

My little art shop (or "art diner") where I sell my work in the form of stickers, prints, posters, keychain charms, and more!

LBella Branding 2020

Bold, colorful, and fun brand identity design I've done for myself!

"Paprika" Poster Redesign

A movie poster redesign for the 2006 animated film, Paprika.

Virtual-K Sticker Club

A monthly "sticker of the month" club that people can subscribe to and get fun stickers in the mail each month. Works as an extension of my art diner, Virtual-K.