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Planetary Analyzer Concept

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Planetary Analyzer Concept Overview

This Planetary visual design concept was a small internal based project focused on showcasing the video and interaction capabilities of the ViewPoint kiosk. The requirements included full screen 1920×1080 video, image sequence animations, 3D models and a visually striking user interface. This was meant to be a marketing showpiece in a show real so specific features and the ux were not the sole focus.

My Role

Space and specifically Mars have been focused upon in the media. Nasa, SpaceX and government officials have been focusing on the mission to mars program and what that means for our current generation and the future generations to come. Exploring our solar system and planets like Mars is incredibly important. After coming up with this initial idea I created a visual design inspired by technology and space travel, modeled/textured four separate planets and brought them to life through key framing their rotations.

Challenge

This internal marketing project had a short deadline and did not allow for much iteration or testing. Due to the time constraints I was only able to create a few different screens which meant that each screen needed to convey interesting and visually stunning ui elements. A small selection of elements and interactions were defined and animated because of the limited timeline.

Solution

The design’s focused was centered around a user being greeted with a login screen for the fictitious application. Once the user entered in their credentials a home screen would present earth as the default planet selected. After reviewing the information the user would select Mars and analyse the orbital speed, patterns and surface area. Most of the allotted time was spent on defining the final visual design, 3D models and motion graphics. I created a working prototype using ViewPoint that would allow the marketing team to video someone walk through the different screens and selections.

Planetary Analyzer sketch description...
My initial notes, sketches and rough user flow for the project. Some of the screens including the planetary comparison feature were not included in the final deliverable.

 

Blender 3D model description...
3D models of Earth, Mars, Venus and the Moon were created in Blender. The textures used were pulled from Nasa’s free texture asset library. The models were animated and rendered out as image sequences for later use in After Effects and the ViewPoint editor.

 

Visual concept description...
The final visual designs presented in sequential order. This was a fun project and allowed me to draw inspiration from some of the latest movies and video games to hit the market. I went with a darker theme that really allowed the vibrant planets, numerical graphs and text to separate from the background and capture the user’s attention.