It's really satisfying to make someone else's ideas become a visual reality
My name is Bailee. I'm a motion graphics artist at NASA's Conceptual Image Lab.
You know I start by asking a lot of questions and then yeah I still use
pencil and paper. I definitely doodle a lot and take notes
during meetings and then and then make some preliminary sketches.It's really
tempting to start animating right away, but I think sketching those ideas out
first really helps sort of lay the groundwork for the piece. My name is
Jonathan North. The first thing I do is try and get all the information about the
project that I can. I ask all the questions. Like for example, Dragonfly's
going to Titan. I have to know how big Titan is, the surface, air quality, how it
looks. So once I speak with a scientist and get all my information, I then go to
a rough storyboard. My name is Adriana Manrique. As we talk I'll start sketching,
even though if there's like sketches that take 5 seconds, just to get the
ideas down. They help me break down the big project they help me troubleshoot
things that otherwise I might not be able to even ask.
My name is Dongjae Krystofer Kim. Sometimes there are projects that
involve both 3d and 2d together, and I really do enjoy breaking that boundary.
I think there was one piece I build with dark energy for WFIRST, and it was a
highly stylized piece, but it also used 3d models but it was stylized
in a way that it looks 2d but I still had the freedom to move the spacecraft
around in 3d. My name is Jacquelyn DeMink. I tend to be like generally like the
more hand-drawn style of 2d animation. It usually looks more fun and cartoony.
I enjoyed working on the Earth Expeditions project, the five different missions
because I had not only got to do a different style that I'd never worked
with before but also I got to learn about five different missions that NASA
was currently doing. My background, so I was born in the South America in a
country called Guyana. I was there until around 12 or so. Coming
from Guyana, it really did influence my art style and artwork. I kind of tend
to try to make everything go brighter, more fun, add those something in there
a little flair to the work. Like sometimes I'll get a lot of ideas I
guess just from the natural world. Like the way sunlight hits something or maybe
there's like some flowers along a path that have a really interesting sort of
color palette. If I can get away with it, I like to use really bright punchy
colors especially if it's 2d I like to have swooshing lines things that are more
sketchy almost because I think it just gives the work a lot of energy, like a
raw energy that is very appealing.
One of the biggest things is getting the believability of the work. You know, these
are digital images that we are creating to make you believe. It makes science
that would old it otherwise would be dry. It makes it very interesting, it even
makes it very attractive. I think science illustration just makes you very
observant, you know, aside from all the the techniques and stuff that you learn,
it makes you look more closely at the world.