"But dad... Why didn't they use Google Maps?"
"Oh sweetie, in that time and age there weren't cellphones nor GPS like we have today"
"Then how didn't they get lost?"
The stars always were more important and useful than we could think. Join Maia and her dad to find out more about their uses.
This short animation was created for my internship at Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço de Lisboa (IASTRO) back in 2020.
Software used: Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Audition
Animation
Side note: The animation is in Portuguese and there are no English subtitles or an English version
Character studies
Getting the idea for the characters and how they should look was a pretty fast process ending up choosing the first variant and color combination.
The characters consist of Maia, a curious little girl who cannot fall asleep during a camping trip, and her father, who is always ready to give answers to Maia's questions. Being the middle of the night they are both in their pajamas, which if looked closely have bottoms that represent various types of stars. This serves to draw the focus back to the theme of the animation and to give a bigger representation of how they can appear, the father's bottoms have the constellations represented in a more familiar way with the white dots representing the stars and the lines connecting, while Maia's bottom have a more childish representation of stars.
Backgrounds
Campire
Campfire | Close-up
Northern Hemisphere | Forest
Southern Hemisphere | Sydney
Forest
Animation stills
