Origin: Day to Night

Overview

A looping hero animation made for Origin, a concept website for deep sea bio-medical research. A three-masted ship rides the swell past a striped lighthouse, and the same shot moves from bright day through sunset to a moonlit night, with the lighthouse beam sweeping out to sea.

The challenge

A hero loop has to hold attention without fighting the page. The day and night versions had to match closely enough for the light to change inside one continuous shot, and the art had to break apart into layers that could move on the web.

Approach

1. I developed the scene as a painterly illustration: faceted cliffs, a red and white lighthouse, turquoise swell and a tall ship flying a long red pennant.
2. I made a day and a night version of the same frame, swapping the sun for a full moon, cooling the water and switching on the lighthouse, then animated both and blended them into one day to sunset to night loop.
3. For the site I split the artwork into layers: empty day and night backgrounds, a cut-out ship, a separate pennant and strips of near and mid waves, so the hero can move in parallax as you scroll.
4. The frames were generated and refined with AI image and video tools, then cut, graded and looped in After Effects.