Star Trek Discovery follows Michael Burnham and the crew of the USS Discovery 10 years before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series. Season 3 and 4 had the crew jumping 930 years into the future to find a fractured galaxy devastated by "The Burn", where they help to rebuild the United Federation of Planets.
In seasons 1, 3 and 4, I got to work on both on-set and VFX work for the show while at Junction Box Design. For seasons 3 and 4, I conceptualized, designed and animated an assortment of 3D holograms, which provided an interesting challenge to create a user interface that provided narrative context while matching the hand movements of the actors.
Showrunners: Alex Kurtzman, Michelle Paradise
Client: Paramount+, CBS All Access
Oros' Hologram UI
Oros was an imprisoned scientist, whose goal was to finish building his prototype transporter to escape the Emerald Chain. I was requested to build a unique holo-UI exclusively used by Oros. I conceptualized, designed and animated this holo-UI in Cinema 4D to match the hand movements of the actor as he writes out his equations.
Cat Collar Hologram UI
Book's cat Grudge has a very handy cat collar, that both Book and Burnham use in various situations to escape forcefield cages and as a locator. In both instances, I designed and animated a UI for the cat collar and locator based on the UI from Book's spaceship that helped show the narrative beats of them using the device. It was a fun challenge to create a logic to the animation based on the actor's hand movements.
USS Discovery Holograms
After travelling to the 32nd century, the USS Discovery was retrofitted with holograms. Throughout season 3 and 4, I helped establish the design and animate a selection of holograms for narrative beats while maintaining the design language of the ship.
Personal Holograms
For VFX on Seasons 3 and 4, I designed and animated an assortment of personal holograms for a variety of characters.
In all instances, the challenge was to create a UI with a design and animation logic to match the hand movements and eye lines of the actors while succinctly aiding the narrative beat.
Hologram Armistice Document
In Season 3, the Emerald Chain leader Osyraa proposes an armistice with the Federation. I designed and animated the document based on the eye lines and hand gestures of the actors.
