Cassandra Johnson of Astronomy Town approached me with a great idea: vintage-style postcards that fans can fill out and have mailed to their friends and family.
I loved the idea so much because I thought it was both a great way to get the word out about the band, as well as an "in-universe" way to deepen the band's lore. It's as if this is an actual postcard from the fictional town that shares the band's name.
Select slides from the inspo deck. To make sure we were on the same page.
We wanted that classic postcard look, with the letters filled with scenes from the location, as well as a vintage ephemera vibe overall.
To get some of the wonkiness that you see in the letterforms on the vintage postcards, I knew we needed to do it like the designers who made those old cards did it, and hand-letter it.
Lettering & layout sketches.
I scanned the sketch, cleaned it up, and manipulated it digitally to get the final result.
The band's existing logo informed the color palette.
Final postcard design. Front and back.
The illustration consists of: a stock illustration that I colored and manipulated for the hills, a simple gradient sunset using a real photo of stars, and a stylized digital illustration I did for the city.
Details of postcard.
After finalizing the design, I thought it would be cool to see deeper into the world within the lettering, and was imagining a 3D effect that brings depth to that little world.
Setup for the 3D scene.
The setup for the scene is really simple, just separating the layers and scaling to make sure they line up similarly to the flat postcard. For the movement, I found it simpler to move the camera to give the illustion of the card moving, rather than moving the card elements.
Final 3D animation.
Check out Astronomy Town and get your own postcard to support them!