crash course zoology
Crash Course is a YouTube channel and community that makes learning accessible for students in high school and college through its colorful graphics and whimsical animation.
Illustration and Animation done by Thought Café.
Under Thought Cafe, I was in charge of giving the Linguistics and Zoology series of Crash Course a coherent and consistent visual identity to tie each series together.
Crash Course Zoology
Watch the series here!
Crash Course Zoology Playlist (YouTube)
initial thoughts
Crash Course Zoology also benefited from having a color palette ready to work with. The colors chosen for this show was more of deep earth tones, various greens and blues, and pops of bright yellows and reds to mimic the colors of a tropical forest.
In developing the visual identity for this series, I decided that the animals would take the center stage, like a nature documentary, but also taking in the point of view of a zoologist or entomologist doing some field research.
I had a clearer idea of what I wanted to create, therefore moodboards and experimentations weren’t made in its initial stages.
type moments
The type moments in Crash Course features a quote from the script and presents it in a textual context to allow the viewers to follow along and make note of any keywords or phrases important to the subject. It can also feature a definition and/or something not said by the host.
full screen graphics highlights
on-screen graphics highlights
thumbnail illustrations
The thumbnails were based on the design of Safari Cards and the illustrations were taken from the episode to fully feature the animal and its environment as its focal point.
intro animation
The animation was done by the animator of our team, and the environment and animal illustrations were created by me with a helping hand from other talented illustrators in our team.
Check it out in higher quality over on YouTube!
