Volume 41

As Pfizer and National Geographic had the foresight to film their process, we had a great amount of information and footage to inform our graphic contribution. Our role involved visualizing portions of the film’s narrative that were focused on delivering the audience scientific information, ranging timelines to actual models of the viruses and how they operate. Designing for a topic that has been so relevant culturally for the past year was an exciting challenge that we tackled head on.

Getting the details of the science right required a crash course for our team that was provided to us by The Documentary Group and Pfizer. We learned everything from how the Coronavirus attacks cells in the body to how vaccines work to what differentiates an mRNA vaccine.

Having the bones of that scientific skeleton enabled us to build in 3D with an informed perspective. Pfizer was even so kind as to provide us with some 3D models they had on hand, so it was a collaborative process to get that science precise.

Check out some of the microscopic imagery we received from Pfizer below:

In addition to our 3D lift, we did a fair portion of work in 2D to illustrate the timelines and history of the mRNA vaccine as well as the passage of the vaccine from trials to market. Taking a mixed approach of 2 & 3D allowed us to be super clear in the messaging.

Thank you to to our partners at The Documentary Group, Pfizer and Nat Geo for bringing us on board to create a momentous and informative piece.

With any project centered around 9/11, you want to take an approach that prioritizes sensitivity to the subject. Because of this, we did a lot of our initial thinking and design using the lidar technique - a dark, pointellated world where pictures are created via a constellation of dots. The semi-transparency of this technique in design allows for gravitas in the graphics while the subject matter is still visible. This technique became a throughline for both films in this collaboration.

For Four Flights, we took the look we’d established with the lidar technique and sought to apply it to the specific scenes selected for recreation. The recreated scenes ranged from the planes sitting at the airport through to some more sensitive scenes of the interior of the cockpit as it was stormed during United Flight 93. We developed a map language to trace the flights’ individual journeys throughout the day and maintained a connected design to visually tell that story.

BigStar artist Nick Donatelli utilized Houdini to design the lidar plane scenes for the flights and then BigStar Creative Director John Leamy set up all the previous scenes in Cinema4D.

Contributing to 9/11 focused work is something we are honored to do on an annual basis. This twentieth anniversary is particularly momentous because it is a reminder how resilient our country and especially New York City can be in the face of adversity. Special thanks to our longtime partners at Left/Right who continue to collaborate with us year over year on telling these meaningful stories about September 11, 2001 and how far we’ve come in the twenty years since.

The 3D graphics were layered in with illustration and typography and then animated to create a beautiful homage to the buildings in the film’s title sequence.

Frequently, our work on 9/11 pieces is understandably emotionally charged, so delving into the architecture on this film was a welcome respite, and even humorous at times such as the moments the film recounts the city’s negative reception to the towers’ impact on the skyline during construction.

Contributing to 9/11 focused work is something we are honored to do on an annual basis. This twentieth anniversary is particularly momentous because it is a reminder how resilient our country and especially New York City can be in the face of adversity. Special thanks to our longtime partners at Left/Right who continue to collaborate with us year over year on telling these meaningful stories about September 11, 2001 and how far we’ve come in the twenty years since.