Pop Up Magazine: A Journey of Abstract Escape

Rafael de Araujo's Award-Winning Design Explores the Concept of Escape

The design was inspired by clean, minimal shapes like doors and eyes, but mostly abstract forms. The animation and music were synced in perfect harmony, creating a poetic flow throughout the piece. The theme of escape was chosen for its variety of meanings and interpretations, from playful to serious. The project was a journey to explore escape in abstract ways, suggesting constant escape but also the opening of doors to discover something new.

Pop Up Magazine was created entirely digitally, using a mix of cel animation techniques and keyframes interpolations with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. The project was delivered in variations of a 1-minute piece, a 10-second bumper, and three 3-second bumpers, all in full HD 1920 x 1080 pixels.

The design process began in June 2019, with Araujo based in Los Angeles and the exhibition starting in California in September 2019. The project was a collaboration between Araujo and Pop-Up Magazine Art Direction, with music by the Magik*Magik Orchestra and composed by Minna Choi.

The main challenge was in the creative process, specifically in creating a coherent abstract piece in just one minute. The piece was divided into an introduction with doors opening (interpreted as 'escaping'), then presenting the main character in the shape of a circle, escaping from a pattern of squares, falling and getting stuck in a puzzle, escaping from other eyes, cities, and nature, and so on.

The design was awarded Silver in the A' Movie, Video and Animation Design Award in 2020, recognized for its outstanding expertise and innovation. The award is given to top-of-the-line, creative, and professionally remarkable designs that showcase a remarkable level of excellence and introduce positive feelings, amazement, and wonder.