do androids dream?
For a class project at RMCAD, I made a title sequence for an imagined adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel behind Blade Runner. I designed and animated it in yellow and black, using flat shapes and Saul Bass’s title work as a reference. The film credits are fictional.
The concept
I started by reducing the city to silhouettes. Towers, roads, a sun, and a lone figure gave me enough to build the sequence around.
Against the yellow sky, the black buildings feel heavy. I used changes in scale and composition to give the sequence variety within those two colors.
Visual language
I drew the skyline in Illustrator as flat vector shapes, then animated it in After Effects. The buildings dwarf the figure, giving the city a sense of scale without adding much detail.
A small amount of chromatic aberration adds colored fringes to the edges, like electronic interference. It makes the otherwise clean shapes feel slightly unstable.
Motion & pacing
The 40-second sequence moves from the title into the skyline, then breaks the perspective with an inverted city and road. The final shots bring in the sun and a figure surrounded by radiating architecture.
Changes in perspective connect the scenes and make the city feel disorienting. I cut the sequence to The Doors’ “End of the Night.” The video here is silent; you can watch it with sound on YouTube.
