Unseen Energies
DOCUMENTARY CONCEPT + VISUAL DEVELOPMENT
For an upcoming feature documentary exploring extraordinary forms of human perception, I was invited to develop a visual language for the film’s animated sequences, as well as a design system for the graphics featured throughout.
The challenge was to translate experiences that cannot be photographed—internal states of awareness, emotional resonance, and moments of unseen connection—into imagery that could support the film’s narrative without feeling explanatory or didactic. Rather than traditional infographics, the goal was to create animation that felt atmospheric, intuitive, and emotionally grounded.
The resulting visual approach blends painterly gradients, luminous color fields, and subtle 3D spatial movement to create a dreamlike visual environment. Human figures appear as anonymous silhouettes within shifting fields of light, allowing viewers to project themselves into the experience while preserving the privacy of the individuals whose stories are being told.
Three visual motifs emerged during development:
Electric Auras
Kirlian-inspired halos and luminous edges used to illustrate moments where unseen forces briefly become visible.
Prismatic Distortions
Refraction and layered color fields suggesting communication and perception occurring just beyond ordinary sight.
The Soft World
Expansive atmospheric spaces that visualize emotional and telepathic connection as evolving landscapes of color and light.
Electric Auras
When the story needs precision we shift into the first of our three visual motifs, Electric Auras, our language for representing complicated concepts that need quick bursts of visual support, the way infographics might be used in a more traditional documentary. Against a pure black stage, subjects ignite with Kirlian coronas: razor-bright fringes, ultraviolet cores, pulsing RGB halos. The look is half lab scan, half northern lights, so information feels empirical without losing its sense of wonder.
This visual language acts as a flashlight that pinpoints the mechanics behind the mystery. Used sparingly, each Electric Aura moment becomes a charge of clarity in an otherwise luminous haze.
Prismatic Distortion
Our next visual style treats the audience like the parents in this story: standing on one side of a pane, catching prismatic glimpses of a reality that was always there but never fully in focus. The fluted-glass motif visualizes that boundary—light splits, colors drift, silhouettes blur—so every frame feels half-revealed, half-mysterious. That refraction does two things at once: it protects the private, almost sacred inner world the telepathic children inhabit, and it dramatizes the parents’ first moment of recognition, when fragments finally coalesce into meaning. By peering through this spectral window, viewers share the sensation of discovery—and the invitation to step inside.
The Soft World
This is the world on the far side of the glass—the place the children already inhabit and the adults are only just beginning to sense. It is not built of objects so much as fields: soft pulses of color, drifting atmospheres, and shapes that hover between landscape and emotion. A mountain crest glows like a low-frequency beacon; two silhouettes meet at its peak and the air itself brightens, as though intention carries its own light.
We render this realm with quiet gradients and hazy focus so nothing feels locked down or literal; every form is in the process of becoming. Textures bloom, fade, then return with new hues, suggesting living currents rather than fixed terrain. Motion is slow and tidal—waves of color lift, fold, and settle—mirroring the telepathic exchanges that ripple beneath spoken language.
Emotions in Motion
Translating emotional frequencies into moving fields of light and color. A major part of this story is visualizing feelings and the power they hold.
