Psyche Inspired: Daniel Zepeda-Cuba

Institution: Rochester Institute of Technology

Major: New Media Design

Psyche Inspired Class: 2020-2021

Reflections on Psyche Inspired

Reflections on Project 1: Psyche Vintage Travel Poster

The poster has a large degree of texture, making it feel worn and aged. The colors are that of the Psyche mission itself, beginning at the cool and dark tones of purple and radiating out of the asteroid into a bright and warm yellow. Nearby, a spacecraft hovers in orbit of the asteroid. The asteroid is in the bottom half of the poster with the words "Psyche: A metal world" written on top of it. Stars twinkle in the space shown.

Psyche Vintage Travel Poster

Daniel Zepeda-Cuba

November 13, 2020

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: digital animation

About the work: This piece is a vintage travel poster for (16) Psyche. The intent was to make the poster feel aged with vintage style graphics and colors in order to allude to the fact that Psyche is a planetary core formed long ago. I wanted the asteroid to be the main focus of the poster, but I still wanted to add the fact that we are well on our way to visiting the asteroid by including the spacecraft hovering close by. I then chose to animate the poster to add a feeling that all the elements within were floating in space and create this surreal feeling of seeing the poster in motion. The concept originally began as a postcard, but I later transitioned the idea into a larger poster to better capture the scale of the asteroid.

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Reflections on Project 2: Origins

Three semicircles sit at the center of the piece, the smallest at the center representing the core of our planet, and surrounding it planet Earth itself with land and ocean masses. The third semicircle encases the other two with an intense, dark black, symbolizing the vastness of space. Stemming from the Earth are several strands reaching out towards a star. One of these strands has a distinctive appearance of a strand of DNA. Also featured are the Sun, looming in the background in an intense and vibrant yellow, along with the Moon floating slightly to the side and above planet Earth. At the bottom of the design, 4 lines float beneath the Earth, becoming increasingly thinner and faded.

Origin

Daniel Zepeda-Cuba

February 8, 2021

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: digital

About the work: This minimal design was created with the idea of expanding upon the symbols created by astronomers for the first few discovered asteroids. (16) Psyche’s symbol was a semicircle with a star above. My idea was to add to the logo to create a piece exploring the origins of Earth, and the shared foundation our planetary core may have with Psyche. At the center of Earth – the core – and at the surface of our planet, strands reach out to the stars, grasping for a better understanding of the structure of our own world.

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Reflections on Project 3: Psyche Logo Lightbox

Psyche Logo Lightbox

Daniel Zepeda-Cuba

March 31, 2021

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: Laser Cut Paper

About the work: For my project, I decided to create a laser-cut paper lightbox of the Psyche logo. My intention with this project was to present the logo in a unique and interesting way. I took the original design and colors of the Psyche logo and divided every shade of the gradient into a separate layer and formatted it for laser cutting. In order to capture the differences in the logo’s colors from the dark purple to the bright orange, I needed to make the darker colors further away from the light via more layers of paper, and I needed to make the lighter colors closer to the light with thin layers of paper.

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Reflections on Project 4: Formation | Aspiration | Connection

3 artworks depicting Psyche’s hypothesized creation, our ideation, and the launch of the Psyche spacecraft. The first is an abstracted version of Psyche in its creation: flames and fragments appear as it may have looked like when Psyche formed. The second is a hand reaching and wrapping around the asteroid, with strands wrapping around the hand and the asteroid together. The third shows a spacecraft coming from Earth towards Psyche.

Formation | Aspiration | Connection

Daniel Zepeda-Cuba

May 3, 2021

Major: New Media Design

Genre/Medium: Digital / Adobe Illustrator

About the work: The main goal of this project was to summarize every stage of the Psyche mission and interpret it in my own way. The 3 artworks depict (16) Psyche’s hypothesized creation, our imagination of what we hope to do with the asteroid, and the eventual launch of the Psyche spacecraft. The first artwork features the abstracted idea of what (16) Psyche looked like when it collided during its formation. For this, I hoped to capture the chaos and intensity of the impact, as well as the ever so slight formation of the asteroid we know today. The second work features a hand reaching out to grab the asteroid itself, a metaphor for our idea to come into contact with the asteroid and begin to understand the information it yields. The final artwork depicts the launch of the spacecraft from Earth towards (16) Psyche. I hoped to allude to an idea explored in one of my previous projects of Psyche sharing the same DNA of our planet.

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Psyche Inspired

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