Technical Direction
/
FUI
/
MOTION design
Severance: Study
/ About the project
A deep dive into the "mysterious and important" design language of Apple TV+'s Severance. With no source files, working only from the show itself, I reverse-engineered Lumon's terminal and rebuilt it in After Effects, engineering the dynamic parts to be expression-driven and animating the rest to match the show's exact timing and feel.
/ Credits
Client:
Personal Project
Role:
Technical Direction, FUI & Motion
Tools:
After Effects, Sketch, AEUX, Trapcode Form
/ Year
2022
01
The Aesthetic Logic
Matching "Lumon OS"
With no source assets, I performed frame-by-frame analysis of the series to reverse-engineer the specific easing curves and interaction timing that define the show's 1-bit CRT look.
Systemic Workflow: Designed initial UI layouts in Sketch and utilized AEUX for a non-destructive bridge into After Effects.
Expression Rigging: To manage thousands of data layers, I wrote extensive expressions and utilized AE Global Renamer 2 to maintain a scalable pre-comp structure.
Physical Integration: Finalized the study with high-fidelity tracking and compositing to seat the UI onto a physical terminal, achieving a realistic "in-camera" feel.
02
Procedural Data Systems
To achieve the "alive" look of the data without creating visual chaos, I moved away from manual keyframing and toward procedural animation.
The Displacement Rig:
Utilized Trapcode Form driven by fractal displacement fields. By restricting displacement to specific axes, I ensured particles drifted organically without clipping through one another.
Z-Space Navigation Architecture:
Emulating the software’s deep-zoom required a custom camera rig. By pushing a camera through Z-space, I maintained control over depth and parallax, allowing for grounded navigation through the data grid.
Custom "Rolodex":
The folder selection cards are fully expression-driven. Start with any letter or number and subsequent tabs adjust automatically. Files within each folder are dynamic and scalable.
03
The Outcome
Conversation Starter
The result was a working MDR terminal template, built to behave the same way as the original. Posting it online turned up people who had worked on the show, who confirmed the recreation was accurate and mentioned that what appears on screen is real software the actors interact with.