Case Study: Daughter of the Inner Stars. Character Art and Logo Design for Performance

This case study unveils the creative story of one of the totally artistic projects in which we had the great luck to participate. Welcome to take a glance at how our team developed elaborate character art and original graphics for the immersive orchestral performance called Daughter of the Inner Stars.

Client and Project

Daughter of the Inners Stars is the enchanting live orchestral concert that combines the magic of a live narrator and original animations with a unique orchestral score by award-winning composer Nicholas Buc and performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Drawing upon Ukrainian folklore, this enchanting fairy tale is perfect for families, igniting children’s imaginations as well as captivating adults with its evocative music and animated artistry.

Daughter of the Inner Stars is a unique experience that blends a live narrator, brand-new animation, and a cinematic orchestral score. With the help of a 65-piece orchestra, it showcases the profound power of musical storytelling. Throughout the 60-minute concert, children embark on a thrilling journey into a mystical realm filled with a courageous heroine, cosmic wonders, and an enchanting mystery.

Talking about the plot of the performance, it sets off amid a space battle between two warring planets when a pilot-doctor loses control of his ship. Just when it appears his fate is sealed to an eternity of drifting in space, his ship comes before a strange sight. Before he can turn around, his ship is swallowed up by the portal. Far away on his home planet of Berynia, the daughter of the missing pilot, Fia, detects a message from a distant pocket of space. It is a message from her father. With no spacecraft or companions, Fia has little choice but to consult Berynia’s ancestral nature spirits because only these spirits have knowledge of long-forgotten magic. And so, Fia sets out on a daring journey to rescue her father.

Our team was approached by Melanie Hiluta and her team, Magical Muse, with the request to work on character art and, later, the original logo lettering and custom graphics. The creative team from the tubik side included Maryna Solomennykova, Arthur Avakyan, and Olga Syrotkina.

Character Art

The primary task for our artist was to develop the system of detailed 2D characters, which would become the basis of visual storytelling and later be transformed into 3D art and animation for the performance. Having discussed all the details, we started the early stage of sketching aimed at a deep creative search for the general concept of the characters and catching the client’s vision.

Below, you can get a closer look at how the creative process, from sketch to polished digital artwork, moved on for various fairytale characters.

Fia character art

Burto, Fia’s father character art

Dormo character art

Selki character art

Witch character art

Liso character art

Another interesting challenge was developing various outfits and hairstyles to find the one that would be the most appealing and correspond to both the client’s understanding of the character and the character’s personality in the story. Here are some options created for the main character.

Also, each character had to be thought over and illustrated in various positions to make it flexible for further development in animation and integration into different environments.

Logo Design

Another creative task our team helped with was creating an original logo for the performance that would reflect the full name of the show and would apply to various promo materials and marketing goals. The logo’s geometry was based on the ancient Cyrillic font to keep the visual connection with Ukrainian folklore and ethnic motifs.

The logo was adjusted to be used in different positions, such as one long line or a block of text. The designer also stretched this style on a set of neat and elegant graphic elements based on geometric patterns, which could be used both as independent graphics and as the border for an emblem featuring the character inside. The graphics echoed the culture of old traditional emblems and inscriptions.

The performance premiered at the Sydney Opera in the summer of 2024, and it was a fantastic experience for our team to see the character and graphics we developed for the client as part of an enchanting and bright show many families enjoyed.