Forest Fire 101
The Earth Science Division of NASA was tasked to create infographics educating the public on what forest fires are and how they start. They wanted something that felt like “a textbook illustration but cooler” and the resulting 3 animations are the product of that. I worked on a team of producers and scientists to develop these animations.
The rough ideas were laid out to the different focus areas in this project.
The 1st animation was “Fire Regime”, which defined “forest fires” and how areas can be affected depending on the ecosystem.
The 2nd animation focused on the phenomenon of “Zombie Fires” which are dormant fires kept alive in far north forests during the winter in a similar fashion to how igloos can retain heat.
The 3rd “Ingredients For A Fire” was eventually reworked to focus on what factors can contribute to starting a forest fire.
The scientific team also wanted some of the animation to include diagrams that highlight where on earth we are looking, and much time was passing. The most challenging part of conceptualizing time as a “widget” in these animations, the concept was hard to distill and more exact timescales were needed to fully realize the idea.
Rough drawings of the animations mocked up by me for a meeting with the team. At this point I felt settled on the layout and basic information hierarchy, the rest was fleshed out later on as we had subsequent meetings.
The Animations
This animation was the first to be completed and set the groundwork for how the rest would look, minus the tricky “widget” iconography.
This animation was the most different one of the three. We wanted to give a few examples of how fires can start without spending too much time on each idea. I opted to include a few possible “Ingredients” in the video including winds, dry foliage, and a ignition source like a cigarette.
“Zombie Fire” was the last one completed as it’s concept was hard to settle on. We went back-and-forth in meetings with the internal team and with the Earth Science team, trying to properly display the passing of time for a season. What we settled on came from one of my original sketches as it was the best idea we had.