You Get the Best Ideas When You Pay Attention to the World Around You

Recently, my family and I ended up talking about medieval astrology and astronomy. The whole conversation started because I saw a video on Instagram showing medieval zodiac charts. As we talked, we started wondering whether astrology and astronomy were already separate fields in the Middle Ages or still treated as one. Half of us were convinced of one answer, half of us of the other, so I decided to look it up myself.

After some Googling, I learned that in the Middle Ages, astrology and astronomy were initially a single discipline focused on understanding celestial phenomena. Only in the 17th century, with the development of modern science, did they begin to separate more clearly. While researching, I also came across countless medieval astrological illustrations and manuscripts. Medieval Europeans believed that the movements of the sun, moon, stars, and planets directly affected life on Earth. They practiced what we would today call astrology, which is why astronomical motifs appear so frequently in manuscripts and objects from that period.

Before studying design and programming, I completed a bachelor's degree in Art History, so these images immediately caught my eye and reminded me of one of my favourite courses, Gothic Art.

When Medieval Aesthetics Meet My Current Obsessions

All those colour combinations, intriguing shapes and compositions, the typography, the symbolism... you could spend hours browsing Google or art books looking for more medieval examples. What drew me in the most were the deep indigo backgrounds used in the illuminations, the circular compositions for the zodiac signs, and, of course, the use of gold for highlights.

The gold instantly reminded me of my small obsession of the month: making Christmas ornaments out of gold foil. I found inspiration for them on Pinterest, my entire "Christmas" board has been taken over by golden ornaments lately.

While looking at medieval zodiac imagery, I thought it would be fun to reinterpret these charts in a completely new way: in the style of those Pinterest gold ornaments, but with a modern twist. And that's how the idea was born - to recreate a medieval zodiac chart in my own way and animate it, because animated things are just a hundred times more magical!

When Sketches Come Alive: My Design & Animation Process

I won't go into too much detail here, in the next section I'll briefly describe the process for anyone curious about how I designed and animated the chart.

I started with sketches: first of the individual zodiac signs, then of the full chart, and finally a storyboard where I drew out all the frames of the animation. I decided the animation itself didn't need to be overly complex, but I wanted to give it more dynamism through frame changes and zooming in and out.

Once the sketches were ready, I moved on to "the fun part": illustrating everything in Adobe Illustrator. I first illustrated the drawings, but since I wanted the zodiac signs to truly look like the gold Christmas ornaments from my Pinterest board, I used the 3D and Materials feature. I inflated the shapes and applied the Gold Natural material, which is the closest match to real golden foil. Once I found the right approach, I applied the same 3D material to all golden elements and designed the full zodiac chart with planets, the sun, and stars.

When the illustrations were finished, I brought everything into Adobe After Effects. That's where I animated the chart's rotation, the movement and flicker of the stars, and the orbits of the planets. I added a phonk track to give the whole piece a modern, edgy feel.

Animation & Final Thoughts

You can watch the final animation on our Instagram:

Let me wrap up with a thought that ties back to the title: ideas and inspiration really are everywhere - in nature, in conversations, in art, in flavours... When we stay open to them, jot them down in our notes app or on a piece of paper, and take a moment to reflect on them, we expand our creativity and come up with ideas we otherwise wouldn't.

If my family and I hadn't had a totally random conversation about medieval astrology and astronomy, I never would have designed and animated a contemporary version of a medieval zodiac chart. And that would've been such a shame!

Bibliography

• Kiely, A. (2025). Written in the Stars: Zodiac in medieval art. DailyArt Magazine.