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SPLUDE
INDOMLEON BRANDING 2025
My personal YouTube channel, Indomleon, needed a fresh coat of paint to bring it up to the standard of work I am now capable of. The old branding was created at the end of the production of previous videos, when I was desperate for the project to finally be completed, and did not receive the attention it deserved. Now given proper time, I set out to create a brand book for myself to keep a more consistent and visually appealing appearance for the work I am passionate about. To show off the effectiveness of this new branding, I'd also develop a prototype video with the new system.
Existing Brand
01
The Indomleon channel exists as an outlet for my opinions and personality. That personality could safely be boiled down into an obsession with animals, both real and unreal, and the content reflects this. The flagship series, Monster Mender, discusses the mythological and biological inspirations that make up the creature designs in my beloved Monster Hunter franchise, then consider and illustrate new approaches to the concepts.
Watermelon has always been a part of my personal online presence, inspiring the colors and patterns used as well as the physical characteristics of the mascot character. As for why, frankly it's a long story, and not a very interesting one at that. In 2025 though, it was time to relinquish this aspect of the branding in favor of something new and more professional.
02
Concepts
A refreshed vibe for Indomleon puts a stronger focus on "edutainment", content that is entertaining first, but should leave the viewer with some new information they didn't even notice they learned. The channel should create a similar sense as a well-liked teacher or professor whose passion for a subject makes it more interesting to their students, even when they might normally find the topic dull and miserable to sit through.
Revealing one's identity online can be a risky move, and I knew from the beginning I had absolutely no intention of showing my corporeal form on YouTube. Humans in general respond to faces, though, especially when establishing a relationship of trust. If the content of Indomleon was going to be educational going forward, I would need to establish myself as an authority on the information presented.
One angle on this idea that I attempted was that of a disheveled field researcher, somebody who looks not only like they can hit the books, but are willing to adventure out into nature to corroborate the literature. The mascot features a high hairline and glasses to emphasize their studious nature, with durable, loud clothing to match their rough-and-tumble enthusiasm for nature. They appear unkempt and dirty to show a priority for experiencing the wild over being well-groomed, like myself, but also to further the idea that nature is with them inside and out at all times. In this take, an avatar would shift through several expressive poses to match voice over, composited into screenshots or video of relevant scenery. From this position, I would act similarly to a wildlife presenter in a documentary, clearly excited but restraining that energy in order to seem professional to new people.
This personality was heavily influenced by the work of wildlife expert Nigel Marvin, especially on my childhood favorite spinoff of Walking with Dinosaurs, in which Marvin is Chased by Dinosaurs, and in the spinoff of the spinoff, by Sea Monsters as well. I also borrow influence from the obsessive excitement about wild theories seen from the fictional Dr. Tanner of Dragons: a Fantasy Made Real. The mockumentary discusses how dragons may have existed as real creatures that inspired the legends we marvel at today, very similar to the work I do now.
To maintain visual interest in the fast paced world of Internet video, as well as to emphasize points, cutaways would be needed to show supporting video and imagery. Images would have appropriate filters or drawings alongside them, making them look as if they were pasted into a page of a notebook. Video footage is overlaid with heavy film grain, in keeping with the tactile nature of the stills. When stills and video are needed together, a piece of ripped paper sits over top the video footage.
A second approach pulls back on the nature presenter aspect and focuses more on the studious personality trait. This avatar instead spends all day buried in books, like the researchers seen in Monster Hunter, who apparently never leave their massive thrones of notes and books. The character in this approach is holed up in a library, and uses excerpts from the literature around them to make their points. They wear massive glasses, complete with extra zoom lenses to help them make out tiny, messy script written hundreds of years ago, a massive mane tied up and out of their eyes just well enough to keep it from coming loose. A similar principle in the character's priority of their interests over themself will add to the feeling that this is a knowledgeable but down-to-earth person, like I aim to be.
Initially I wanted to get photography of a real library to serve as the background, but none large or old enough were accessible to me, so I resolved to mimic one in Cinema 4D.
The editing in this take should appear totally diagetic, as if everything is being found entirely within the library. Each cutaway would be styled as if looking at a piece of parchment packed with information. Images would have filters placed over them to look like illustrations, video would be separated into separate key frames or similarly filtered to appear as a magically moving drawing if necessary.
On consultation, a combination of the two approaches was recommended, and I agreed. The editing style of the first approach was more flexible and achievable, while the set and character design of the second was more appealing. A less purely diegetic version of the second approach was the result, but still maintaining a strong tactile style.
03
Setting the Scene
The most time-consuming asset I would need would be the set the videos would be taking place on, so that would need to be developed first. The library had been the idea that had been most attractive to people I consulted, and so the rest of the branding could be built around it. Cinema and Redshift were the programs of choice, as I had the most experience with them, especially recently.
Blocking test with basic shapes
Early lighting and composition test with dummy character model for framing
Completed scenery, with lighting and textures still in progress. Also evidently in an earthquake, due to uncooperative defocusing in Redshift cameras.
The finalized scene uses warm lights in order to capture the cozy feeling of an old dusty library, with softly floating scoutflies and flickering lamps livening up the place. The skulls add a bit more character specific to the topics Indomleon covers. The warm palette would also help to contrast against the greens of the outfit worn by my avatar, who will speak from behind the desk.
04
Making a Mark
The most distinctive visual element I had going for me in this new brand system was the unique set of spectacles my avatar would be wearing, and so I chose to focus primarily on those, though a few other ideas would push their way through, they were ultimately rejected.
These sketches included a variety of different ways of abstracting or simplifying the glasses into a logo-worthy shape. The angled version was most eye-catching, so I would then recreate it in vector style. Just to certain though, several others were sketched in Illustrator as well, as the transition between hand-drawn to smooth vectors can make a big difference.
Even still, this look was most interesting, and so it would move forward.
I would then try several versions of a circular logo, as would fit in a YT profile picture. The left featured a more literal representation of the glasses, sometimes with a shadow to emphasize their form, but I was more interested in the right version, where the abstracted frames and highlights somewhat resembled a pair of dragons. I felt that this more suited the energy I want to put out, and was overall simpler.
I preferred the earthy toned palette, perhaps because I had spent so much time staring at the warm library, but I do legitimately feel it represents me better. At this stage, I also added a texture to adhere more strongly to the timeworn, physical aesthetic of the library.
04
Graphics and Editing
A strongly tactile style somewhat conflicts with the digital nature of producing videos for YouTube, and I certainly couldn't get away with holding a single shot with only a character posing to keep a viewer's attention. To get past this obstacle, the editing would need to appear organic as well.
To achieve this, any footage not in the library would be overlaid with this custom animated film grain texture I created in After Effects, as well as an overlay of noise, that way the footage would feel as if it had been retrieved from some kind of archive, rather than just ripped from somewhere on the Internet.
Unedited frame for comparison
Footage treated in this way may still need supporting graphics to emphasize a point or make comparisons. In this circumstance, extra graphics are made to look as if they are torn pages from a book, complete with drop shadow, as if physically in the imaginary space.
05
Brand Book
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