Starry Station

Author/Artist Name

Avery WilsonFollow

Files

Academic Level at Time of Creation

Senior

Date of Creation

Spring 4-25-2025

Artist Statement

We all long for experiences that make us feel more alive. I strive to make artwork that conveys a sense of wonder and provides happiness as an escape from the mundane. Nature, traveling, and day-trips to theme parks are big influences in my artwork. They have a way of helping me realize the greater picture in life and give me a small escape from reality. Theme parks appeal to me because of the way they make me feel as if I’m in a new world for the day. For my BFA show, I incorporated all of these ideas by designing my own theme park, Starry Station, revolving around different environments across the globe. This show involves an animation and fun illustrations to bring a piece of the theme park to the gallery for people to enjoy.

The Starry Station Exhibition features several different areas of design, including illustration, ux/ui, branding, and animation. I created a fun but clean branding system with a blue logo and bold typography. The ride illustrations have a lot of bold colors and texture to bring the spaces to life, and the park mascots are designed to be friendly and silly. For example, the Panther Prey ride illustration shows an indoor boat ride with glowing plant life and glowing water. The mascots are drawn to be friendly and silly; for instance, the penguin Tux is drawn with thick outlines and large features to be round and goofy. The mural illustration was a way to tie all of the textures from the illustrations and lovable mascots into one ginormous piece to convey the size of this project as a whole.

The colors, textures, and subject matter that I used in my pieces were influenced by nature and my love for travel, but I also looked to other artists for inspiration. One current artist that inspired my work for Starry Station is Kristen De Palma. I loved her color palettes that are tropical, floral, and even some of the more muted ones. Her hand lettering influenced my typography choice for the Starry Station logo. The way she draws flowers and plants also inspired some of the plant-life in the ride POV illustrations. Deborah Sussman, a designer that specializes in environmental design is a big role model. Her work for Disney World advertising and wayfinding has been a big inspiration for Starry Station and influenced the park map and mobile app. Among other artists, Oliver Sin has a playful way of animating characters and environments that I incorporated into my ride safety animation. I aspire to be an inspirational artist like them someday.

Advisor/Mentor

Jim Bryant; G. Scott Cook; Katie Knoeringer; T. Michael Martin

Description

Starry Station is a fictional theme park I created to bring some magic to the mundane. This theme park revolves around four different biomes, the arctic, desert, tropical, and rainforest, each with two animal mascots to bring some playfulness into the park. Overall, I wanted the theme park to feel joyful and fun.

The show includes 13 total illustrations, one mural illustration, 24”x66”, four ride illustrations, 16”x24”, and eight character sheet illustrations, 10”x15”. There was also a 2 minute, 26 second video on display that showed the Starry Station mobile app, as well as the Volcano Falls Ride Safety Video that included the characters in a silly manner. The merch table included lanyards with the Starry Station branding and acrylic pins of each of the animal mascots to take home a piece of the theme park magic.

Photo Credit

Photo #24 taken by Randi Miget, 2025

All other photos taken by Avery Wilson, 2025

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Wilson, Avery, "Starry Station" (2025). B.F.A. Practicum Exhibition (ART 498). 147.
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art498/147