Foundation is a series of award-winning sci-fi novels so sprawling and epic, no one has successfully adapted it in over 50 years. That is, until Apple TV+ snatched it up like a boss. With some filming underway and an audience foaming at the mouth, Apple reached out to collaborate on art for a teaser reveal at their WWDC20 conference. Translation: boil down a new TV series based on seven novels that span 1,000’s of years, the race to save humanity, an intergalactic war and the fall of an Empire into one image.

Roger that.

The story (which inspired Star Wars, btw) is set in a future that can predict an even farther future through a device called the Prime Radiant and a new form of mathematical science. Rooted in antiquity, but located in deep space, it’s a world we explored ad infinitum. Sketches of key show concepts, ancient marble monoliths, visions of exile uprisings, layers of statistics and mathematical equations. Finally, puttin’ that AP Calculus to the test.

After a myriad iterations, we opted to keep things mysterious. Dark and foreboding like the 30,000 years of obscurity the story predicts. The golden luster of the Empire’s emblem rising to endure. Subtle mathematic overlays computing their course. Now, we’re fired up to be developing additional key art for Foundation with Apple TV+. Perhaps someday we could collab on a device that won’t predict the fall of an Empire and 30,000 years of darkness.