Case Study - Space Probes

Space shows are always popular and as such have been a big part of my work load. However, they can get pretty routine. A planet sitting here, a rock floating there, a bright star in the distance. These shots give you a lot of freedom to play around with composition and lighting but sometimes you want a little something different. So I was thrilled when I was approached to work on Space Probes with the mission to make these robots come to life and give them each personality. They wanted a fun and light hearted show that showed off these different probes as cute figures exploring the universe. They needed a title sequence, intro animations for each of the probes and various fun situations to put them in. Who wouldn't jump at that opportunity?

Title Sequence

The Producers came to me with this reference image as their idea for the title sequence. It's a map of all the routes of the US space probes since the beginning of NASA. Using the routes of just the probes that would appear on our show I was able to make a few storyboards that the Producers approved of. We then made separate elements for each episode so they would really stand out. For the Voyager show, Voyager speeds by a reveals the episode title. For the rovers', they played on top of the text. Giving each episode a fun and unique start.

Introductions

For each episode we wanted to have a section to introduce the probes to the audience. Since the rovers episode consisted of four different rovers we decided to introduce them as a slightly difunctional family.

Big shout out to NASA's free 3D model library! A site with all their 3D models, free of charge, for anyone to use. I love this site. Only down side is not all of them are clean and ready to use. Many models required stripping down to the important parts that would need to be animated as well as retextured. Everything from wheels, camera's, arms, had to be reworked to make them animatable and bring them to life.