Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

Cosmos is definitely one of my favorite shows right now. It's not only educational, but also entertaining and just plain cool. The effects that are used in this show are captivating and extremely impressive.

Neil deGrasse Tyson floats through space as he explains many of our universe's phenomena. In the first episode, there's a really cool representation of how old our universe is in which major events in the past few billion years are squeezed into one calendar year. Neil walks around on the big calendar in the middle of space and shows how insignificant humankind really is in comparison to how long our universe has existed (this can be seen briefly at 2:41 in the trailer).

I also love the opening intro with the word COSMOS spread across a black hole/eyeball. The amount of time and work that went into creating this show certainly paid off.

Crazy COSMOS

This month, The National Geographic premiered their new series, COSMOS. This show has become big news that even President Barack Obama got involved. The new show encourages people of all ages to become more involved in exploring new frontiers. The show reached over half a billion homes all over the world the night of the premiere. National Geographic and Fox broadcasting network really made a mark with the new series and set the bar pretty high for all new shows of its kind.

The show itself is pretty remarkable but what is really amazing is the title sequence. Big Block Media Group created the breath taking sequence. Big Block truly captured the show's theme with their amazing graphic animation. Big Block used all the resources they could get their hands on to create this sequence. From the real live action footage to the amazingly created space scenes, this title sequence is one to be noticed. The entire sequence is 90 seconds long, way longer than the usual 30 second openings to most shows. Be sure to take a look at COSMOS' history making title sequence!

Click HERE to see the whole title sequence!

Drake Equation

     Happy last post!  Well, isn't this a bittersweet moment?  Over the past few months I have posted about motion graphics from things like movies and especially music.  I think my favorite post on here was in regards to Flying Lotus's Layer 3 live set-up.  As an avid music connoisseur, I find it exciting to see two of my favorite things, music and post production coming together.

     For my last post I am changing up a little bit.  This is a video that would not be too hard to replicate in After Effects, it is using motion graphics to explain the Drake Equation from Carl Sagan's Cosmos.  None of it seems particularly difficult, most of the objects just grow and shrink as well as fly around the screen.  The only one I am not sure about is the rotating Earth.  See the video to get what I mean.



Visual Loop Daily Video - Drake Equation by Visualoop

 My guess is the image of the Earth was originally a flat .png and the editor grabbed the edges and pulled them back as to make the image like a cylinder.  Then they warped the top and bottom so that they were touching opposite ends.  The middle may have been "puffed" out to make it appear like an orb.  But this is just a guess!  :)