Nova

As a kid I’d always spend hours pouring over an “artist’s impression” of a wormhole, space colony or black hole in all the science & space books I had – these days the glut of information about all this is overwhelming, but accessible and everywhere.

I always love learning about space travel, the formation of stars, planets, the universe and other fun stuff like string theory, infinity, general relativity, along with all the other cosmics physics shenanigans that absolutely melts your head once you start giving it any thought, such as the double slit experiment, distortion of time with respect to velocity, multiverses, the Fermi Paradox. Can’t say I understand the maths & calculus behind it, but it is fascinating.

What it is:

This is a proof of concept more than anything, just to see how making a galaxy/supernova/ black hole could work done entirely in After Effects. No science fact here at all – there shouldn’t be any noise, nor should there be 2 explosive shockwaves and it could probably do with a little less movement on the camera to give that impression of scale – but otherwise, I think it turned out ok.

How I did it:

Made a spiral shape whatsit in C4D, imported to AE as a .obj to use as a reference layer in Form, duplicate Form a few times for a bit more complexity on the galaxy, throw in Particular for the starfield & gamma wave/solar pulse/wave of destruction, Mir and a dash of Element to make it extra snazzy

I’ve got no background whatsoever in science – I enjoyed and was ok at maths, decent at physics and good at biology in school, but the amount and level of maths involved to study theoretical or cosmic physics meant I wasn’t keen enough to go down that route – artist’s impressions are something a lot more interesting as far as I’m concerned.

I’m keen to get involved in doing more work like this for broadcast & education, if you’re interested in working with me on something worthwhile, then get in touch…