AstroAnimation

Our topic was the Compact Ultraviolet to Visible Imaging Spectrometer, or C.U.V.I.S. Set to launch in 2030, this little guy will measure UV light in the atmosphere of Venus to find out what molecule is absorbing ~50% of UV on the planet.

Since we don’t know this mystery absorber yet, and the mission has yet to launch, our artistic intentions became depicting the birth of CUVIS and it’s hypothetical mission/completion of mission as endearingly as possible, sans knowing what the absorber is.

Inspiration/ Science

For our animation we were given the opportunity to create our animation based on “The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope”. We decided to make the animation to show what the Roman Telescope was created for, as it is built to investigate dark matter. Why are we trying to investigate dark matter? It is because scientists are trying to find out if dark matter is a physical matter that we can research.

Animation Process/ Statement

We merged 2D with 3D animation as a stylistic choice during production, and had the outside (space) shots be 3D with the inside shots (humans, aliens) being 2D to convey depth in a unique way. When it comes to the science specifically, we focused on dark matter findings in the context of observing galaxies in deep space, and many of the more technical visuals are based on graphics in the field.

A Glorpzorpian father teaches his son about the magnificent Aurora Borealis—and its dangers.

“The Great Aurora Borealis” is an educational tale told from the perspective of aliens living on Earth. Through a playful, comedic story, the film briefly explains what the Aurora Borealis is and how it is formed.

✨ The Science ✨

Commonly known as the Northern Lights, auroras occur when charged particles from the Sun interact with our atmosphere.

Sunspots, visible if you could safely look at the Sun, which you should NOT do, mark active regions that can release enormous bursts called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. These eruptions send clouds of charged particles into space, carried by the solar wind. Yes, Joie, there is space wind.

When the particles reach Erp, its magnetosphere guides them toward the poles. There, they collide with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, causing the gases to glow—and creating the magnificent aurora.

Most black holes are inactive or show only minimal activity, while some produce enormous jets of energy. Recently, scientists observed a young, minimally active black hole consume a star and then, several years later, suddenly develop powerful jets. These jets may last for approximately 1,000 years before fading.

We wanted to communicate this phenomenon through an entertaining metaphor. We chose a baby dragon to represent the black hole because it is young and relatively small compared with other black holes, and because the jets reminded us of a dragon breathing fire.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Exploration as a film is designed to showcase how the Molecular Assembly Index is used to detect signs of complex life in a whimsical and simple way that engages the audience.

When designing this film we wanted it to be whimsical and simple, so we kept the story short and sweet and utilized mixed media and a custom soundtrack to create a unique look for the film.

We decided on making the backgrounds and the planet's inhabitants, the rock critters, out of paper and having Exploration the Rover be 2D animated, to give sense that the Rover isn’t from the planet and he is a visitor.

RESEARCH!

Exploration’s story is based on the current research being done by Silke Asche, which involves using a Mass Spectrometer to study the Molecular Assembly Index and how it can be used to look for signs of life!

THE MOLECULAR ASSEMBLY INDEX:

• complexity and concentration of molecules!
• More complex molecules are rare to find in large groups
• If this machines finds a lot of big, complex molecules all in one place, it could be a sign that a living creature made those molecules

This is the type of machine and research that our little Rover, Exploration, is conducting.

Credits

A film by
Bryan Tam
Sophie Henry
Emma Quigley

In collaboration with Giannina Guzmán Caloca

Voices

Detective — Mark Tong
Prosecutor — Bryan Tam
Sun-Father — Mark Tong
GEM — Emma Quigley

Credits

Animator / Sound Design / Editor
Braxton Wheeler

Animator / 3D Background Design / Editor
John Croney

Animator / Editor
Stephanie Ingraham

NASA Scientist
Kavitha Arur

Credits

By
Aarya Motghare
Stanzanae Ware
Ashley Ruiz Chavira

Character Design
Ashley Ruiz Chavira

Animation
Stanzanae Ware

Background Design
Aarya Motghare & Stanzanae Ware

Voice Acting
Stanzanae Ware & Aarya Motghare

Script
Aarya Motghare

Storyboarding
Aarya Motghare

Collage
Aarya Motghare

Sound
Aarya Motghare

Editing
Aarya Motghare

Credits

Made by
Valeria Santana
Savannah Halen
Samuel Trujillo

With assistance from
Dr. Travis Fischer

Credits

Animation by:
Lys McKeithan, Yuna Pham

Music by:
freesound.org, YouTube

In collaboration with:
Katja Pottschmidt, Rachel Hemmer, Xuan Nhut Truong

Credits

A Film By
Kenny Moss — The Past
Jackie Bolanos — The Present
Sara Quisley — The Future

In collaboration with David Burtt

With the help of new programs and technological innovations like the TIGRESS (Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder for the International Space Station) probe, scientists are finally able to look further into the origins of how elements are created from Supernovas. In the distant depths of space, learn about the death of Supernovas and how different heavy metals, like Titanium and others, atomically form!

For this short film, we focused on the nuclear reaction of cosmic rays, including the cosmic ray origins and the measurement of elemental abundances.

Animators: Tobias Baldinger, Chelsea Njenga, Miranda Curras

Scientists: Priyarshini Ghosh

For our film, we wanted to focus on how the existence and attributes of carbon can determine the possibility of extraterrestrial life, as well as what kind of life may exist outside of our own planet.

Animators: Kiki Brennan, Jillian Najera, Haley Wear

Scientist: Gabriella Weiss

The topic we animated was about exoplanets and other planets that might be found past our solar system. Each of us used their own resources to create our parts of the animation, with some collaboration in the classroom scenes.

We chose to do this because we figured each daydream is different so it would make the animation more on theme if each of us did our own small section. For the classroom scenes, we decided to share responsibility.

Animators: Estera Plis, Kaila Moise, Luhuan Ma

Scientist: Ellis Bogat

The principle behind our animation is the formation of the moon. A long time ago, the planet Theia collided with the Earth, devastating the planet and shaping what we now call the moon.

We utilized a mixture of 3D animation, 2D animation, and VFX to create a retelling of the formation through a lens of a romance story that takes a turn for the worst and then gets better by the end.

Animators: Konstantin Pribylov, Tony Dixon, Justin Lee

Scientist: Sarah Valencia

This animation has to do with the DAVINCI mission to Venus. The Davinci probe is a planned mission to study the planet Venus in the near future. Follow Bob the Engineer as they build and send out the DAVINCI on its several year mission!

Animators: Cody Welch, H Higgins-Tan, Emily Harline

Scientist: Matthew Garrison

Our science topic deals with the PSR B1259-63 Binary, a Binary of a pulsar neutron star orbiting a massive companion star. We used two personified satellites to explain this- the Chandra X Ray Observatory and the Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope. These telescopes capture X-Rays and Gamma rays for NASA research purposes.

Our video covers what a neutron star is, what these telescopes do, and the Binary, using illustrative and animated graphics.

Animators: Danny Kloren Garcia, Zoe Lai, Lara Schneidawind

Scientist: Jeremy Hare

A child and their mentor opens a coloring book about Fermi. As the child colors each page, some pages come to life, putting the child and the viewer into space with Fermi, watching and learning from the mentor, as they talk about what Fermi is and what it does.

Animator: Jay Tran

Scientist: Janeth Valverde

Animator: Charlie Cornwell

Scientist: Janeth Valverde

This animated short is about the Fermi satellite, which is turning 15 years old in 2023! The animation was inspired by media like Regular Show and Diary of a Wimpy Kid to try and capture the awkward humor of being a teenager.

Animator: Tom Woronowicz

Scientist: Janeth Valverde

Animation Archive

On the morning of October 9, 2022 multiple space-based detectors pick up the brightest GRB of all time passing through our solar system. As the GRB fills space with a vibrant energy and light, a similar vibrant energy of excitement and color fills the people of earth. The film is a blue/gray monotone as it starts, but when the BOAT GRB is detected by the Gamma Ray telescopes, it alerts the computers and phones back down on Earth, bringing color to each scene. You will see each person’s life affected and changed by this new color and it brings a sense of community to these scientists and people.

Though we are not depicting the Gamma Ray Burst completely accurately, we are taking artistic liberties by making it very colorful and being very abstract with how the burst actually looks. This color is supposed to represent the liveliness of energy from this news rather than what it realistically looks like. Judith Racusin, our scientist that showed the research for this project, described this excitement when first receiving the news. She shared with us a graph that demonstrated how bright the BOAT GRB actually was. We took into consideration a lot of the things that she told us, and focused on her description of her excitement to tell the story of this event.

Animators: Holly Knego, Justine Samson, Jonathon Chin

Scientist: Judy Racusin

Animation Archive

Our animation covers the topic of the Lunar Flashlight satellite which has been sent to orbit the moon and shine lasers down into permanently shadowed regions to see what's down there. We wanted to be faithful to the science and other aspects of the mission, but we also wanted to have a fun story with characters, so we personified the lasers being shone at the moon. We also personified the concept finding of data into a physical being that actually told that story to us, providing a physical object to be taken back to earth (the data).

We put a lot of effort into trying to keep our styles consistent with one another, with Grace animating the story sequence and Emma and Stephen animating the characters. We made a brush that we would all use, a cohesive background style, and a specific style for all of the laser people to be. Overall we all feel very confident in this animation and think it exemplifies the themes that we and our mentoring scientists wanted to achieve!

Animators: Emma Booth, Grace Kim, Stephen Winkless

Scientists: Daniel Cremons, Barbara Cohen

Animation Archive

Lunar Preservation explores possible protective procedures in order to sustain the moon as a natural space and as a scientific site. In addition to this, we imagine what possible conflict might arise from independent organizations and corporations who also has an interest in lunar exploration.

We wanted to imagine how Lunar preservation could lead to possible life on the moon in the form of underground moon colonies that would function as global scientific hubs. Through the lens of cartoonish antics and humor we explore how Lunar preservation might take shape in the future.

Animators: Najja Kinwole, Samuel Barna, David Zhen

Scientists: Rosemary Killen, Caela Barry

Animation Archive

An Angler fish (white dwarf star) encounters a massive supernovae which spring out jellyfish! One of which the Angler fish becomes friends with and they explore across the universe to watch other supernovae and galaxies!

The idea of the story came into being when we discussed how massive our ocean on Earth is. Especially how little we know of it. Similar to deep space. We came up with that concept of bringing both of those worlds together where, inspiration from our scientist Andrea, two deep ocean characters encounter supernovae together. One of which would be a supernova remnant!

We wanted the style of our animation to be light hearted and explored the concept of friendship. It was to be based between both 2D and 3D elements.

Animators: Gulleh Rizvi, Liv Craig, Jonas Dellbosak

Scientist: Adrien Piquenot

Animation Archive

In this piece we created a narrative adaption of the Mars rover Perseverance, and the function it serves to NASA on the hunt to find traces of life on Mars!

Animators: Rachel Nemez, Rin Costello, Morgan Drazek

Scientist: David Burtt

Animation Archive

The BurstCube is a tiny piece of technology with a big purpose! The BurstCube is able to detect gamma ray bursts that occur when two neutron stars collide. Then, the BurstCube reports this information to telescopes and scientists. For our project, we really wanted to turn the BurstCube into something engaging and exciting. We thought about what made the BurstCube so interesting— its small size versus the large events it captures. Through the name of our scientist Israel Martinez’s presentation, “Little BurstCube and the Big Booms”, we had an idea… “that sounds like a band name!” From there, we divided the work and created our short. Working with a similar style was interesting, because each of us have not only different styles of animating but also different programs that we all worked with. Meshing the 2D and the 3D elements was something some of us had never worked with before, so learning about how the two processes can truly come together into something amazing was a great experience.

In our animation, The Big Booms is the name of a band of two neutron rock stars, and they are putting on the performance of a lifetime! The animation consists of the two neutron stars and their awesome performance. As the show progresses, the two neutron stars dance around each other and eventually cause a huge explosion– a gamma ray burst, in which they transform into a SUPER star!

Animators: Bee Salvador, Paige Hunt, & Romina Nunez

Scientist: Israel Martinez Castellanos

Animation Archive

The telescope NuSTAR was launched June 13th, 2012 and has since then changed our understanding of the universe through its hard x-ray detector. For the film Decade of Discovery, we wanted to create a whimsical narrative with playful characters that artistically portray the discoveries of NuSTAR.With its two x-ray telescopes and one mast, it is able to pick up on high energy phenomena such as supermassive black holes, X-ray binary stars, and supernovas.

We started off our process by pooling together what we wanted to personify about the telescope. We intended this piece to be for younger children so within the character designs we kept soft shapes and bright colors. We experimented with different creatures and the relationships they have between each other to represent the high x-ray phenomena that NuSTAR has detected.

At its core this piece wants to celebrate everything NuSTAR has accomplished within the past ten years. After talking to our scientists, we could see the pride they had for NuSTAR and how excited they were to be celebrating the upcoming anniversary. This piece is our way of capturing the hard work and love that was put into NuSTAR

Animators: Molly Mignano, Lydia Mastrangelo, & Sofia Maldonado Feliciano

Scientist: Katja Pottschmidt, Nazma Islam, & Janeth Valverde

Animation Archive

Cosmic Explorers: Europa Edition is inspired by our scientist Sabrina Thompson’s research involving using AI technology to explore and gather information about the environment and conditions of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Sabrina wanted us to include three different satellites that communicate with each other about what they find on their trip to Europa. We accomplished this by focusing on three satellite characters. One acting as a real estate agent, to help the other two find a home like they are in a reality television show.

For the background art and environment, we went for a more stylized look and used photographs of Europa as reference. A more cartoony appearance for the houses was chosen to match the look of the characters.The characters are simple in design and have a textured lineart to give more definition and help them fit into the environments better, while still standing out but not being shaded in.

Animators: Ray Bricker, Corinth Boone, & Isabelle Giller

Scientist: Sabrina Thompson

Animation Archive

In our film Jet's Journey, our Team aimed to visualize the "Underdog" sub-relativistic Jet's Journey through Joseph Campbell Monomyth (The Hero's Journey) narrative structure. By putting a spotlight on the lesser known weaker jets produced by stellar blackholes in hopes to spark future interest, insight, and further research on these phenomena.

After our mentor Kim Weaver gave us our prompt and coined the Underdog term we rolled with that concept so we had our sights on a meek little character. Early in pre production our team decided on going a mix-media route, deciding that having our protagonist be the lone stop-motion puppet in the film would help him stand out and be easier to follow on 2D backgrounds.

This film as a whole was definitely its own stressful Underdog Journey, from start to finish, Kim was able to make the science consumable and less intimidating to comprehend when she would talk to us. We crashed into a lot of obstacles along the way, barely reaching the finish line but the final result was something very strange and unique.

Animators: Maya Sorhage, Nicole Jordan, & Ike Osere

Scientist: Kim Weaver

Animation Archive

For our animation Magnetic Pull, we wanted to focus on two elements of what happens to black holes. One being the magnetic force around black holes that becomes more dense and rapid as time goes on. The second being the end result when the magnetic forces become too much for the black hole to handle, which causes it to flip after thin jets explode from strong magnetic pressure. To portray the magnetic field we decided to use flying toy blocks attracted to a child’s magnet. The child represents the black hole that over time is overwhelmed and flipped by the magnetic force when the black hole explodes.

As a team we have divided the work based on the mediums we were working with, 2D and 3D. We had constant communication with our scientist Sibashish Laha in order to get the elements we wanted to portray in our piece scientifically right. At its core, Magnetic Pull is a fun animation that simulates what a black hole goes through when the magnetic fields surrounding it build up to a point that it can’t keep up.

Animators: Saumya Chavva & Simon McClendon

Scientist: Sibashish Laha

Animation Archive

The D.A.R.T (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft was launched on November 24th, 2021. D.A.R.T’s purpose is to test the viability of crashing a satellite into an asteroid to change its projected course. By testing this satellite, scientists can determine whether or not this would be a possible way of defending the Earth against any future asteroid threats. D.A.R.T is expected to make contact with Didymos’ secondary body sometime in September of 2022.

We thought that a fun take on this mission would be to make the D.A.R.T satellite into a character and follow their mission as they defend the Earth from an approaching threat. Accompanied by their friend LICIACube (who is there to take photos of the results) will DART be able to save the planet in time?

Animators: Leah Mattox & Noah Wolf

Scientist: Angela Stickle

Animation Archive

An explorer is searching for planets that could support a human settlement in the Trappist-1 System. While they enjoy their explorations they are pushed to move quickly through many planets, nearly losing hope before finally finding the perfect new home! The spaceship traveling towards the Trappist-1 system, a planetary explorer begins their work moving through a couple of planets at a leisurely pace despite the lack of checks on their planet habitability checklist (Trappist 1d and 1g). Their tablet sounds an alarm and calls them back to the ship. The explorer is low in their quota for the day and no-one has found a human safe planet yet. They move rapid fire through visits to a few more planets intermittently cutting back to an increasingly more chaotic room and an increasingly stressed and disappointed explorer. Goes to (Trappist 1f 1h 1b and 1c) no match, finally the explorer sits in their office exhausted before pulling them-self together for the last planet on their list. (Trappist 1e) That one is just right! The checklist is filled with checks!

Our Scientist Ell Bogat is researching Exoplanets- On average, it is estimated that there is at least one planet for every star in the galaxy. That means there's something on the order of billions of planets in our galaxy alone, many in Earth's size range. These planets outside of our solar system are known as Exoplanets. Helping us directly on the Trappist-1 system.

Animators: Lakeisha Felton & Lenna Forman

Scientist: Ell Bogat

Our scientists, Henrike Fleischhack and Roopesh Ojha are currently working on the AMEGO satellite mission. The main goal of this satellite is for it to serve as a kind of probe, picking up and reading various gamma signatures from out in space. NASA hopes to use the collected data to gain a better understanding of various phenomena such as neutron stars and quasars.

For our animation we decided it would be fun to depict the satellite as a little robot, being sent out on a mission after detecting two neutron stars in the area.

We went about this by splitting the workload in half, meaning I would handle animating the characters while Rain would focus on building the backgrounds. After both processes were finished we compiled them together for the final film.

Animators: Edward Orji & Rain Wang

Scientists: Henrike Fleischhack & Roopesh Ojha

In space, some carbon and hydrogen molecules come together to form Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. When the molecules are hit with a photon from a star, they become excited and shed infrared light. As the infrared light travels, it expands and becomes visible light. Known as “PAH’s,” the light these molecules emit can help scientists figure out how far away distant stars are. Our animation begins with the PAH’s formation and shows how the energy is emitted, eventually reaching specialized telescopes and scientists on Earth.

We wanted our topic to be as approachable as possible, making all the elements humanized. Paired with a calming background score, educational script, and human characters, the film makes larger concepts less intimidating and fun to view conceptually.

Animators: Emma Barany & Elliot Zink

Scientist: Jason Glenn

Our scientist Connor Nixon studies life on ocean worlds. For this project, Nixon gave us information on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Europa’s surface is mainly composed of icy water, and scientists believe that under all of the ice, there is an abundance of liquid water (twice as much water than all of Earth’s oceans)! Europa’s water opens up the possibility of life beyond Earth, because on Earth, where there is water, there is usually life. This project explores the possibility of creatures that could live under the surface of Europa in a fantastical manner. “Inside Europa” is heavily inspired by surrealism, and emphasizes the idea that we do not know for certain what is under the surface of Europa’s ice (if anything). “Inside Europa” is a mixed media piece that features two-dimensional and three-dimensional animation in order to tell the story of an explorer who is currently ice-fishing on Europa to find a sea creature called Europa’s Venom in order to win a cash reward. However, as the character is dragged into the water and comes face to face with Europa’s Venom, they are in deep shock when presented with a massive creature instead of an adorable one like on the poster, transforming the plot from a money hungry explorer searching for a creature to an explore desperately fighting to survive the vast and potentially dangerous waters of Europa.

Animators: Kofo Folorunsho & Ellis Edwards

Scientist: Connor Nixon

Our film, Little Black Holes, takes the concept of black holes and their jets to create a story about a space ranger confronting two baby black holes in a candy store. The scientist we collaborated with, Nazma Islam, made a really fun analogy on black holes being little demons that create trouble everywhere they go, and we stuck with this analogy to make the film. Here we create a satirized version of how black holes absorb energy from stars around them and are essentially unstoppable. We split our story down the middle and animated our halves fully. Sydni animated in Clip Studio Paint and Louis animated in TVPaint. Additional sound design was done by Louis and assembled together in Adobe Premiere.

The film starts with the twins entering the candy store and being offered candy by the star-man. Excited by the yummy-looking candy, they activate their powers and absorb the candy, as well as almost absorbing the star-man too. Alerted of the confrontation at the candy store, the space ranger reluctantly dresses up and leaves to go to the planet with the store. They initially give the two black holes a warning telling them not to do that again, but one of the black holes bites them. The space ranger then punishes the two by hitting them on the head and knocking them out for the time being. All seems at peace again at the candy store until the mother of the two black holes sees her babies beat up. Furious, the black hole mother eats the space ranger, and for the black holes it’s a happy ending.

Animators: Louis Roesler & Sydni Warren

Scientist: Nazma Islam

Trojans is a skincare commercial with behind the scenes footage of the asteroid models and director Lucy. The advertisement showcases the surfaces of different asteroids, examining what makes their differences so special and encouraging positivity. The behind the scenes montage shows them in their “natural habitat” alongside interviews discussing the project.

Our scientists Simone Marchi and Cathy Olkin talked to us about asteroid shapes and their craters and showed us NASA’s upcoming Lucy mission where they were planning on sending a space probe to study the Trojan asteroids.With that, we decided to play with the idea of combining 2D and 3D animation into a commercial, because it would feature their textures on 3D rendered characters while giving a lightheartedness in 2D facial expressions and features. Our scientists gave us insight on some small details about the Trojan asteroids so that we could effectively incorporate them into the interviews.

Animators: Gianna Puglia & Alleah Nobeza

Scientists: Simone Marchi & Cathy Olkin

Prompt:

With new reports suggesting of life inhabiting Saturn’s moon, Titan, E.D.D.I. (Exploration Dog Doing Investigations), is tasked to capture and return with samples of life at all costs. FETCH is as if National Geographic made a “The Martian” sequel but instead of having Matt Damon, its a dog. We follow Eddi as he explores the different terrains and environments that Titan has to offer. Although, after years of failing to make contact with any signs of life, he grows tired and lonely of the mission; desperate to make contact. In a 1-2 minute short, we will encapsulate the wonder and intrigue of space, aliens, and what lies beyond our world.

Art/science statement:

While some aspects of Titan remain a mystery, we wanted to create a visualization of the terrain and life that could live there. Our goal is to share our curiosity by creating our own vision of Titan’s landscapes and creatures in a playful and lively short. Fetch embodies our optimism when looking towards the future of interstellar exploration. In this fictional world of dogs becoming astronauts, dog-shaped space crafts or even dog-shaped helmets, we wanted to continue asking questions about the universe and the secrets that it holds.

Credits:

Animation: Rob Thompson and Isabella Potenziani

Sound/Music: Rob Thompson Scientific

Reference: Conor

The Science of it all: The MeV domain is one of the most underexplored windows on the Universe. The time is right for an MeV mission. AMEGO is a satellite projects that provides three new capabilities in MeV astrophysics: sensitive continuum spectral studies, polarization, and nuclear line spectroscopy. Maybe AMEGO will allow us to get to know more about neutron star merger and the elements that comes out of it.

As for our film, Gettin' Smashed is about AMEGO, a backdoor-dealing paparazzi. He tails the two most celebrated Neutrons stars, as they bar crawl, in hope to photograph some good scoops in exchange for some good space money.

After several failed attempts, and stars who are getting drunker by the number of bars they hopped, AMEGO finally is able to capture the exact moment where the stars merged, producing invaluable number of elements. He then moves to a location that is most-definitely-not NASA and receives his money at last.

In the process of developing the idea for Getting’ Smashed, we initially brainstormed a few ideas where there where thousands of gold wedding rings getting churned out of space, lost kids and lost friends, hungry babies, before we finally reached the final paparazzi idea. It was an instant hit with our science collaborator. We want to go with a UPA style of limited animation that has a quicker, snappier cuts for extra humor. The characters are designed on the spot, and the backgrounds are tailored towards a more textile look to push visual interest

Lava Bed Bats: Artist Statement

For over two months of research, animating and consulting with professional scientists, the Lava Tube team has managed to create a thoroughly enticing short about astro scientists. Although these scientists are bats, they do meet strange outer worldly bats that are as friendly as they are menacing. They are taken into lava tube caves, which are found mostly on Earth, yet the moon also bears its large dark spots from asteroids and previously flown lava. Lava was thought to have occurred on the moon over 1 billion years ago, but newer observations by NASA spacecraft have shown that they go back to 100 million years. Therefore, the moon may have more to offer from within than we know. In this particular short, we chose to depict these caverns as strange, spooky, and inhabited by a mysterious cult. The latter implies there may be a reason why most people don’t speak of those lava tubes, because no one ever lived to talk about them. From this mysterious cult using the sun’s rays to generate the essence of poor souls, mainly astronauts, into lava to keep their society prospering for as long as they need. In addition, they may also potentially take over the Earth after countless eons of watching over it with so little in return of progress. It may sound dark, but then again, in outer space, no one can hear you scream.

D.R.I.P. ( Damp Rock International Project )

D.R.I.P. is about the current search for water on the moon, including worries and arguments had by the scientific community, all of it put through a comedic, lighthearted and cartoony lens. As soon as we were given our subject to work with, and a productive conversation with Dr. Timothy A. Livengood, we had enough insight into the perspective of the scientists and intricacies of the actual subject that we could begin drafting ideas. We were told of their outlook on manned or robot missions, of what the most subtle and clean method of transport should be, of their theories and whatnot, and that got our collective creative cogs turning.

We decided to garner as many elements of our conversation as possible, having the animated film revolve around both a human astronaut and a robot, spicing it up with a comedic spin of a grumpy guy and a sort of HAL 9000 inspired robot going into this rather mundane research activity.

The general art direction was decided what would be most efficient to animate between the both of us, with simple, cartoony designs and relatively minimalistic backgrounds. It was fully animated in Adobe Photoshop and composited and edited in Adobe Premiere. Luckily the subject we were given was simple and open enough where we could have a lot of fun and play around with what we wanted to do without losing the scientific accuracy. It wasn't an easy task but we managed to do what we set out to do and have fun with it.

X-Ray Binary Stars! X-Ray Binary Stars is a short film by Zachary Combs and Stephen Perozziello. The two of us in trying to find a way to interpret the complex phenomenon of orbital modulation in high mass x-ray binary star system stumbled into a very friendly way of thinking about stars and star systems. A person and their dog seemed like the perfect analogy, and the UPA style fit our vision perfectly. For non-animators out there, the UPA style is how we refer to a style that came out of the 1960’s in cartoons by Universal Productions of America. Shorts like Gerald Mc Boing Boing and Rooty Toot Toot and shows like Mr Magoo heavily inspired the style and tone we strived to replicate in this short film. We animated mostly in Adobe Flash and did special effects and sound in Adobe Premiere and After Effects.

The film itself draws a connection between our X-Ray binary star system, IGR J16493- 4348 and someone taking care of his dog in a few ways. We compare the accretion process of material falling to the dense object in the relationship to feeding ones dog, and stellar tides to the dog pulling the man by the leash. Stephen, Joel and I had a lot of fun coming up with the various analogies used in the film and are happy with the end result.

This project was meant to be the love child of Selin Buyukcngiz and I’s passion for animation and space. This opportunity meant a lot for both parties. Our scientist collaborator from Nasa, Sabrina N. Thompson was helpful in keeping the project clear and concise. This would be my first animation proper animation collaboration and we dove in head first. The plan was to treat this as professional as we could, we planned out the weeks for processes such as rough animation, rough 2 animation, clean up, coloring, sound design and compositing. Amidst this project, the COVID 19 shutdowns began and we were forced to halt our project. Without the necessary software, I was moving at a slower pace while Selin has major computer issues, still we kept moving forward. Finally, when this felt like things was coming together with tv paint subscriptions having been dispersed and our process back on schedule, Selin had to return to Turkey and we communicated at odd hours of the day. I felt the importance of communicating everything about our journey because It is a unique situation that we are all experiencing at the moment and it should be remembered.

This project is about sending a cube-satellite to Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. We applied a clear cut mail delivery analogy to relay it. Using coloring as an indication of reality and white paper background to refer to the analogy.

Selin and I have already discussed the possibility of continuing to work this project because we're extremely passionate about seeing this through on our own demands

Magnetars are neutron stars that are formed from supernovas with a strong magnetic field. This magnetic field emits high energy electromagnetic radiation (gamma rays and x-rays). Magnetars start off as a supernova that transfers its materials as it dies and this forms a smaller star.

Our film attempts to show how magnetars are created by showing the magnetar as a character. Since magnetars start off as a supernova, we decided to make the character’s head very large at the beginning. When the supernova eventually dies, its head shrinks to a smaller size, becoming a magnetar. This shows that the mass of the magnetar is similar to the supernova’s, even though its size may be much smaller.

Our animation is based on the water and dusty concept of Mars, because Mars missions heavily focus on ‘following the water’. And because the pressure on Mars is so low (equivalent to Earth’s stratosphere) and the temperature is so cold, water on the surface either is frozen or exists as a gas. If water is combined with a salt, it can exist as a liquid on the surface of Mars. Researchers have suggested that Recurring Slope Lineae (dark streaks on the surface of Mars) may be evidence of flowing liquid brine water.It may also be that a large reservoir of frozen water exists underground. Based on the scientist concept we decide to create a candy factory which is made by Mars underground ice and show the process how to make the ice transfer to water. Even though we never found life on Mars (at least for now), we still want to add a group of working martians and a dragon looking monster character to push the story development and show the outside scene of Mars and show the global dust storm. Because Mars isn’t dusty all the time, but it does have dust devil activity. So our character looked around and saw dust devils instead of a dust storm.

We get inspiration by a youtube video about how to make candy, we both really enjoy the factory working loop and the concept. After we write our story and character design, we use Photoshop to do 2D frame and frame drawing and add the color after we finish the line work. We did the animation, background and sound half and half. We use After effect to create the motion of title and credits and used Premiere pro to connect the animation together and add sound effect

Children around a campfire talk about the tale of the Ice Monster, a small ice rock creature who lives in permanent shadows on the moon. The Ice Monster explores to the edge of the crater, curious about the bright light.

The Science: Some craters on the Moon, in areas more concentrated in the southern pole, have not been touched by direct sunlight for billions of years. This is because the Moon has a straight axis. In August 2018, it was confirmed that ice can be found in these craters. The ice within these craters, or “cold traps” are a result of water vapor getting trapped inside. However, it is still unclear how this water got there. Some theories include: it arrived via icy comets or asteroids, chemical reactions driven by solar wind created water, or that there’s more ice under the surface of the moon. Animation: "Gabby Garcia - Ice monster scenes (3D and 2D animation), compositing Sabrina Binhashim - camper scenes (3D background and 2D animation), compositing, sound" Scientist: Wes Patterson

Research

Neutrinos coming from Blazars. This topic interested us because the way a Blazar produced high energy Neutrinos, traveled through space, and reached Earth was fascinating. We also wanted to incorporate the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory into the animation because it plays a huge role in detecting neutrinos.

Neutrino is a fast, light, and unsociable particle that can provide information about environments that are not available from studying light alone. However, neutrinos are so difficult to detect since they rarely interact with matter. With this, the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory at the South pole has clear glacial ice with advanced technology that help scientists detect and study neutrinos more easily.

Animation: Erin Kim: 3D modeling(background), coloring, post-production (sound, caption, credits) / Hope Chung: 2D drawing, storyboard, completing animating. Scientist: Roopesh Ojha

NASA’s Fermi Traces Source of Cosmic Neutrino to Monster Black Hole

A tale of forbidden love between the moon and her cowboy.

We made this film with NASA scientist Dov Rhodes who is researching solar winds and their effect on conditions in moon craters. We decided to take a sillier approach, personifying the theoretical astronaut traveling in moon craters as a cowboy trying to find electricity to power his moon barn. Dov told us there would be greater amounts of static electricity in certain parts of the crater, so we came up with the idea of the cowboy dancing in order to harvest this electricity. We had a rootin’ tootin’ time animating this, and we hope you have an electrifying time watching! Animation: Amber St.Onge (animation, backgrounds, editing) Xochitl Cornejo (animation, backgrounds, choreography) Scientist: Dov Rhodes

Check out our process

Research

We utilized 80s space aesthetics to depict the detection of Gravitational Waves following a Neutron Star collision.

We are now at a point where there have been four major detections of gravitational waves occurring at the site of large celestial impact collisions. Our group is focusing on the collision of two neutron stars and the gravitational waves detected in their wake. When the collision occurs,  large blasts fling newly formed elements, such as gold, into space. Following their wake are gravitational waves. This collision and subsequent waves are detected by analyzing data collected at FERMI and LIGO. Though this discovery is largely impactful in the scientific community, the detection of this is minute.

Through the process of animation, our group aims to call attention to the occurrence of neutron star collisions and gravitational waves by depicting it in a digestible from. As artists we want to utilize experimental animation processes to emulate the splendor of the creation of elements. We also want to focus on the dichotomy this impact has on the scientific community versus the general public. To do this we are framing the animation as a Breaking News segment. In keeping with the experimental techniques we plan to utilize collage to create this. The overall visual aesthetic is from the 80s. We find the recent discovery of this is best depicted through seemingly outdated technology because, although we are using the most advanced technology we have, it’s simply not advanced enough to know what to do with this data.   Animation: Sarah Lyons: Puppet Animator, Declan McKenna: After Effects Specialist and Puppet Animator, Leili Arai Tavallaei: Stop Motion Wax Experimental Sequence, Rob Thompson: Voice Actor, Lillian DeHart: Voice Actor Scientist: Roopesh Ojha and Judy Racusin

Research

Our video stars a young detective, the famous space telescope, and a young alien apprentice as they search the planets and the stars for DARK MATTER. As sinister as the name sounds, they’re quite peaceful and shy, yet the purpose of their existence remains shrouded in mystery. Astronomers have described dark matter as something invisible, with the only evidence of dark matter being theories and hints from space as to what dark matter maybe. One hint that shows evidence of dark matter is whenever light hits dark matter’s mass the light becomes distorted. It is theorized that dark matter is made up of wimps or “weakly interacting massive particles”Dark matter takes up 27% of the universe, while dark energy takes up 68% , leaving normal matter taking up  5% of the universe.

With a subject as mysterious as dark matter, we were inspired by old mystery children cartoons such as, scooby-doo and the pink panther. Thus, the first character we created was a young space detective. We later added the Hubble Space Telescope since this particular telescope was involved in finding evidence of dark matter. In one scene, Hubbs and another Space telescope, Chandra, finds two dark matters passing through each other,creating a bullet cluster. We also decided to add an alien character to keep the science-fiction element of the story. To emulate old film noir films we decided to us mostly gray scale color scheme, with only a few colors appearing, such as the colorful space sky.

Animation: Sung Youn Kim, (character design, story-boarding and animation) Jess Peterson ( character design, animation, backgrounds, editing,) Scientist: Regina Caputo

Check out our process

Research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

A neutron star and a main sequence are personified as children at play. The amazing power of a neutron star's x-ray burst is examined. Outburst​ tells the story of a neutron star and a main sequence star in a binary system, following the cycle of the stars’ relationship leading up to the neutron star’s X-ray burst as the result of hydrogen accretion. We decided to bring the two stars to life as children on a playground. When thinking of a binary system as characters, it is quite easy to see the hydrogen-sapping neutron star as a villain taking advantage of its main sequence companion. Knowing this, we personified the ‘stars’ of our animation as best friends to better reflect the return of the status quo following an X-ray outburst. Through regular collaboration with Katja as well as Joel Coley of Howard University, the personalities of the protagonists were finalized: the neutron star is brimming with energy and regularly osmosing hydrogen, and the main sequence star is simply along for the ride but is always ready to lend a helping hand!

In addition to the protagonists, we set out to creatively represent different aspects of astronomy, stars, and space in this project - particularly in the way the backgrounds and characters are colored - so that both the metaphors and the science are shown through the art. The character who appears for a couple of seconds in the dentist’s office? He’s a red giant. The cracks through the asphalt and the general destruction of the playground? They display the packed density of the neutron star as it pulses in an outburst. We resolved to achieve a specific level of detail and style from the start. Everything was stitched together with carefully-chosen sound effects in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Animation: Steven Judge - Keyframes, colors, sound, editing Terri Ogwulumba - Animatic, inbetweens, backgrounds Scientists: Katja Pottschmidt, Joel Coley, Koji Mukai, Paul Hemphill

Check out our process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_burster

Our film showcases the beauty and awe of a lunar impact from three different perspectives around our world: A small child on the Earth, an astronaut in a space station, and an AI stationed on the moon. Together they all stop to observe the impact.

Our project is focused on the impacts that the moon endures and the craters that result from them. Through this film, we are exploring visualizations of an impact and focus on the beauty it creates through effects animation. We showcase several scientific concepts relating to impact craters such as ejecta blankets, ejecta curtains, impact melts, and impact flashes. This is shown through pure visualization of some concepts as well as a representation of data and other concepts portrayed in a more human way, as notes in a journal.

We hope to create a sense of awe and wonderment with this film, sharing the feelings that we first felt when learning about this topic, and hope that the audience would be able to relate to that experience. We would also like to create the sensation of an impactful and emotional narrative that the audience can relate to and resonate emotionally with through the experiences of the three characters.

Animators: Emma Londa and Korben Dennis Scientist: Angela Stickle

Research

A girl at home with a cold ends up on the moon and learns about LRO's Diviner, a machine that measures lunar temperature, taught by Diviner himself.

the Diviner tells us about the moon’s surface and its properties like its temperature and landscape. The moon has very extreme temperature ranges and can range from over 200 degrees Fahrenheit to negative 423 Fahrenheit. On top of telling us about temperature, the Diviner also tells us the rockiness or lack thereof of different parts of the moon. This is used to safely land spacecrafts and tell us about the moon’s surface

Animators: Sofia Cisneros and Elizabeth Saylor. Scientist: Chanud Yasanayake and Benjamin Greenhagen

Check out our process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diviner

The Vela pulsar helps with Fermi birthday celebrations!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Pulsar

Our group chose this project originally because we were absolutely enamored by sweet little Fermi and all that he does for us in space (and has been doing for 10 years now)! As we worked on the project further, it was amazing how our creativity grew with the materials that we chose to use and the way in which we chose to explore our topic. Using a mix of stop motion, 3D modeling, and 2D animation we were able to create this birthday celebration short about dear Fermi (with some ideas spurting from the Mars Rovers’ birthday song feature that we wanted to gift to Fermi in this animation). Of course we couldn’t have done this without the help of our mentors Roopesh Ojha and Elizabeth Ferrara, and our professors Jay Friedlander and Robin Corbet - it was such a joy to be able to demonstrate scientific research by means of this creative outlet, and to be able to share Fermi’s 10 year anniversary celebration through such an accessible medium.

Happy birthday Fermi!

A young girl tries to send a message to the aliens who live near pulsars…

Research

We were fascinated by the mysterious origins of neutrinos, and we wanted to try and represent the topic through a creative lens. With a documentary inspired approach, we depicted a neutrino, a gamma ray, and protons as birds taking a journey from AGN TXS 0506+056 to Earth, where the birds will land upon a new home, Fermi tree and Ice Cube pond.

Research

Our film is dedicated to the idea of teaching kids about binary star systems through a dog. Laika, the first living thing to be in space, narrates how the Fermi satellite, discovers binary star systems through gamma-ray pictures. It is meant to be a kid friendly short, to teach them a big concept of different types of star systems, in a simple and funny way. Laika, the dog is also a tool to keep the children’s attention as she explains the system, hopefully by making the kids laugh, they can see science as a fun and interesting topic to explore more. This short film is also to celebrate the Fermi satellite’s tenth birthday, a big achievement for such an old piece of equipment that still functions and is still discovering new things about our universe.

Research

Neutrino burglars!

Research

Scientists record and collect data from cosmic events. This is a dramatization of such an event, and how that information reaches scientists on Earth. This class really taught us both the value of being able to trust your partner in order to produce the best result possible. It also taught us how to translate complicated ideas into a narrative that’s easy for the audience to follow! We learned that scientific animation isn’t just direct models of phenomena, but a diverse field whose primary concern is the best way to get information out to the general public and the different forms that it can take.

Research

Gravitational lensing

by Bruno Saad Marques, Willy Fair, Karl Ericksen, Claire Foster.Scientists: Sara Buson, Roopesh Ojha

Traveling through intergalactic space, Captain G. Nisnel and his crew search for lost treasures. Due to their inferior intelligence, they cannot foresee the dangers lurking behind the galaxies…

About the group:

They are a diverse group of four scallywags. Their animation master, Bruno Saad Marques is a foreign exchanged student from Brazil. Coming up with story ideas, Willy Fair is a junior animation major, who focuses on stop motion animation. Karl Ericksen is a junior graphic design major with some serious talents in voice acting. The character designer was Claire Foster, a graduate illustration major. Gravitational lensing brought this group came together for the animation and science class.

MICA Animation Festival 2016: Audience award winner

Research

When observing a galaxy’s rotation, it was to many scientists’ surprise to find that objects lying at the edge of the galaxy were moving at a faster rate than the ones closer to the center. This had defied all the things that we knew about gravity and mass. As such, the scientists developed a theory that suggested that there was another type of matter that existed beyond what we are capable of seeing which holds the galaxies together. That type of matter is dark matter.Our project departs from the idea of dark matter being a crucial part of our universe despite it being undiscovered all these years. To this day, we do not have much information about it nor can we see or interact with it. Therefore, we were inspired to create a mockumentary that tells a story about Dark Matter, a middle schooler who was ignored by everyone. We believe that this would be an interesting and fun way to depict several of the theories revolving around dark matter since our main character plays such an important role in his peers’ lives and in his school.

Research

In our piece, we attempted to create an animation depicting black holes and how two neighboring black holes are affected by gravitational waves through a visually pleasing way. We chose the images of mandalas to show the pattern of light bending around black holes in a almost rippling effect. We went from a more smooth animation to a more geometric animation to illustrate the change after the merging of black holes. We decided to go more abstract since there is not a clear understanding of exactly what happens after black holes merge.Originally this project was created for the Dome format and was projected at the Maryland Science Center Planetarium.

Research

We created a hybrid animation combining a 3D environment and stop motion figures. Using the plot of ‘’gravitational wave surfers’’ in order to comically portray the effect of gravitational waves, our characters explain the theory in ridiculous surfer lingo.

Research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave

September 2015: Two massive black holes merge, and gravitational waves are detected for the first time. A brief flash of gamma-rays follows shortly after. How could two black holes make gamma rays?

Most of the animation was done with the 3 of us working together in the same space. Our plan from the formation of our idea was to use several kinds of media to complete our film, and we ended up including stop-motion, traditional 2D animation, digital animation, painting, and pen and ink. Originally this project was created for the Dome format and was projected at the Maryland Science Center Planetarium.

Research

An entertaining and education animation that explains the basics ofwhat X-ray’s are and how we collect them for study in outer space. We believe that humor is the most powerful educational tool and implementing it in this work was part of the fun of making this animation. This animation is meant to be presented on a planetarium dome, this is because we as artist believe that the dome is a wonderful way of presenting things for an audience, it creates a feeling of enrapture that can only be experienced when watching animation in this way.

Research

What inspired me to create this film was the process of how a pulsar is formed. I was interested in humanizing the process and imagining it as if the star was giving “birth” to a new one as it exploded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell

Ground-based gamma-ray telescopesBy Seth IzenScientist: Jeremy Perkins

https://veritas.sao.arizona.edu/

by Susannah Indyk Scientist: Liz Hays

Dark matter makes up the majority of matter in the universe, but it is not known what dark matter exactly is. The main contender for dark matter particles are Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs. WIMPs are expected to produce gamma rays when they interact, like dark matter is. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope looks for these gamma rays in dwarf spheriodal galaxies, prime locations in the search for dark matter.

https://carnegiescience.edu/news/reconciling-dwarf-galaxies-dark-matter

"Wormholes, alternate universes, time warps — we’ve all heard crazy theories about what happens inside a black hole. So what’s the real story? The short answer is, physicists don’t know."

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/whats-inside-a-black-hole/

In 1912, Victor Hess took off on a hot-air balloon to mesure ionizing radiation in the atmosphere.

Victor Hess

by Sofia Pujolscientist: Andy Inglis

Solar Flares is a short animation combining 3-D computer animation and hand-drawn elements that describes the formation of solar flares on the Sun and their release. A solar flare is a release of built up magnetic energy on the Sun’s surface. The buildup of is embodied by a ghostly hand that scratches and pulls at the Sun’s surface; its release is drawn as little golden angels that are eager to fly far and wide. The radiation fromthese powerful flares is emitted throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The effects of solar flares on Earth can range from radio malfunctions to aurorae borealis. Those effects are hinted at when a halo forms over the Earth once the angels (particles from the solar flare release) reach it. Solar Flares was an exploration in attributing nonscientific explanations and personifications to scientific and natural phenomena.

Fermi detects the highest-energy light from a solar flare

By: Jerron ShropshireScientist: Sylvain Guiriec

Cosmic Graffiti is a cosmic adventure that explores the stellar phenomenon known as Gamma Ray Bursts through the style of Hip-Hop and the aesthetic of graffiti. Join me as we journey to the outer reaches of space to witness a Gamma Ray Burst dance before us leaving behind a cosmological graffiti mark, all synced to a “phat" beat. Cosmic graffiti is meant to be an artist representation of what happens when a supermassive star collapses on itself. The form perceived to be created as a result of this massive explosion shows a large similarity to a form of graffiti known as “wildstyle”. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon this gamma ray burst takes the aesthetic of this style to show something both cool while be stylized.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst

Sometimes the sun emits powerful flares, but for the sun himself, it's noting more than a sneeze!

This video was created to be shown on "Science on a Sphere". The second part of the film shows the "flat" 2D version that is mapped onto the sphere by specialized software and the parts distributed to multiple projectors.

Animation: William Lynn

Fermi sees hidden solar flares

By Kyrstin Cooksey, Veronica Dolcich, CJ Reynolds

Scientist: Robin Corbet

The X-ray/gamma-ray binary Cygnus X-3 as a superhero!

Research

by Tristan DiMaria, Malcolm Jones, Shoshanah Tobesman, Elena Dreyer.Scientist: Elizabeth Ferrara.