Astro is a homesick alien who hails from the planet Gemini. He landed on Earth not too long ago with a very specific mission that has since taken a back seat to his obsession with all things streetwear & fashion.
To the power of ten
In my role as Lead Compositor & Animator at Shadows Interactive, one of my jobs is to help bring Astro's adventures to life. My concept for this video was based on the 1977 classic Powers of Ten in which every ten seconds we view the starting point from ten times farther out until our own galaxy is visible only as a speck of light among many others. In Astro's version, I used a little artistic license and adjusted the concept to fit the length of the music. At the end we loop back around to see it was all in his imagination - perhaps daydreaming of home?
Blue Sky Thinking
Always looking to challenge myself, I was determined to not use a cloud transition. These are often used in extreme zoom sequences as a cheat to disguise various disparate satellite imagery (such as the jumps from city to state to nation). I endevored to create a seemless transition from the grass of Griffith Observatory to outer space, making it possible to focus on the starting point until the Earth itself vanishes from view. It was no easy task, and the dimensions pushed After Effects to its obsolute breaking point, but it was totally worth the effort.
