T O P I C R E V I E W |
Robert Pearlman | collectSPACE Artist adds motion to NASA's Apollo mission patchesThe iconic mission patches for the Apollo moon landings have come to life in a new clip created by a professional animator. Cincinnati-based artist Neil Smith revealed his take on the historic NASA emblems in an animated short he published on YouTube and Vimeo on Thursday (April 2). "I have always thought it would be cool to animate all the mission patches from NASA's manned moon missions," Smith wrote in his video's description. |
sts205cdr | WONDERFUL! That was very well done! |
randy | Echoing the post of sts205cdr, very well done! |
prontouk | Absolutely fantastic, great animation and imagination. |
4allmankind | Too cool, especially Apollo 13! |
J Blackburn | Excellent!! |
mach3valkyrie | Great job! Very entertaining. |
Rocketman! | Outstanding piece of work! The graphics, the animation concepts, the music and audio clips … the whole package. I had considered trying something like this with the collectSPACE insignia. I would love to see what Neil could do.
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butch wilks | Outstanding. It brought tears to my eyes. Love the deep blue moon background on the Apollo 7 patch. It just added to the patch that is missing from all the embroidered patch. I think it looks better like this. I'd like to add my enthusiasm to Rocketman's to see the collectSPACE insignia animation, with the spacecraft moving a long the orbits. It would look fantastic and make the insignia pop out. |
nasamad | Outstanding job, he certainly know how to animate now! |
astrorero | Beautiful! Radio transmissions and Kennedy's speeches were very appropriate. A job well done! |
Tykeanaut | What a great idea and very well executed too! |
p51 | I agree of course that it's very well done. I hope someone contacts him about this thread... |
KSCartist | This is absolutely fantastic. I can imagine the work involved but I would love to see the Space Shuttle and ISS Expedition patches done as well. |
Ronpur | I could have seen those being used for the opening of the TV broadcast if they had the technology to do them back then. It is beautiful. |
astroborg | Very nice work! At the time of the Apollo 15 mission, didn't one of the US Broadcast networks have an animation of the Apollo 15 emblem? I seem to recall this was the case. |
mach3valkyrie | It was CBS News. |
Robert Pearlman | Neil Smith has gone into more detail about how he animated the Apollo mission patches on his blog here. The eagle featured in the Apollo 11 patch presented quite a challenge – both in a design sense and in a 3D modeling sense. First of all, of all the mission patches I wanted to somehow incorporate the lunar module (LEM) sitting on the surface of the moon – which was not a part of the patch itself. Secondly, I wasn’t sure I could animate a 3D eagle very well. I’m fairly good with hard surface objects like machines and space ships; but I’m not all that great (read: crappy) at organic things like people and animals and yes, eagles. I had an eagle model that I attempted to animate landing on the moon and striking the pose as seen in the mission patch. Wow. Did that suck... And there is a poster version of Smith's art for sale through Zazzle. |
Space Emblem Art | Neil, Absolutely great... including your Apollo 11 eagle. Keep up the good work. I'm sure we'd all like to see what you could do with Skylab, ASTP and shuttle mission emblems. |