Project description:

 Describes NASA's mission, Persevrance Mars 2020, consisting of sending a new exploration rober to Mars. It describes the mission, the operations and the objectives, from launch to landing, describing what new instruments it will use to carry it out and how it will deploy them.

 

Impact reached:

 The project was published in the science section of the newspaper La Vanguardia on the launch day of March 2020 in Google Amp stories format. Its diffusion was extended to social network channels, through a video version for YouTube, Twitter and Instagram TV, as well as in stories format for the same social network.

 

Techniques/technologies used:

 The first process was based on the modeling, texturing and rigging of the rober and the rockets involved in launch, to later illuminate and animate it. For this, Maya Autodesk and its Arnold render engine were used. Once the animation sequences had been rendered in 3D, we went to video montage and post-production using After Effects and creating the sequence of all the phases of the mission and the detail of the instruments. Once all this was done, the pieces were rendered in weight-optimized mp4 to mount them on the Google AMP Stories format on which we assembled the entire sequence. All of them on a wordpress platform.

What was the hardest part of this project?

 The most complicated parts were: On a narrative level, being able to synthesize such a complex mission without neglecting any of the key aspects of it, doing it in 12 slides. Posing infographics in mobile and desktop format without either losing information or visual weight. And from the technical point of view the rigging process (robotic arm, camera mast or wheel movement) as well as the rendering of the same.

What can others learn from this project?

 

 

I think that in this project, editors may be more aware of the advantage of animation as a narrative and descriptive tool, both in science projects and in many other fields of journalism. Likewise, you can also see how these projects can have output on multiple channels (video, social networks, stories) since they are designed to be multiplatform both in format and composition, to reach the largest number of users and readers.

Project links:

stories.lavanguardia.com/ciencia/20200707/25781/perseverance-mars-2020