Space: 1959 - A Retro Space Odyssey

Back in the 1950's, Dr. Wernher von Braun and his rocket scientists dreamed of travelling to Mars. They had worked out exactly how to do this - not as a Buck Rogers adventure, but as a detailed engineering document. Enter Collier’s Magazine editor Cornelius Ryan. He put Wernher and his people together with concept artists such as Chesley Bonestell. He gave them a new mission: show the world how it could be done.

The product of this union was a series of articles entitled "Man Will Conquer Space Soon". It took space travel from Buck Rogers Fantasy in the minds of the world to something that could really happen. It could be argued that this is where the Space Age started.

This project is a love letter to the Collier's articles, and the Disney animated shorts that followed it. They helped blaze a trail that led to the Apollo landings in 1969. The very same von Braun who authored the space plans here helped design the Saturn V that put real boots on the lunar surface.

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The models were created for realtime in the Blender Eevee renderer. I used a specialised build that supported parallax occlusion mapping so that the moon surface would pop convincingly. The models were made in Blender, textured using Photoshop and Painter. All animation was done in Blender and editing and compositing was in Blender, Resolve and After Effects.

Adam Palmer did extra effects work and Kurikai served as an animation soundboard.