Exploding Planet Animation

Way, way, waaaaaaay back in 2005, 14-year-old Leko wanted to try getting into Flash animation because he saw a lot of people doing a lot of cool stuff with it.

Upon downloading the free trial for whichever version of Flash was available at the time, and playing around with it to learn the absolute bare basics, the first real animation I made was the BIONICLE planet just exploding. Because it was 2005, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie was coming out later that year (or might have already by the time I'd done this), so my 3-second animation project was basically just trying to recreate the trailer where the Earth explodes, and then the phrase "Don't Panic" appears.

I DID have a lot of fun playing with some effects and tools I've been skittish about trying to use, but have wanted to figure out for a long time. Getting a good handle on particles and the physics tools in particular. Remaking the exploding planet from almost 20 years ago seemed like a good excuse to finally really dive in.

And, yes. I COULD have just found a high-res render of the island of Mata Nui from LEGO's official art and slapped it on a sphere to make the pre-exploded planet. But I didn't do that. I made my own render. By tracing over that official one in sculpt mode. Because if I'm gonna REALLY kick 14-year-old Leko's ass at animating, might as well go all out.