Rogue Earth: An Illustrated Cosmic What-If
A six-minute animated science explainer that turns an orbital threat into a step-by-step winter on Earth.
Field notes / why it works
A peaceful night-sky opening gains tension from a small moving anomaly before the spoken danger lands by 0:29. The six-minute story uses 76 internal picture changes to teach the mechanism, quantify the risk around 3:40, then show the consequences; the sun-to-winter transition at 4:24–4:30 is the strongest replay peak.
Plate 01 / The format in one breath
A calm, colourful cartoon world is threatened by a scientific “what if.” A low, animated narrator first explains the mechanism with simple diagrams, then walks through increasingly personal consequences until an illustrated catastrophe becomes tangible. The six-minute supplied segment ends during the consequence sequence, so no final resolution is evidenced.
Why it works
- A tranquil star-gazing image holds for the first 3 seconds while the narration turns its apparent safety into a threat by 0:20–0:29.
- The abstract risk becomes legible through nested scale diagrams: the Sun and belts at 1:17–1:40, a dangerous encounter at 2:14, and numerical odds at 3:40.
- A broad concept becomes lived experience at 4:00–5:59: a reddening sky, shrinking sun, buried cities, falling temperatures, and frozen oceans. The 4:24–4:30 transition into winter is the strongest replay peak supplied.
Plate 02 / Format card
| Platform · aspect · length | YouTube · 16:9 · measured 640×360 at 30 fps · 6:00 analysed |
| Pace | Detector: 5 long shot groups, 4 definite cuts, 0.7–2.3 possible cuts/min, 72.01 s mean group length. More useful here: 76 internal visual steps, about 13.3 picture changes/min. |
| Script | 1,003 transcribed words · 167 wpm across runtime, about 210 wpm in speech bursts · 57 sentences averaging 17.6 words · one question · 18 number mentions. |
| Voice | Low-register, warmly authoritative science narrator; brisk, precise, and very animated in pitch. |
| On screen | Nearly all 2D vector-style animation: scenic story tableaux, space diagrams, graphic labels, and character reactions. No presenter. |
| Captions | No running subtitles in the sampled frames. Small factual labels and one chapter-style card carry only key data. |
| Sound | Continuous tonal/music-like bed, measured about 9 dB below voice; no clearly measured cut-synced effects. −15.9 LUFS integrated, −2.8 dBFS true peak. |
| Structure | Peaceful scene → hidden danger → gravity primer → real encounter → worse encounter and odds → Earth scenario → escalating consequences. No CTA in supplied six minutes. |
Pro / 13 plates + recipe
The first plates are open. The full dissection is Pro.
Get the timed shots, type and sound specs, and the runnable recipe.
Open the full blueprint- Plate 03 / The hook, frame by frame (first 3 seconds)Pro
- Plate 04 / Structure (beat sheet)Pro
- Plate 05 / Shot grammarPro
- Plate 06 / Visual style guidePro
- Plate 07 / Voice and deliveryPro
- Plate 08 / Sound designPro
- Plate 09 / PackagingPro
- Plate 10 / Script templatePro
- Plate 11 / Production planPro
- Plate 12 / PromptsPro
- Plate 13 / Edit recipePro
- Plate 14 / QA checklistPro
- Plate 15 / Make it yoursPro
- Recipe / runnable promptPro