"News Intro" Fundamentals

I often get asked how one goes about creating that "glass rings floating around with lots of blues and golds" network news look. The following tutorial is by no means definitive, but it does present the fundamentals that one might use to get that 'look' using Zaxwerks "Invigorator" and "ProAnimator" plugins. Consider this a starting point, then add your own salt 'n pepper!

First, check out the final result HERE (Quicktime, h.264, 5 megs) or HERE (WMV, 2 megs). Then check out the tutorial HERE (Flash, 32:23, 27 megs) *whew*... How's THAT for mixing and matching codecs?

I refer to an 'earth' map in the tutorial, and you can find it (courtesy of NASA) HERE.

A bit of a housekeeping note: I've chosen to publish this tutorial as a Flash SWF. Although Quicktime is pretty much universal and you have the option to save to the desktop (with QT Pro), the quality for h.264 screen caps was (in my opinion) lacking, try as I might to get a good compression recipe.

UPDATE: A few people have asked me how to create the 'oval' illustrator shape used in ProAnimator & Invigorator in the tutorial. Click HERE for a quick overview (Flash, 1 min., .7 megs)