Explainer video style · Cosmic comic

1960s comic book style explainer videos

1960s cosmic comic: halftone dots, heavy blacks, crackling energy. Brief it in one sentence and get a narrated, animated explainer film in the Cosmic comic style, scored and voiced, in about 15 minutes.

Make one in this style

Or let the director choose a style for your topic.

What it looks like, and when to use it.

Cream newsprint, Ben-Day halftone dots, heavy black ink, crackling energy and deep-space skies, printed slightly off register like a 1960s superhero comic. Cosmic comic is drawn in code, with panels, caption boxes and big sound-effect words. It turns forces, space and science into an adventure, one panel at a time.

Best for

Space, physics and big forces
Lessons for kids and teens
Product launches with punch

Try a brief like

“What happens inside a black hole”
“How a rocket escapes Earth’s gravity”
“Where lightning gets its power”

The art direction the director follows.

Every style is a full art direction, not a filter: its own palette, type, motion and music. This is the brief the director works from for Cosmic comic.

Look: Drawn in code, no generated images: a 1960s cosmic superhero comic page, printed on cheap four-colour presses. Cream newsprint, flat colour with Ben-Day halftone dots, the colour plate printed slightly off register, heavy black ink outlines, solid black shadow crescents with feathered hatching on the side away from the light, clusters of black crackling energy dots, deep-space skies with planets and energy streams, bold panels, caption boxes and big sound-effect lettering.
Motion: Comic-book punch: energy dots crackle and flow, speed lines trail fast moves, a sound-effect word pops in with an overshoot and a jitter, panels split the frame for a close-up reaction, focus lines flash. Then everything holds so the panel can be read.
Music: Bombastic retro adventure: brass fanfares, timpani, surf-guitar twang and big orchestral hits, like a 1960s cartoon serial.
Type: Comic lettering: all-caps hand-lettered style (Bangers-like) in yellow caption boxes with black borders and an offset shadow. Sound effects in huge extruded block letters, red with a yellow top band, on a spiky burst.