Heh, well this went off on a tangent. I was gonna say... I never said I would ONLY use Machinima.
Either CGI, or even a real video shot is what I was going for on this one (there's a small indie company nearby with an oldschool printing press that I could probably get a few cover pages from and then wrap them around generic newspapers) . That's a good start, StarRanger. I'm not sure how much you want to drive yourself crazy with tweaking it though, or what program you did this in. If you want to develop it further though, here's what I'd need.
1. Some bumpmap detail on the ground surfaces so it looks less 2D (mostly to prepare it for item 2).
2. Reflections on the ground surface for the light from the paper to bounce off of (it's going to be raining, so the ground needs to look wet)
3. The bundle should be tied.
4. Use the "Is This the End of Paragon City?" article title.
5. Animated dropping into the frame (cool that you asked about that, because I had that thought in the back of my head but didn't even include it in the storyboard)
6. Rain? No big deal if you can't do that, because even if I was doing CGI for this myself, I'd be adding the rain and splashes in a separate program anyhow.
That made me all teary...It's wonderful. Keep going with it. I think you missed one of the atlas's though, i could be wrong. I can't wait to see the finished product.
Yeah, I know. I think it was 32 that's mission, as I have yet to find a screenshot of it.