“No Children in Space” (Pilot) Animatic

   2013-02-02  Posted in watch
Watch on YouTube (Four parts in a YouTube playlist)


This is a Storyboard Animatic (or “Story Reel”) for the Pilot Episode of “Lunatics”, “No Children in Space”.

Our goal is to fully animate this episode and launch the series.

With 18 40-minute episodes per year, this could become the largest free culture/open movie project yet attempted.

This is an experiment in commercial free-culture.

“Lunatics” epsiodes and source material will be free to re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license…

…but we need to pay 3D modelers, animators, and actors for their time.

That’s where YOU come in!

We’ve decided to FAN-FUND this project by pre-selling the videos (and other goodies) through a Kickstarter campaign.

This way we keep creative control. We serve serious fans of the series, rather than the mass market. And Lunatics stays hard science fiction.

Let’s make it happen!

Additional sites and formats are coming.

This is the state of the animatic as of December 24, 2012. This is the first “shot-complete” version. I intend to make additional revisions with more 3D Blender graphics, some updated graphics, and so on. These will be posted on this page as they are uploaded. I also plan to upload these revisions to Vimeo and Internet Archive as well as providing downloads in various video formats. A DVD version is being prepared for the Pre-Production backers who ordered it and we’ll probably make this available as an extra on the final production DVDs and Lib-Ray “Volume 1” releases.

Pre-Production Kickstarter Sponsors & Backers

Special thanks to our Sponsors!

Luna Project

Chamba Project  (This is an Internet Archive link, as the project was shut down some time ago).

And Thanks to All of our Kickstart Backers!

Martin Ansdell-Smith — Jim Bedford — Mauro Bieg — Ryan Cartwright — John Colagioia — Tom Curl — Konstantin Dmitriev — Jonathan Fluck — Joe Futrelle — Thomas Gideon — Gal Goldschmidt — Franz Gustav — Janet Hancock — Simon Harris — Ian — Javier — Norman Jolley — David Jordan — Emmanouel Kapernaros — Kathryn N Kapust — Tom Kiesel — Mike Linksvayer — Raffaele Manzo — David Maulik — Donna & John Myers — John Myers — Stephen Ormsby — Derek Pearcy — Vibha Pingle — Mike Riley — Gregor B. Rosenauer — Timo Rossi — Karen Sandler — Hugo Simões — Elizabeth Small — Barry Solow — Junius Stone — Julie Tribble — John Tyler — Hal Tynan — Stuart Ward — Robert Wicks — Shiva Wolfe — Joseph Yu — mm2001

Pre-Production & Animatic Credits

Series Created by

Rosalyn Hunter & Terry Hancock

Character Design by

Daniel Fu

(With the Voices of)

Karrie Shirou

Ariel Hancock

William Roberts

Lex Quarterman

Paul Birchard

Veronika Kurshinskaya

and

Sergei Oleinik

as

Maj. Sergei Titov

It’s hard for me to decide on any order for the principal actors, as their roles are meant to be quite balanced in the series. This order is mostly by order of appearance, and also reflects the size of the parts in this pilot episode — except for Oleinik who is credited last and more-specifically as this is really a “guest” role in this one episode.

I’ll probably re-think this when we prepare the credits for the rest of the series.

Featuring Music by

Elaine Walker

J. T. Bruce

Butterfly Tea

Additional Music by

Insignificance

Lulo

Mattias Westlund

Miguel Herrero

J.M.F.

Walter Well

Gotika

Distemper

Fridance

Yunus

Alone in the Chaos

A.K.1974

Animatic by Terry Hancock

including…

Synfig Animations by Timothee Giet

Sketches by Terry Hancock

Videos from NASA

Photos from NASA & RosCosmos

It’s possible that I should add an additional credit for Daniel Fu here since I used a lot of his concept art to “sweeten” my sketches in this version. I may add that later, but he is already credited above, of course. Also, he might not want to be associated too-closely with my clumsy mixing of the art with the sketches! Sorry about that.

3D Set & Prop Models created by

Vyacheslav Yastrebcev

Cosmin Planchon

Gorka Mendieta

Guillaume Cote

Sathish Kumar

3D Character Models by

Andrew Pray

“No Children in Space” Written by Terry Hancock & Rosalyn Hunter

Melodee M. Spevack

Karen Jagger

Sophie LeNeveu

David Jordan

Kristina Ponomarenko

Jami Cullen
Screenplay by

Terry Hancock & Rosalyn Hunter

Russian Translation by

Konstantin Dmitriev

Veronika Kurshinskaya

Sergei Oleinik

Japanese Translation by

Miki Kuroki

Produced & Directed by

Terry Hancock

Executive Producers

Your Name Here

We will be offering an “Executive Producer” credit as a high-end reward on our Kickstarter. “Executive Producer” is a somewhat honorary title in film-making — it usually means someone who has contributed significantly to the money, but not someone with creative control. As you may know, rewards can’t include equity and this one doesn’t include profit-sharing from the project, so it really is just honorary. We may consider other options outside of our fundraiser, though.

Special Thanks to

ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti

Mark Wade’s Encyclopedia Astronautica

NASA

USGS

RosCosmos

ESA

Artemis Society International

Lockheed-Martin

Boeing

The Moon Society

Space Frontier Foundation

National Space Society

For Research Publications & Reference Material

Some specifics: Cristoforetti’s photo-documentation of her Soyuz and Sokol training was extremely useful in resolving questions about the Russian space equipment, which is often hard to find documentation on (especially in English). She also answered a few specific questions about the layout of the trainer and the actual Soyuz spacecraft.

Mark Wade’s Encyclopedia Astronautica is likewise a great resource on Russian and Soviet hardware as well as many “spacecraft that never were” which were useful in considering new designs for Lunatics.

ESA of course, paid for Cristoforetti’s training, without which we wouldn’t have her great photos.

NASA, USGS, and RosCosmos all provide a lot of photographic and video information under suitably-free license terms (the situation with RosCosmos is more-poorly documented, but appears to be compatible with “CC By”, the US government information is “copyright free” by federal statute). The main limitation on this information is with personally-identifiable information that might be interpreted as an endorsement — that’s part of why all the astronaut’s faces are blurred out in the video, although it’s also because they are just placeholders/stand-ins for our characters.

Lockheed-Martin and Boeing have published a number of engineering papers about moon transportation and long-term fuel storage that I consulted in designing the Lunar Transportation System.

The whacky “flop-down” landing system for the LTS was inspired by one of Artemis Society International’s lunar-hotel design studies.

The “alpha-town” vision for the future of the International Space Station (and why we refer to it as “Alpha” in the show) is due largely to articles published by the Space Frontier Foundation.

The Moon Society is the current host of the “Moon Miner’s Manifesto” and other material about lunar colony construction and design. It was a past article from this publication that suggested the idea for the periscope-like “Earth windows” in the ISF-1 colony. The National Space Society is credited for general space advocacy and many of the people I have met in the community.

All of these space organizations are real-life models for how the “International Space Foundation” itself might function, although it is obviously highly-fictionalized.

Naturally, these are only a few of the most important materials we looked at in the art design and conception of Lunatics.

Rosalyn Hunter

Rosalyn Hunter (Writer)

Rosalyn Hunter has been writing science-fiction and fantasy as a hobby for decades, although she has only recently published any. She also writes verywell-received online fan fiction under aliases which shall remain undisclosed.

Her writing features excellent character development and dialog in a clean,clear style.

She also brings to this project her extensive scientific background in botanyand molecular biology. Rosalyn was the first graduate from the University ofTexas with a B.S. in Botany. She went on to do research on E. Coli DNA repairmechanisms in the Molecular and Cellular Biology program at the Universityof Arizona where she received her Master’s degree.

She has since worked as a laboratory manager at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), as a commuity-collegeprofessor at Tarrant County Junior College, Navarro College, and Hill College in Texas, as well as teaching high-schoolscience classes (Biology and Chemistry) for four years.

She is also a fan of Japanese “Anime” animation, and has been involved in a number of online fan communities, including”The Anime Cafe” where she acted as a reviewer, moderator, and administrator for several of the site’s most active years.She has also been a space advocate, active in the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and theNational Space Society.

Terry Hancock

Terry Hancock (Director & Producer)

Terry received a BA from The University of Texas, with a major in Astronomy and a great deal of additional coursework spanning several natural sciences, aerospace engineering, and film production.

He went on to work for such projects as the McDonald Observatory Planet Search program in Texas and testing of the NICMOS infrared imaging chips for the Hubble Space Telescope. Later he worked with data from that same camera for astronomical research at Extrasolar Research Corporation in Pasadena, California as well as working for Caltech/JPL’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) until 2003.

A space advocate since childhood, Terry Hancock has been an active member of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space and of the National Space Society and of local chapters in Texas and California. He has been a member of The Moon Society since 2012.

Terry Hancock is an advocate not only of using free-licensed open-source software but also of applying its free-licensing methodologies to other areas, including the arts, electronic and mechanical design, and space development. In 2009, he wrote and published a book in cooperation with Free Software Magazine, called Achieving Impossible Things with Free Culture and Commons-Based Enterprise.

Lunatics has provided Terry with the unusual opportunity to merge many of these experiences into a single project.

NOTE: Much of the following text was garbled when we switched to WordPress — will be revising it as soon as we can!
Daniel Fu has been a comic artist at least since 2000. He worked togetherwith Rosalyn and Terry on an earlier free-culture project in 2000, and so hewas a natural choice for this project. He has created several graphic novelson his own, and is perhaps best known for his series The Retriever. In 2011and early 2012, he completed design concepts and model sheets for thecharacters that will appear in Lunatics.Currently he designs interactive interfaces for commercial web applications.Daniel Fu (Character Designer)
Karrie Shirou (“Hiromi Aoki Lerner”)Karrie Shirou is a voice actress, performer, cosplayer, and writer based inLos Angeles, California.Previous Voice OverJaws: Ultimate Predator (VG) – Newscaster (Collision Studios / GTL Media)BlazBlue: Continuum Shift 2 (VG) – Female Classmate #3(Arc System Works / PCB Productions)DiGi Charat / CD Welcome! Collection, AnimeGamers TV spots, series andmovie trailers – Dejiko (Broccoli International / Synch Point)K-On! – Azusa’s Friend, Additional Voices (Bandai Entertainment / Bang Zoom Entertainment)The Hunter: Iria the Computer Animation – Iria, Lara Croft (PEI / 21st Century Anime)Fairy Godmother – Little Girl (Gwen Frey)Nescaflowne / Workshop Only – Hitmi (Studio Sokodei)Selected PerformanceDiGi Charat Concert Climax Tour / Japan – Dejiko (Broccoli International)K-On! / Live Promotional Team at Anime Expo, Sakura-Con, New York Anime Fest, J-Pop Summit, Otakon – Yui Hirasawa, Azusa Nakano (Bandai Entertainment)The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya / ASOS Brigade – Mikuru Asahina (Bandai Entertainment), Hare Hare Yukai dancer (Bandai Entertainment / Minori Chihara)Rocky Horror Show – Ensemble, pre-show host (Emergency Exit Productions)
Ariel Hancock (“Georgiana Lerner”)Lunatics is Ariel’s first voice-acting role. She is the daughter of Rosalyn Hunterand Terry Hancock, living near Dallas, Texas.Initially, we selected Ariel for this project mainly for logistical reasons, once wehad decided to use a child actor for Georgiana: it’s easier to direct a child inperson and we don’t have to worry about stage parents or legal issues (whichworries us a bit on a free-culture project where we’re breaking a lot of new ground).She was not uncontested, however: we did listen to some auditions from adultactors and even considered demo reels from other child actresses. We felt thather performance was strongest of these, and she has shown real enthusiasm and a pretty high-level of professionalism for a 9-year-old. She’s been very serious about the project, and this has made us consider looking for other acting opportunities and training for her.Ariel is a fan of all kinds of animation and is very excited about being involved inan animation project herself. Due to her parentage, she is pretty much doomedto experience science and science-fiction, but hasn’t complained about thisinevitable fate.Introducing Ariel Hancock!
Paul Birchard (“Joshua Farmer”) Selected Recent RolesPaul Birchard is the only actor ever to have left Hollywood, based himself inGlasgow, and lived to tell about it! He has worked with many of the finest Actors.Directors and Writers in the Business – in Film, TV, Radio, Stageand in Voiceovers. The White House Murder Case (Stage – 2012), “Professor Sweeney”Air Force One Is Down (TV Mini Series – 2012), General GreavesThe Angels’ Share (2012), “Jim Vincent – Winning Bidder”Love Bite (2012), “Reverend Lynch”Outpost: Black Sun (2012), “Gaines”Hanna (2011), “Bob”Inherit The Wind (Stage – 2009), “The Mayor”The Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia? (Stage – 2010), “Ross”Spooks/MI5 (TV Series – 2010), “Libby McColl”The Dark Knight (2008), “Cop With Fat Thug”Waterloo Road (TV Series – 2008), “Jerry Preston”1408 (2007), “Mr Innkeeper”Inside Waco (Docu-Drama – 2006), “ATF Raid Commander”A Line In The Sand (TV Movie) 2004, “Littlebaum”Revelation (2001), “General Demolay”
Selected RolesVeronika Kurshinskaya is a film, television and theater actress born in the Russiancity of Yaroslavl. In 2008, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career.Since then, Veronika has appeared in a number of film, television, and theatricalroles. Her interests are painting, photography and supporting theater and artprograms. Veronika’s career has been highlighted by numerous internationalpublications such as Komsomolskaya Pravda (Russia), Soul Brazil (Brazil), LA Splash and Rogue Cinema (USA).Veronika Kurshinskaya (“Anya Titova Farmer”) Fingerprints (2012), “Actress”Wal-Bob’s (2012), “Call girl”Behind the Scenes (TV series) – Bed & Breakfast (2012), “Bella Black”Once Upon a Time in the East: A Fistful of Bullets (short) (2012), “Gavrila”Speak Now! (2011), “Chloe”2010: Moby Dick (2010), “Elena”The Dazzler (short) (2010), “Gina the Producer”Divine Intervention (short) (2010), “Alex”The Closer (short) (2009), “Secretary”
Saint Alex (short) (2012), “Tybalt”Primate Cinema: Apes as Family (short) (2012), “Male Chimp”Speak to Me in Poetry (2012), “Groom”Happy Endings (TV series) – The Kerkovich Way (2012), “German Soldier #2” (uncredited)Urban Jungle Dating Dilemmas (TV series) The Good, the Bad and the Tessa (2011), “Flashback sequence”Urban Jungle Dating Dilemmas (TV series) La Dolce Vita Tessa (2011), “Mime”Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Video Game) (2011) “Czech Resistance (voice)” Selected Roles Lex Quarterman is a radio, television, and film actor who was born in Portugal,raised in Ukraine, and now lives in Los Angeles. We really didn’t expect to findsomebody fluent in Russian to play Tim, so the fact that Lex is opens somepossibilities for future scripts. His audition as Tim was amazing! Lex Quarterman (“Igor Timothy Farmer”)
William Roberts (“Rob Lerner”) Selected RolesRaised in Oregon and northern California, William Roberts acted and directed atthe Oregon Shakespearean Festival, Ashland, Oregon, from 1963 to 1972. Heacquired a B.A. in Theatre Arts from Humboldt State College, Arcata, Californiain 1967 and a Diploma in Drama at the University of Manchester in the UK in 1969, where he has resided since then. He has acted on stage as well as inradio, television, and film productions.Infinite Justice (2006), “Walensky”Afterlife (TV series) – Sleeping with the Dead (2005), “Maslansky”Cold Mountain (2003), “Grayling”Down (2001), “Special Agent in Charge”Balto (1995), “Rosy’s Father”The Affair (TV movie) (1995), “Clark”Martin Chuzzlewit (TV mini-series) – Episode Three (1994), “Mr. Scadder”Paul Merton: The Series (TV series) – Episode #2.4 (1993)The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (TV series) Transylvania, January 1918 (1993), “Stanfill”‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (video short) (1992), NarratorInspector Morse (TV series) – Fat Chance (1991), “Hank Briardale”
Sergei Oleinik has worked as a translator, voiceover artist, and musician. He has been involved in many different projects ranging from internationaltelevision productions to documentaries, music videos, and commercials.In our pilot episode, Sergei provides the voice for the cosmonaut-pilot,Sergei Titov who accompanies Hiromi and Georgiana to the Moon, andwho is in fact Anya Titova-Farmer’s brother. Although we do not have areappearance of Sergei in our immediate plans, it’s possible we maysee him again in the future.Sergei Oleinik (“Maj. Sergei Titov”)
We first met Elaine at the 1999 International Space Development Conferencein Houston, Texas. Elaine Walker has a long history as an electronic musicianand composer and as a space activist. She currently lives in Arizona, whereshe teaches classes in music theory and continues her work with her pro-spaceband “Zia”.Zia is an exclusively electronic band who began performing on the East Coastin 1992. Founded by Elaine Walker, Zia bangs out pro-space and sci-fi musicon futuristic instruments. All of the synths are triggered live with drum sticks.Microtonal musical scales run rampant throughout the Zia repertoire. In the popgenre this is a monumental task which adds an eerie, futuristic edge to the songs.Zia was together for 11 years in Boston and NYC, and relocated to Arizona 2003.Zia has three full length albums and two EPs. The newest release, Martians, wasofficially released at the first XPrize Cup!Elaine was nice enough to not only free-license this track for us, but to producea “TV Size” version for us!Elaine Walker (Featured Musician)
J. T. Bruce is a mostly self-taught animator, artist, filmmaker, and musician withan eye for the bizarre and an ear for the unusual. He grew up in the redwoods ofthe Santa Cruz Mountains in Northern California, playing electric guitar and makingmovies with friends.In 2004, he graduated high school and drove south to attend San Diego StateUniversity. The next five years were spent earning a degree in film production,recording progressive metal albums, animating like a madman, and partying likea champion.After college, J. T. worked as a freelance graphic designer and a nightlifevideographer before landing a gig as a 2D animator at a 3D film production studio.Several years later, he’s still trying to be a jack of all artistic trades, and hopefully,master of some. Online and off, his work has been shown on screens and playedon stereos around the world.J.T.’s upbeat symphonic metal track “Bellatrix” from his album “Unversica” servesas a very appropriate theme for the Lunar Transportation System in our Lunaticspilot episode.J. T. Bruce (Featured Musician)
Born January 27, 1981, Butterfly Tea (Olivier Renouard) is a great art lover, but ofcourse especially of music. He composed electronic music for five years (Techno / Trance / Dream / Dance) before converting to instrumental soundtrackmusic for movies and games. His “group” “Butterfly Tea” represents hisorchestral-style music for soundtracks.In contrast to the later stories we have planned for “Lunatics”, the pilot episodeinvolves a lot of dramatic “adventure” scenes with spaceflight, for which thereseemed no obvious alternative to a more traditional movie/fanfare soundtrack.Fortunately, the “Butterfly Tea” tracks Renouard has published on Jamendounder the CC By-SA license (in the “Adventure/Action”, “Magical and Fantasy Adventure”, and “Ethnic Flavor” albums) supported this kind of energy in oursoundtrack.These tracks have a traditional symphonic sound with just a touch of an Easterninfluence which makes them ideal for both the Soyuz launch sequence and also some of the scenes on arrival at the colony.Olivier Renouard (“Butterfly Tea”)

2011-2012 Pre-Production Kickstarter Downloads

Posters and Wallpaper Art

Artwork Printable Wallpaper/Desktop
Concept Art Poster/SVG 20.5MB
Concept		 PDF (16MB) 3000×2100 (PNG) 1920×1080 1440×900 1366×768 1280×1024 1280×720 1024×768 800×600
Concept Art Poster/SVG 6.8MB
Concept		 PDF (4MB) 1978×1280 (PNG) 1920×1080 1440×900 1366×768 1280×1024 1280×720 1024×768 800×600
Character Line-Up Poster/SVG 13MB
Concept		 PDF (10MB) 2048×1413 1920×1280 (PNG) 1920×1080 1440×900 1366×768 1280×1024 1280×720 1024×768 800×600
Lunatics Silhouettes Teaser (New Version)

Silhouettes graphic updated to match Daniel Fu’s character concept art

 — 1920×1280 (PNG) 1920×1080 1440×900 1366×768 1280×1024 1280×720 1024×768 800×600
Finger Puppets!
Lerners

Finger puppets of Lerner family and Sarah Allison arranged for printing on ‘US Letter’ paper (SVG)

 Farmers

Finger puppets of Farmer family and Allen Emerson arranged for printing on ‘US Letter’ paper (SVG)

Art Book and Writer’s Guide

All of these have been re-rendered after editing and proofreading, so you’ll want to get the updated versions, even if you previously downloaded the earlier chapters.

You can also download the ENTIRE BOOK as one PDF (325 MB, 172 pages).

FRONT
Front Cover		 BACK
Back Cover
(Click for Full-Size PDFs)

Separate sections:

SVG Drawings

This is a collection of original SVG drawings we’ve created in this process.

Character Modelsheets

These are direct links to the SVG files — on most systems, right click and select the option to download the file. They are best viewed in Inkscape.


Georgiana Lerner,
Hiromi Lerner,
Rob Lerner,
Anya Farmer,
Josh Farmer,
Tim Farmer,
Allen Emerson,
Sarah Allison,

Gen. Theophilus Salt,
Maj. Mark Spenser,
Tsgt. Tina Harris,
Maj. Sergei Titov

Vehicles and Sets

Space Station Alpha

“Alpha” is the evolution of the present-day Space Station, with additional modules and the Lunar Transportation System docking complex and fuel depot.

Space Station Alpha

Lunar Transportation System

Lander (Master SVG Drawing),
Lander (TOP view),
Lander (STARBOARD view),
Lander (FRONT view),
Lander (AFT view),
Lander Un-Lading Sequence (SVG),
Service Module – Cutaway View,
LTS Initial Launch Sequence,
LTS Initial Deployment,
LTS Logistics & Reference Mission (LEFT),
(RIGHT),

Audio

Cast Readings

On September 8, 2012 we held our first cast reading. This is a meeting via conference call in which our actors (in Los Angeles, Dallas, Glasgow, London, and Moscow in this case) get a chance to read together, work out issues with the script, and decide on how to play their lines. It’s not exactly fully dramatized, but it’s a basis for them to record their lines afterwards. This is equivalent to a “table read” in conventional filmmaking.

1 “No Children in Space” 33:21 OGG (38MB) MP3 (32MB)
2 “Earth” 38:01 OGG (44MB) MP3 (35MB)
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Author: Terry Hancock
Terry Hancock is the director and producer of "Lunatics!" and the founder for "Lunatics Project" and the associated "Film Freedom" Project. Misskey (Professional/Director Account) Mastodon (Personal Account)