I am working very hard on this right now! 🙂
Books
I have laid-out / typeset 44 pages of the “Pre-Production Art Book & Writer’s Guide”, which includes an introduction addressing series format and production schedule, and all of the character model sheets.
The model sheets and some of the plans will be printed in color, by the way, as I found a print-on-demand publisher who can print a book with just a few color pages (as opposed to charging the color rate for the whole book). To make up the cost difference from pure black and white, I’ll be printing the text parts of the book a bit smaller in two-column “journal” format (still nicely readable, I think).
I’m afraid I’m still working on some of the plan drawings — sorry, but they’re really very intricate.
The script for “No Children in Space” and some character reading scripts that we’ll be using for voice-actor auditions will be included. Of course, I already have the original short story “The Arrival” which will also be included.
Posters
Daniel has turned in a line-art version of the “character line-up” (see below), and I’m expecting to see the colored version in a few days. After that, I’ll layout the poster and send it to the printer. We’ll organize signings shortly after that.
These posters will be 13″x19″ — a little larger than originally promised. I originally limited the size to avoid problems with international shipping, but it turns out that the mailing tubes aren’t really a problem. The printer can go up to 14″x20″ on these, but it’s much easier to find 13″x19″ frames, so that’s the size I’m going with.
I may post a couple of possible designs for the poster before I send it to the printer, as I did with the concept art posts to decide which to print.
This means that the books and posters will go out just before the end of the month, which is a little later than I hoped, but not too bad.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack is just about settled. In fact it was all settled, but then I got an idea which may or may or not work out — I’m still waiting to hear back from the artist on that, who in this case isLiz Lysinger (IMDB). She’s part of the band, Zia, but Elaine Walker is the one I know — and who was nice enough to re-mix her track “SpaceZine” from the original masters to improve on my version which had some timing problems – this will be the title music for “Lunatics”, probably for all of Season 1, and certainly for the pilot.
What happened, basically, was that Elaine said “Great, you can use any of my music!”, which was fantastic news, and so I went back and looked, and I got excited about a particular track, but it turns out that it’s Liz that has the rights to that one, and I’m not sure she’s as open to this whole free-licensed art concept (oops).
I’m still waiting to hear back on that track, but it’s no reason to panic — I already had that scene taken care of with different music that was already free-licensed. I just feel that the Zia track (“Zero G”, also from “Martians”) would be nicer if we can use it. So I’m going to wait and see before I give up on it.
We also got a very nice symphonic metal piece from J. T. Bruce which I’m very happy about — this piece basically serves as the theme for the “Lunar Transportation System”, which is sort of an operational analog to the Space Shuttle, but goes to the Moon. I had some trepidation about this one, because it would’ve been hard to replace, but he was really nice about it, so we get to use the track I really wanted on this.
I also cleared some particularly-appropriate music from Russian punk bandDistemper and some symphonic soundtrack music from Olivier Renouard, a.k.a. Butterfly Tea, which serves mainly as the soundtrack for the Soyuz launch system (although it also appears in a couple of other places).
I’ll be including a collection of these tracks in the data set, and putting them on the download site.
Storyboards and Animatic
I’m sorry to say, though, that the storyboards and animatic are going to be way late, as I really haven’t started revising them yet. As a result, I’m going to have to delay sending out the data disks (or USB/flash cards).
I’ve started laying out the download page, though, and I will be able to post that early next week so you’ll be able to get access to the data online as it’s finished. Not everything will be up immediately, of course, but you’ll be able to get a lot of the material, including the finished PDFs for the book, the original SVGs, the music tracks, and other elements.
I figure it’s better to wait and send the disks out when they have everything I promised on them than to try to rush them or publish them incomplete.
Summary / What to Expect
- I will post an update next week with the download page URL
- I will be sending the masters out for the book printing, hopefully by the end of next week, it typically takes 10 days for printing, and then I’ll sign and re-ship those to you.
- I hope to get the color line-up art this week, so the posters should also go to the printer towards the end of next week, and thus be ready about the same time as he books.
- I’m going to hold the data disks until the data set I promised is complete, so that may be another month. However, you’ll be able to get the same data from the download site as it is finished, if you like.
- For those who ordered packages, you’ll get the books and posters first and the data disk/card will ship separately later.
Other News
It’s not related to the pre-production rewards, but we’ve made some changes in what we expect to do next. I will be putting out the call for both 3D artist and voice-actor auditions very shortly — we’re going to go ahead and start with that phase of the project. I’ll also be doing some of the technology and workflow testing to try and prove the animation workflow concept we have for “Lunatics” in June.
After looking at other Kickstarter projects, we’ve decided that our original multi-stage plan is not the best idea. Instead, the next Kickstart we run for Lunatics will be the one to completely fund the production of the pilot episode. We hope to launch that on Moon Day, July 20th, this Summer. By then, I hope we will have our principle voice actors cast as well as have selected the 3D artists who will be working on this project. We should also have a brief “teaser trailer” and some technology demonstrations to show in the Kickstart video.
It’s going to be a busy couple of months getting all of that organized, but I’m very excited about it!
