Sadly, Andrew Pray, who created the character model for “Georgiana Lerner” that we’ve been using in our animations up until now, is no longer with the project. He’s an art student, and is no longer able to commit to the amount of work that the character modeling for “Lunatics!” represents. This is a bit of a blow for me as a producer and for the project. It means we’re going to have to take some time for re-grouping. Certainly we’re going to have to find someone new to do the character modeling for the project.
Saying “Goodbye” and “Good Luck!” to Andrew Pray
When Andrew Pray first submitted a portfolio of work last year, he gave us previews of his model for Georgiana Lerner that he had created. I didn’t ask for any original work in that call, just for examples of previous projects. So I was really impressed that he was enthusiastic enough to do that.
Recently, however, I found out that he’s not going to be able to continue on the project. It has been a year since our original arrangements, and I guess for him the window of opportunity has just closed. It’s a long time to wait, and he’s got other priorities — like the art college program he’s attending, that are just going to keep him too busy to work on “Lunatics!”
I understand that, but it makes me sad. I had hoped we could work out some kind of work schedule that would work out, but it seems not.
He has generously offered to help us out some more on a time-available basis, and some of his work, like the teddy bear in the Soyuz set will be staying in the production. Unfortunately, the character models — at least for the eight principal characters — probably need to be modeled by the same person if we are to have consistent style, topology, and rigging (although we might have someone else do the actual rigging).
So it’s not so clear how much (if anything) we’ll be able to keep from Andrew’s Georgiana model. I will still be using it for some demonstration work, but it’s likely going to have to be replaced.
This creates enough doubt about the production, that I don’t feel comfortable going on with our planned crowd-funding campaign until it’s resolved. So unless a resolution comes up really quickly, this will probably mean a project delay.
Looking for a New Character Modeler
And so that brings us to the big consequences for the project: we need to find a new character modeler.
Since this is an opportunity to re-think the requirements, I’m going to specifically look for someone with the experience and talent to match Daniel Fu’s model sheets a little more accurately. That was part of the original concept, and I think we’ll go back to that requirement. I did like the results I was getting with my materials test renders on Andrew’s model (see the picture below), so we might also be considering that as an influence.
It’s likely therefore, that I’ll also be looking for someone with experience modeling for toon-shading. I’m not sure if I want to go with a Freestyle/outlined look or not. My initial experiments using the Blender Internal renderers outlining feature were not that satisfying and I never got anything useful out of Freestyle in my own experiments. But that may just be my own inexperience with it. If you, or anyone you know, are interesting in taking over character-modeling for “Lunatics!” please contact me, Terry Hancock (“digitante at gmail dot com” ) or on one of the social media sites I frequent. We can talk terms.
Of course, you’ve probably seen Daniel’s modelsheets, but here’s a quick preview of them:
I’m willing to try to raise more money for a very experienced modeler at a higher commission rate, since this is a pretty critical part of the project. The money would have to come from crowd-funding, though, so the whole project — work and pay — would be contingent on that succeeding.
Other Openings
There may be some other openings on the team coming up. I would love to hear from somebody with some Plone site management experience and/or Zope experience — I’m still not satisfied with our project/community website, and I think it’s getting a little beyond how much time I can put into it.
We’re also going to need at least one really good interior/set modeler. We had some good people involved last Summer, but I haven’t heard back from them all.
And finally, we’ll need a good character rigging expert.
I’ll post additional information as I become aware of it.
