Highlights
This month was almost entirely work on the “Suiting Up” sequence in the Lunatics pilot episode, “No Children in Space”.
I started out trying to keep the April 12th “Yuri’s Night” deadline I had announced at the beginning of the year, but I realized I couldn’t make it — or I wouldn’t be happy with the release I could finish in that time, which would still be a lot like the New Year’s release I made.
So I announced I was going to slip the deadline yet again, and I suggested I would try for May 1st (though I didn’t make that either).
I completely refactored the SU sequence, moving the animation into new files, setting up new camera files (one for the main shots and one for the cutaways). And I created four character animation files:
- Hiromi & Georgiana in shots A, B, and C
- Hiromi & Georgiana in D, E, F, and beyond.
- Sergei’s action throughout
- Supporting characters
I also added the News Crew in and created additional shots for them. This was stuff I had in the original storyboard, but had dropped out. They’re back in now!
I continued work into May, so there’s no conclusion here, though I made a lot of important progress.
New Colo Server
I purchased a new server to use for the co-location of our main “Virtual Studio” platform. I realized that part of why I was reluctant to move the PowerEdge R720 server into colocation for the web platform was because it was so useful for rendering! I didn’t want to let go of it.
I also realized that it is really a bit overpowered for use as our web server. I don’t need a machine quite this powerful for websites. So instead I bought a slightly smaller Dell server of the same generation: a PowerEdge R420. This is a 1U server with 48 GB RAM — still more than adequate, but not as much as the R720, which I will now keep on site for rendering and LAN services.
It is close enough to the same machine, though, that I expect the exact same software configuration will work on it. Definitely my experience with the first will apply to it.
The new server is from the same supplier we got the R720 from, but it is better condition — if I didn’t know better, I’d think this thing was new. It’s very clean!
Shot Check Renders from “Suiting Up” Sequence
S1E01-SU-1-SuitingUp-cam.blend shots (status at the end of April):
S1E01-SU-2-SuitingUp-cam.blend shots (status at the end of April):
Overhead view of the S1E01-SU-4-Support-anim.blend file with the News Crew added.
Production Timelapse
As before, production work at 60X — so a minute of video is an hour of work. Which means I did about 35 hours of production work this month. Almost entirely on the “Suiting Up” sequence, which has been revised and expanded a bit, making it closer to the original storyboard concept.
