May 2025 Summary

Highlights

The main project for May was to finish up the “Suiting Up” sequence, including processing the diagetic audio (dialog and ambience stems). This scene really took a lot of time to finish, due mainly to the complexity of the character animation and my own unfamiliarity with the Non-Linear Animation (NLA) editor.

 

Suiting Up Audio Retiming
Screen capture of Audacity open to mix for Lunatics pilot “Suiting Up” sequence.

In the process, I also created a spacesuit radio sound filter to use on dialog. This should be useful for the sound mix in other scenes as well.

I found a Python Morse Code audio generator, cduck/morse. This should be a perfect way to generate morse-code messages I can overlay in the soundtrack if I want.

Demo of Morse Master
Demonstration of generating an audio file from morse code using the “morse” Python package by “cduck” on Github.

Sample command:

$ echo "Lunatics!" | python3 play.py -f 750 --wpm 10 -o lunatics_morse.wav

I found a suitable Samsung smartphone (A21S) for installing LineageOS and purchased it. I will have to find time to flash the ROM and set it up. I’m hoping it will be a suitable replacement for my current phone, which is very broken and worn now.

Shiny, shiny new phone.
Pearly iridescent effect on new smartphone, with model number label.

I made the first attempt at setting up certbot in Apache2 on my static droplet-based web server (which hosts the Lunatics Release Site among others. But I found that the script isn’t compatible with the way that I have several sites per configuration file in my Apache2 setup. I’ll have to refactor the configuration files to get it working right.

Screencast Timelapse

This month, I finished the “Suiting Up” sequence sound and synchronization with the animation, as well as tweaking the character animation to correct many errors. At this point, I’ve signed off on the animation. The only things remaining are compositing and the possibility that I might cut some after reviewing the whole episode.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:10 Sergei Walk Cycle (Hand popping problem)
00:40 Sergei Expression & Sitting (Now using “Tweaks”/”Edit” for Actions)
01:05 Sergei Walk Again! (Lost yesterday’s animation work)
02:02 News Crew Animation and Corrected Blocking for Camera
03:56 Check Renders
05:03 Rendering
06:51 Suiting Up Sequence Test Assembly with New Renders
09:18 Retimed Audio Sync
10:58 Putting Retimed Audio into Assembly Edit
11:25 More Animation Tweaks: Hands, Eyes, Head Turns
14:49 Zipper Sound Effect Recording and Breakdown
16:03 Updated Assembly Edit
17:14 Checking Updated Renders
17:38 Problem with Hiromi’s Hand Interfering with Chair Arm
17:51 Yet More Renders
18:12 Final Diagetic Audio Stems (Dialog and Ambience)

Music Tracks:
00:00 “Жизнь”/”Life”
05:23 “В противоречии”/”In contradiction”
09:07 “Далеко”/”Far Away”
12:55 “Все решено”/”Everything is Decided”
17:26 “Не так”/”Not So”

From Dogma-Dalyeko, Jamendo #43251 / CC By-SA 3.0.
This is the whole album — a nice fit to the length.

 

Avatar photo
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)