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.
