Teaser Trailer Finished!

Teaser Trailer

Getting the teaser trailer finished has been a frustration for awhile
now. Initially, this was going to be a quick one-week demo to go with
our crowd-funding campaign last Summer, but it got pushed aside multiple
times. This was both because the assets for it needed some delicate
fix-up work (time consuming and I had to improve my skills to do them)
and because there were a lot of competing priorities. As a result, it’s
now about a year late.

But now it’s done! And while I still see a few imperfections, I’m very happy with how it has come out!

Please check it out.

Of course, while the teaser uses some elements (including the voice
lines) from the pilot episode, it is a different view on events than
what we’ll see in the pilot.

Lunatics – “No Children in Space” – Teaser Trailer from Terry Hancock on Vimeo

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Pitch Video and Kickstarter

After last Summer’s unsuccessful Kickstart, I knew I wanted to make
sure we were absolutely ready for another attempt before launching.
We’re putting a lot more care into making a good pitch video. We plan to
launch (once again) on Moon Day, July 20th — that’s just about 12 days
away as I write this.

Of course, our video will start with this teaser trailer, but we’ve also got a lot more to show now.

Since last Summer, we have:

• Completed voice recording for the pilot episode, “No Children in
  Space” and all but a few lines for “Earth” as well (thanks to the
  enthusiasm of our voice cast, who were willing to proceed even though
  the up-front money fell through)
• Mixed the soundtrack for “No Children in Space”
• Created a full-length storyboard animatic for “No Children in Space”
• Created some of the most challenging mech models (thanks to Chris
  Kuhn joining the project!): the “Gagarin Start” Soyuz launchpad at
  Baikonur and the Lunar Transportation System Shuttle/Lander.
• Created several of the character models (thanks to Bela Szabo, who is working steadily through these already).

So we’re trying to make this Kickstart as attractive as we can. I feel a LOT
more confident about our presentation this Summer, and I really think
we have a chance of raising the money to finish the pilot at least —
and maybe even go beyond that.

Please Help Us Crowd-fund the Pilot!

If you’re reading this, chances are, you’re already a fan of the
potential of Lunatics, and you’d like to help us succeed in making that
potential real by getting the funding to finish our pilot episode and
then kick off the series.

So let me talk a little bit of strategy for friends of the project who’d like to help:

We need to raise about $42,000 in this Kickstart, which will give us a
production budget in the neighborhood of $35,000 (overhead costs pay
mostly for creating and shipping physical rewards, though some goes to
Kickstarter and Amazon for their services).

Obviously, we are not going to raise that kind of money from 47 of
you who backed our first Kickstarter or from the 101 who currently
follow our Facebook page (we’re very grateful for your support, and we
won’t turn down the help, but we don’t want to break your bank account
either). In order to make our goal, we will have to appeal to a lot more people.

With the teaser made and more material to show, we feel it’s time to
try to broaden the field of interest beyond our immediate circle and
beyond the general “free culture fans” group. Mainly, I think we need to
appeal to the broader group of fans of science-fiction, real-space, and
animated films.

Of course, we’re going to send press-releases to
established news and blog channels that relate to our target audience.
But the best advertising for a project like ours is from individuals.

The best thing you can do for us is to help us get the word out —
right before the campaign starts and during the campaign. Chances are,
many of you following this have friends we don’t reach, so sharing links
to the project (i.e. http://lunatics.tv which will link to the videos and updates
and the Kickstarter campaign, as before) or to the update is going to be the
main way we reach new people.

Of course, it works a lot better to link to something new each time
(posting the same link over and over again is spammy and can get
annoying). We’ll try to make this easy by posting a little new content
every day during the campaign.

The second best thing you can do is to support our campaign on the
day it launches (July 20th). If you already know you’re going to back
the project, this will make it count even more for us. We’ve even got
some “early bird” rewards planned for the first 50-100 people who back
the project — special for those of you who’ve been backing us all
along.

The reason why this is good for us is that it will create a rapid
growth spike right at the beginning. That tends to get noticed by
Kickstarter and sites that watch Kickstarter, so it will create more
chances for the project to get noticed. I’m sure you’re heard of popular
projects that manage to reach their goals in just a few days — this is
how it happens.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if that happened with “Lunatics!”? But even
if we just get to 10% quickly, that will be a big enough event to
encourage more people to support the project.

For those who are counting pennies (and who isn’t?), the money won’t
actually come out until the end of the campaign (and then only if it is
successful). So, financially, it makes no difference whether you back
the project early or late. And of course, if you’re undecided about
rewards, it’s not hard to change them later if you want (Often, if I
want to make sure not to forget someone’s project on Kickstarter, I’ll
back in the $1 – $10 range, and then plan to upgrade. This way I get all
the updates so I don’t forget).

I feel a lot more confident this time around, and I hope that will
translate to a successful campaign so we can realize Lunatics for
release starting in 2014.

Thank you all so much for your continued support!