Thank you very much to all of you who were willing to support this very
ambitious project at this early stage! It has, however, been apparent
for awhile now that we’re not going to succeed in funding the entire
production process for the pilot episode in one go. So much for the
“frontal assault”!
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean a failure for the project —
we’re now switching to a more incremental process. We’re getting
ready to announce a replacement Kickstarter campaign which at
minimum will fund us just through:
- Voice and sound production for the pilot episode
- Producing an animatic to illustrate this (and serve as an intermediate step in producing the fully-animated version)
This campaign is currently going through the Kickstarter review process and will hopefully be launched in just a few days.
This eliminates some of the riskiest and costliest parts of the episode
production (3D modeling and animation) and focuses on steps we are ready
to do right away, and the cost (at just over $4000) is a great deal
more attainable (we’d be at over 40% of that goal if we simply
transferred the pledges from this Kickstarter to the new one).
If you want to hear what kind of voice-production work we can currently
produce, I can invite you to listen to the sound production for our
“Teaser Trailer” (attached below). And of course, if you enjoyed the
“Lubo” video I posted in our last update, then you’ve already seen some
of Timothée Giet’s animatic animation — which is what’s going on
in the background of that shot with the Soyuz rollout (the gopher in the
foreground is 3D animated, albeit very simply).
This new Kickstarter is on an urgent timescale — just THREE WEEKS — because
this way we can complete it before we are currently scheduled to begin
recording voices. This will allow us to avoid having to slip the
schedule and possibly lose the opportunity to get all of the actors
together at once to rehearse their parts.
I should mention that, although this clearly means a delay in when we can start 3D animation
for the pilot episode, it does not mean we are giving up on fully
animating it. It’s simply that we are breaking this down into smaller
steps, and giving ourselves more time to demonstrate our readiness for
the 3D work as well as the worthiness of the story we’re animating.
I will post a new update with the URL for the new campaign as soon as it is launched.
