I know we’ve been very quiet for awhile now — progress was a bit slow at first while we sorted out some workflow problems, but we are making pretty good progress now. I am currently drawing and revising the colony floorplan. It’s amazing how many inconsistencies had crept in before this revision, and a lot of my current work is just resolving conflicts. I’m also adding a lot more detail that had previously existed only inside my head, so this has been a very good exercise for getting things down on paper where we can refer to it. A lot of what we’re producing for this Kickstarter Pre-Production project is the “story bible” that we’ll use to keep stories, directing, and design consistent throughout the series.
Well, the holidays went well, and now it’s back to work. This week, I’ve spent on defining the spec for the model and design sheets to get Daniel started, and also working on some additional reference research on Soyuz to support modeling the Soyuz re-entry (and ascent) module which we’re going to need for an early animation test.
I wrote a column for Free Software Magazine about the free software infrastructure I set up on our server to support Lunatics. You might find it interesting: Creating a Project Website for “Lunatics” with Apache, Zope, Plone, MediaWiki, Trac, Subversion, and the Cloud Too
Hello everybody! Today, I started work on following through with the posters (the “Concept Art” posters). I’ve queried our two logo sponsors and received a logo from one of them. I also checked the cost of the poster printing. I’ve also had a chance to run over the final numbers and make sure that the overheads have all been accounted for. It turns out that when all the costs and overheads are calculated, we have about $1836, which is very nice: that will cover not only the $1600 for Daniel, but $100 incentive for Rosalyn on the script writing work, and still leave a bit for contingencies.
Some of you may be wondering where this “Phase I” Kickstart (and the work it’s meant to support) falls in our overall plan, and just how far it will take us. I don’t know exactly how fast we can progress — whether we’ll be able to keep getting enough people interested in contributing directly to the project or how many rewards, pre-sale DVDs, or merchandise we’ll be able to sell to keep the project funded. That’s really going to depend on the fans.
This week we’ve started get character design concepts from Daniel Fu. I’ve also been working on modeling the Soyuz “Transporter-Erector”, which will appear early in the pilot episode.
This week we’ve started working on initial character designs with character designer, Daniel Fu, of “Daystorm Productions”. Daniel is the author of a webcomic series, “The Retriever” and has an excellent portfolio. Daniel was my first choice o this project, because I’ve worked with him before, because he has a lo of artistic range, and because his designs have a good sense of volume and 3D form, which will be essential for our designs which will be modeled in 3D.
First weekly progress report: Google Group for project discussion. Also: positive response from a character designer, and technical development is proceeding on some important packages for animation.
After a few days work and weeks of procrastination and fretting, the Lunatics website is finally starting to make some sense and become quasi-functional. Yea!
