Happy New Year! A lot has happened in the last few weeks, and we’re about to make some major changes on the “Lunatics!” project website. Progress continues on 3D assets for the series and for “No Children in Space”; and we’re making new promotional and fundraising plans. It’s time to shake things up, and we’re planning to do just that!
I’ve been posting a series of updates to our Kickstarter about each of the people involved in producing Lunatics. After the fold – links to the individual updates.
We had the idea for the story of “Lunatics!” as far back as 2003. But it wasn’t really clear what form it would take. Making it into an “online TV series” was always the way I visualized it, but I didn’t see how that would be possible. Prior to this, in 2000, I also discovered the world of free-software and Linux . I was very impressed with the quality and culture of free-software projects. Comparing the success of GNU/Linux software to the constant mired, limited, and poltiically-complex world of space development really made me want to understand how free-sofware got made and how the same principles could be extended into other fields of endeavor.
We’re currently doing five things simultaneously: casting voice actors, reviewing applications for 3D artist internships, finishing our pre-production Kickstart work and rewards, training on the software, and planning for our next Kickstarte which will pay for the production of the pilot episode, “No Children i Space”. Everything is complicated and interlocked, and I am very busy camper. But this is pretty fun, I have to admit!
I am working very hard on this right now! 🙂 I have laid-out / typeset 44 pages of the “Pre-Production Art Book & Writer’s Guide”, which includes an introduction addressing series format and production schedule, and all of the character model sheets. The model sheets and some of the plans will be printed in color, by the way, as I found a print-on-demand publisher who can print a book with just a few color pages (as opposed to charging the color rate for the whole book). To make up the cost difference from pure black and white, I’ll be printing the text parts of the book a bit smaller in two-column “journal” format (still nicely readable, I think).
Well this is one of those “good news/bad news” posts. The good news is that Daniel is producing some truly awesome model sheets, and I want to share some previews of them. The bad news is that they aren’t going to be done on time. So, I’m slipping the pre-production schedule by one month to accomodate (i.e. Kickstart rewards should go out in May, now).
We’re breaking a lot of new territory on the project, at least for us, and this isn’t the first and probably not the last time I’ll misjudge the schedule. I had estimated model-sheet production based on Daniel’s time on the concept sheets, but he’s doing a much higher quality of work on the model sheets, and it takes some time (and unlike some of us, Daniel has a full-time day job to keep up with, too). I suspect I could’ve gotten my part done on time, but I have to admit, an extra month makes me feel a little less stressed, too.
This last week, I mostly spent getting up to speed with Blender’s scripting interface for Python. I have to admit to being a little anxious about this, but it’s really pretty simple stuff once you get started (that’s always the hard part!). Daniel’s working on the model sheets. And I’m starting to write the structural parts of the book we’re creating as part of the production process.
