Sathish Kumar, who was part of our Summer 2012 modeling team , has branched out on his own with his new studio, Spark Multimedia. He and his company will be partnering with us on creating many of the large virtual sets we need to create for Lunatics!
One of the line items on the budget for this Kickstarter is to build a “render cluster”. You might be wondering what that is, and why we might need one.
Our show doesn’t really have a single star. Instead we have an ensemble of several colonists, each of whom gets their own stories. But we also want to get them together as for ensemble moments, like this scene of the two main families having their first meal together on the Moon.
I’d like to introduce you to the people who worked on Lunatics! last year, during the Summer of 2012. We worked on pre-production during the Spring of 2012, and then put out a call for Blender Internships for the Summer. As a test project we created the assets required for the 2-minute short demonstration video on the front page: By design, this used a minimum of 3D assets: just one set, only one character model that required facial rigging and animation, and otherwise pretty simple animation. It shows the initial flight into space, from Georgiana’s point of view. Here’s the team that made those assets: Cosmin Planchon
Since the plan is for Lunatics! to be a series, rather than a one-off film, we have somewhat more ambitious requirements for making our models reusable for the long term. If we can invest a little more in a better rig or design something to use physics simulation rather than manually animating it, this is a good idea, because there will be a payback every time we reuse that model in a later episode.
We’ve individually introduced our principal cast members: Karrie Shirou, Ariel Hancock, Paul Birchard, Lex Quarterman, Veronika Kurshinskaya, and William Roberts, as well as pilot episode guest star Sergei Oleinik. These are joined by a number of other very talented cast members in the pilot episode: Melodee M. Spevack
We found Sergei Oleinik, who is a voice-over artist from Moscow, via an online voice-over casting site. He’s a pretty great guy, and hardly made any fuss over having to do all of this acting in English. In the pilot, of course, he has to speak quite a bit of both Russian and English, which I think he managed very well. Sergei Oleinik is a voice-over artist, currently residing in Moscow, Russian Federation. He has worked as a translator, voiceover artist, and musician. He has been involved in many different projects ranging from international television productions to documentaries, music videos, and commercials.
William Roberts is an excellent and experienced actor, and he does a terrific job with the part of Rob Lerner, the colony leader. In fact, he’s so perfect at it, there’s isn’t much specific to say, except “it’s perfect”. He’s got the right tone, the right mix of inspiration and realism, and just that little touch of worrying charisma. You do feel that if this guy talked you into walking off a cliff, you just might do it. But fortunately for you, his heart’s in the right place.
When we wrote the characters for Lunatics! , we didn’t really give a whole lot of thought to how easy they would be to cast. It was only after that, that we started to seriously consider how hard it might be to find someone to play Anya convincingly. In the story, of course, Anya is a native Russian who speaks English very well. If we cast an American voice-actress who would then play the character with an accent, it would undoubtedly sound noticeably fake. Also, if she ever had to speak Russian, it would mean a real loss in credibility for anyone who understands it.
Lex Quarterman first auditioned for Sergei, because he’s also fluent in Russian, but after listening to his demos, we decided he would be awesome as Tim Farmer (and actually Tim probably would speak Russian). Tim, of course, is the teenage son of Anya Titova and Josh Farmer, who feels dragged along against his will, although we think he might just be enjoying the fame and attention just a little bit.
