Our production team has recently been joined by a new 3D graphics artist, Keneisha Perry, who will be working primarily on characters and character costumes!
We’ve now started working on the asset for the “on Earth” shots in the pilot episode. These models are often not as glamorous, but they take a lot of work, and are very necessary for the plot. We’re also working towards preparing production rigs for animated our characters. We also need HELP on character modeling, if yo have Blender character modeling skills, can follow a modeling style concept, and would like to get involved.
Vyacheslav has been an enthusiastic supporter for Lunatics! since our modeling project last Summer. He contributed to the Soyuz interior set model and created the initial model for the Lunar Transportation System lander that we used in our animatic. He’s also been instrumental in providing Russian proof-reading and translations for us. Most of the labels on the Soyuz console were checked by him, and he has helped us with creating Russian subtitles for our teaser/demo, our Kickstarter pitch video, and the entire pilot episode.
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 sent out some press releases for the Kickstarter. I’ve also posted an update about the non-photorealisti visual style and how we hope to render our characters in the final production (or at least what some of our options are).
There are several factors we have to balance in coming up with a style of animation and rendering for “Lunatics!” You might think that 3D animators should always try for maximum realism (“photorealism”) when making animation, but this is not necessarily a good idea. First of all, the human eye is extremely good at spotting errors in photorealistic renderings and especially in animation. This is the basis of the problem known as the “uncanny valley effect”: if you have extremely photo-accurate models and renderings of characters, then even the slightest error in movement creates a disturbing “creepy” effect. Such animations are often described as “zombie-like” or “doll-like”. This is because we are very sensitive to tiny differences in the way real people move.
I’m pleased to welcome our new character modeling expert, Bela Szabo (a.k.a. “contmike” in some circles). This puts us back on track for a crowd-funding campaign launching late in this month, if everything goes as I expect.
