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!
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.
The idea for Lunatics! came from a discussion between Terry Hancock and Rosalyn Hunter on space-homesteading, the problems of space settlers, and the potential personality conflicts of the space advocates who would be most likely be involved. It was Rosalyn Hunter who conceived the characters and basic story ideas that grew into this series.
I’ve introduced most of the team already, but of course, I need to introduce myself as well: I’ve been interested in space technology and science-fiction since I was a small child, and I’ve been actively involved in free-culture since before the word was coined. Lunatics! is a unique opportunity for me to put all of my skills and training to work on one project. As both an astronomer and a life-long space advocate, I’m very familiar with the reasons for going to the Moon and settling there (and also Mars and other places). And I have some pretty good ideas about how it can be done, having seen a lot of different proposals over the years.
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.
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!
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 have a great voice cast on “Lunatics!” which is one reason I really, really want to see this finished. One of the first characters introduced is “Hiromi Lerner”, voiced by Karrie Shirou. The part of Hiromi Lerner is tricky. She’s a subtle character — it’d be really easy for her to come off as a stereotypical homemaker role and thus dismissed, but the thing is, she’s somebody who’s decided to do this role on the Moon . Inside, Hiromi is like iron, and you could argue that she’s the one that really holds that colony together.
