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.
Over the course of 2012, we had a total of over 30 people work on Lunatics! But there was still a lot to do in 2013. We got a huge boost from mechanical modeler Chris Kuhn joining the team this Summer: Lead Mech Modeler: Chris Kuhn
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.
Although we’re officially on a short hiatus, I am still doing a little work on weekends, and we have also recently been joined by Chris Kuhn, a very talented mechanical modeling artist who is currently working on the Soyuz launch system which features prominently in our pilot episode. I’ve also had a chance to do some more tests with character models, shading, lighting, and rendering — pictures, links, and video after the fold…
Since we decided to have Paul Birchard do the Allen Emerson character (first introduced in “Earth”), I thought maybe I should share his audition for it. We enjoyed it a lot. This of course, is the same “Art Now!” interview that Rosalyn and I voiced earlier. I have to say that Paul a whole lot better than I am at the part! Of course, Paul is playing both the interviewer and Emerson here.
Finally! I can tell somebody… We now have six voice actors confirmed for the pilot episode, who will play the six series regular characters who appear in the pilot (Georgiana, Hiromi, Rob, Tim, Josh, and Anya — in order of apperance): Rob will be played by William Roberts . Hiromi will be played by Karrie Shirou . Georgiana will be played by our daughter Ariel after all (we reviewed auditions from a few adult actresses to be sure this is what we wanted to do — they were good, but a real child’s voice sounds much better, and Ariel did quite well on the audition). Tim will be played by Lex Quarterman . Josh will be played by Paul Birchard . and
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.
