Some of you may be wondering where this “Phase I” Kickstart (and the work it’s meant to support) falls in our overall plan, and just how far it will take us. I don’t know exactly how fast we can progress — whether we’ll be able to keep getting enough people interested in contributing directly to the project or how many rewards, pre-sale DVDs, or merchandise we’ll be able to sell to keep the project funded. That’s really going to depend on the fans.
Continuing with themes in the stories for Lunatics… Here’s number five: Theme #5 Failsafes and Adaptation Space is a dangerous place, don’t get me wrong. But then again, so is Siberia or Alaska. Or the Sahara. There are dangers all over the world that are quite sufficient to kill an exposed human without important life-support or supplies. We don’t worry about that most of the time, because we’ve adapted to these dangers. We do that through the equipment we carry (starting with clothes), through the behaviors we learn, and through the environments we create for ourselves.
Themes in Lunatics Although Rosalyn Hunter is credited as the “writer” on Lunatics and I am credited as the “director”, the reality is a bit more muddled than that. We are highly collaborative in our creative process, as you might expect from a married team. I thought it might be interesting to introduce some of the themes we’re working into the series. Here’s the first: Theme #1 “Bridging from Here to There”
Today I finished the first of the digital ink & paint portraits based on Daniel Fu’s character concept art. This is not the final art we are creating for this Kickstart, but it is the artwork that will appear in high resolution on the “Concept Art Poster” we are offering at the $15 level, to be delivered right after the Kickstart finishes, in December. A lower resolution version (similar to this image) will appear on the “Characters” page . to replace the existing silhouette images.
This is getting a little ahead of ourselves, but we thought it would be a fun extra to share with you all. This is a bit of dialog that Rosalyn wrote for the 2nd episode of Lunatics, to be called “Earth”. This is our own performance of the dialog, although we’ll probably have real voice actors re-record the scene for the final episode. This gave us a chance to test out our recording equipment and technique. We have a little bit of a room acoustics problem, but otherwise it worked out quite well. I have an idea for an acoustic panel made from cardboard that may improve the ambiance considerably.
As you can see from the widget on our front page, we have just launched our Kickstarter campaign to fund pre-production artwork development for the series. This includes the character design and model sheets, the set plans, and plans of the vehicles that appear in the pilot episode, “No Children in Space”. It will also support Rosalyn Hunter in making final revisions to the script.
We’re getting everything ready to star our first Kickstarter campaign. This will cover pre-production artwork some 3D modeling necessary for the pre-production phase, and an animatic of the pilot episode with a temporary soundtrack.
