We’ve just launched our second Kickstarter — this is the BIG one: we’re hoping to fund the production of the pilot episode for the series! Please come see and support us if you can!
Hi all! I wanted to let you know that we have launched the fund-raiser for production of the pilot episode, “No Children in Space”: Lunatics Animated Series Pilot – “No Children in Space” We really wanted to launch on Moon Day, July 20th, and we have. This is of course, the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. We were working really hard to make this deadline (really important, because we actually advertised the date this time). So, I’m really happy we made it.
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
Just a quick note: I have got some more artwork up on the Download page: We are also currently taking auditions for Voice Actors and applications for Artist Interns (Mostly Blender 3D art skills, but also some 2D and audio).
Pretty soon we’ll be fund-raising for the pilot for Lunatics, and we’d like to be able to offer both a standard definition version on DVD and a DRM-free high-definition version. Since Blu-Ray is a very, very closed format, we decided to tr to create a new option with “Lib-Ray”. We’re about 74% of the way to funding that development on Kickstarter, but we’ve just got 5 days to make our Kickstarter goal (or we won’t get any of that). So we could really use help, either directly, or by telling anyone you know who cares about free-culture, independent film, and/or user freedoms with multimedia. …
I have just created the… As mentioned before, the content is not complete (and yes, I’m even behind where I said I was going to be, but I’m starting to catch up now). But I have versions of the Concept Art Poster in SVG, PDF, and various wallpaper/desktop sizes. I’ve also got the first 44 pages of the Artbook, including all of the character modelsheets, and the introduction which talks about the planned series format, business model, production schedule, and so on. The original SVG model sheets for each character are also available. More will be coming very soon! Also… Please check that your name is listed correctly in the backer credits.
I am working very hard on this right now! 🙂 I have laid-out / typeset 44 pages of the “Pre-Production Art Book & Writer’s Guide”, which includes an introduction addressing series format and production schedule, and all of the character model sheets. The model sheets and some of the plans will be printed in color, by the way, as I found a print-on-demand publisher who can print a book with just a few color pages (as opposed to charging the color rate for the whole book). To make up the cost difference from pure black and white, I’ll be printing the text parts of the book a bit smaller in two-column “journal” format (still nicely readable, I think).
Today I sent out the rest of the survey forms to those of you who are getting physical rewards. The actual rewards will probably be ready to go out in about two weeks. I’m starting to work on typesetting and publications stuff, although I still have some of my part owing on the original art. I made a small error in the surveys — I had originally intended to create a separate blank for how you’d like your name to appear in the credits. But I forgot to include this question. So, if you want your name to appear differently than in the “Name” part of your address (or if you wish to remain anonymous), please send me a private message with the name you want us to use.
We’ve crossed a pre-production milestone — the modelsheets for the eight colonists (our main characters) are completed. Daniel is now moving on to the artwork for secondary characters. This puts us on schedule for our (recently slipped) delivery goal of early May.
In my last post, I had to announce a one-month slip. Fortunately, it looks like we are on track to make that goal. I can breathe a small sigh of relief now that the drawings for our eight main characters are done (the last three are below — the previous update includes the other five).
We’re breaking a lot of new territory on the project, at least for us, and this isn’t the first and probably not the last time I’ll misjudge the schedule. I had estimated model-sheet production based on Daniel’s time on the concept sheets, but he’s doing a much higher quality of work on the model sheets, and it takes some time (and unlike some of us, Daniel has a full-time day job to keep up with, too). I suspect I could’ve gotten my part done on time, but I have to admit, an extra month makes me feel a little less stressed, too.
