The task of converting the set of modelsheets drawn by Daniel Fu to 3D character models is a pretty tricky one. It requires a definite artistic sense of form in 3D, the ability to follow an inexact pattern, and of course, a great deal of skill with Blender. In addition to modeling the basic form represented by the modelsheets, the modeler also has to create a range of “shape keys” to represent different facial expressions. This is how we generally animate facial expressions. Blender does a kind of “morph” from the neutral position to one or more extreme points of facial expression (this is different from how we animate arm and leg motions, which are based on skeletal deformations of the character mesh).
We knew what we wanted to do with the personalities of the characters for Lunatics! , and we had back-stories, descriptions, and a few personal details. But we didn’t have characters, and I intentionally left some creative room there, because I felt that a real character designer could do a much better job. I had done something similar to this for a game project years back, and my first choice was to contact one of the designers who had worked on that project – Daniel Fu . Of course, years had passed, and he’d gone on to different sorts of work. He’d also done his own online comic series with ” The Retriever “. So I felt pretty lucky when he agreed to do the designs for us.
Two of our major character parts in “Lunatics!” are played by the extremely versatile veteran character actor and voice-over artist, Paul Birchard. We are so lucky to have this guy on the project, and he really breathes life into these two characters: Joshua Farmer and R. Allen Emerson.
We really need some help getting the word out about our Kickstarter campaign, and one of our fans suggested neat idea: if you embed our Kickstarter widget on your webpage until Aug 20th, we’ll send you a free, high-quality printed set of OFFICIAL finger puppets and a signed thank you note. Details after the fold…
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 was invited to this event to discuss three projects currently crowd-funding, our own “Lunatics!” project, another film project called “Algorithm” , and the huge (and controversial) Ubuntu Edge project (which is aiming to raise $32 million to build a limited run of smartphones running the “Ubuntu Touch” operating system — that’s over 750 times as much as we need for “Lunatics!”). This was a fun chat — the part about “Lunatics!” is mostly towards the end:
Well, I’m not sure what’s happening with our Kickstarter. We’re stuck at 3% with 22 backers. I don’t know i that’s because I’ve overestimated how many people are supporting us or if it’s because you’re disappointed with the results. Could even be I’m just talking to myself and a bunch of web crawlers here, and only imagine that anyone is following this. It could be that even our closer followers aren’t seeing all of these posts, with all the changes that have been happening in the social media sphere. There are so many thing acting to lock you into a digital bubble.
Kickstarter, with its “all or nothing” funding scheme, reduces risks for both creators and backers. For a project like “Lunatics!”, this makes it a lot safer bet. This protects early backers financially — if we don’t make it, you’ve lost nothing. And the money doesn’t come out until the end when we know the campaign has succeeded (or doesn’t because it hasn’t). We really need “inside” support from those of you already following “Lunatics!” if we’re going to encourage the “outside” support from new people we communicate with.
Thanks to everyone who supported our Kickstarter on our Moon Day opening, and thanks to everyone who helped spread the word about it! You never really know what’s going to happen, and I do hate the sound of those darned crickets. So I’m really grateful that we had some noise on our opening day. That’s a little complicated to say: First, and most importantly, it is better than any of our previous Kickstarter campaign attempts, including our successful pre-production campaign! So that’s a really good sign.
Although we didn’t quite succeed with our attempt to fund the voice recording on “No Children in Space” and “Earth”, we were able to proceed slowly anyway, and completed a basic animatic for “No Children in Space”, with voices and soundtrack. We’ve also, since then, been joined by mech modeler Chris Kuhn and new character modeler Bela Szabo, who are already working on models to finish production of “No Children in Space”.
It was somewhat disappointing when our 2012 campaign fell so far from our goal, but I have to admit, there were a lot of signs that we weren’t really ready then. However, after an additional year of work, we’ve managed to accomplish a LOT: And so, I have a lot more confidence about our new 2013 Production Kickstarter. Please come and check it out!
