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 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.
