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…
As mentioned in my last update, Lunatics is on a hiatus while I work on Lib-Ray goals. In the process, though, I’m finishing up the last Kickstarter rewards for Lunatics as well, which are the three copies of the animatic in prototype Lib-Ray format. They’re basically done, but there’s a couple of minor problems I’m sorting out with the menus and the packaging. After some analysis, I’ve also got some (hopefully much more realistic) predictions about Lib-Ray and Lunatics schedules for 2013.
Well. I’m in bean-counting mode today. Have to itemize all of the expenses for 2012. I’ll finally find out how much I actually spent on Lunatics and Lib-Ray and miscellaneous overhea costs. Just looking at all the line-items, I have a feeling the number is going to be pretty staggering.
I’m still working on mastering the DVD for the animatics (a Kickstarter reward for the pre-production backers — in fact, the final one, along with the flash-media versions of the same content). I’m having some considerable headaches with the software but it’s getting done.
As you can see, we’ve revised our website and we have just posted the animatic version of our pilot episode, “No Children in Space”. This is the “International” or “Original” version with English subtitles. We are also rendering an “English-dub” version which is very similar, but has all of the dialog in English.
We’re currently doing five things simultaneously: casting voice actors, reviewing applications for 3D artist internships, finishing our pre-production Kickstart work and rewards, training on the software, and planning for our next Kickstarte which will pay for the production of the pilot episode, “No Children i Space”. Everything is complicated and interlocked, and I am very busy camper. But this is pretty fun, I have to admit!
This last week, I mostly spent getting up to speed with Blender’s scripting interface for Python. I have to admit to being a little anxious about this, but it’s really pretty simple stuff once you get started (that’s always the hard part!). Daniel’s working on the model sheets. And I’m starting to write the structural parts of the book we’re creating as part of the production process.
Well that was an interesting experience. Yesterday, we joined thousands of sites in what was apparently the largest Web blackout protest in history to oppose two very dangerous bills in the US Congress: the “PROTECT-IP Act” (PIPA) in the Senate and “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) in the House of Representatives. This seems to have had a useful effect, as a dozen or so people in Congress have reversed their position, and Obama’s administration released a statement in opposition to the bills. So now we’re back to the business of making new media content work!
Just quick note today: We’ll be joining the blackout protest against the SOPA / PIPA legislation tomorrow (Jan 18th), along with Reddit, Wikipedia, and many other sites.
Even Google will be doing something about it, as I understand it. This legislation could be extremely devastating to us, as it targets many of the people who we rely on as distributors, and of course, on viewers. Furthermore, it is unnecessary to create legislation like this as the threat of so-called “piracy” is vastly overblown.
Well, the holidays went well, and now it’s back to work. This week, I’ve spent on defining the spec for the model and design sheets to get Daniel started, and also working on some additional reference research on Soyuz to support modeling the Soyuz re-entry (and ascent) module which we’re going to need for an early animation test.
