Today, we posted the very last rewards, which were the three Lib-Ray-formatted versions of the pilot episode animatic, along with the dataset, which included all of the extras from the episode download page as well as a snapshot of the development source tree. Once we decided to release these in a format compatible with our developing Lib-Ray standard, we had to wait until we had enough of that standard defined to make sure they would match -- but we've now reached that point with Lib-Ray, so it was possible to finalize these and get them shipped.

And that marks the end of our Pre-Production Kickstarter! Hurray!

I've contacted the three of you who are receiving the USB/SD card datasets with delivery estimates (since they're all different).

For everyone else: if you haven't received your reward shipment, something is wrong -- please message me and we'll get it straightened out!

So, How Did We Do?

This project had a lot of surprises for us. We kind of expected that -- that is, we "expected the unexpected" -- but it's still surprising when it happens. We've run almost a year past our original 4-month estimate for delivery. About 2 to 3 months of that was actually due to us underestimating the time things would take. The rest was essentially "feature creep" -- it became clear that we would have a better product a little later, so we waited.

I can't say I really regret that, since we were ultimately able to deliver a much more complete work than we originally expected: we have the real voice cast and final music on the animatic, which is a big improvement over the temp-track version I expected to deliver in the pre-production stage.

It didn't have much impact on the schedule, but we did also take longer to deliver on the storyboard animatic itself and the CG effects animations because of my progress on the learning curve for both Blender and Kdenlive. Nevertheless, most of those issues are resolved now.

So, I feel that we did pretty well, although I would prefer to have estimated the schedule better. Towards the latter goal, I've adopted a somewhat more cautious approach to estimating for the next steps.

On to Production?

Some big open questions regarding the production plan, schedule, and costs probably contributed to the failure of our production Kickstarter in August 2012. I don't think we were really properly ready to move on to that step then, and the truth is that we still aren't.

We ran so far over on our pre-production schedule that it interfered with our other (larger) funded project, Lib-Ray. We are therefore obligated to spend time now bringing that project back up to schedule -- I really don't want to deliver late on it! We believe it is possible to still deliver on time, even with the delay, but it does mean we don't have time for much else in the immediate future.

However, once we meet certain milestone goals, we will be able to return to the next steps on Lunatics development:

• Demonstration of Digital Puppetry Technique (0% done -- this is probably the most critical risk and needs to be resolved)
• Teaser Trailer (40% done? We have the models, but they need some rework and re-integration, then animation)

• Blocking Model of Colony (20% done -- I have a plan for this set and a couple of module models started. Not hard, but time-consuming)
• Finished CG model space shots of LTS, Earth, and Moon (60% done -- you've seen these in the animatic, but they need detailing)

• Audio voice recording and mixing for second episode "Earth" (50% done - still have to mix. Of course, we already have this for the pilot, as well as the animatic).
• Detailed cost-breakdown and projections of production schedule and expenses (more bean-counting and more accurate/conservative schedules! I have some ideas in my head, but I need to write them down and do the math)
• Re-connect with the team, and recruit new members as needed (some will have gone onto other projects).
• Produce a campaign video using all of this material and higher production values (no more last-minute campaign videos!)

At our current rate of progress, I think it might just be feasible to have this material ready sometime in May -- at which point we could then run a Kickstarter right at the beginning of the Summer to fund modeling and animation work over the Summer (which would work out very nicely for students -- the timing of the previous Kickstarter was a little awkward because it required modelers to work in the Fall when some of them needed to be in school).

However, that's going to depend also on how Lib-Ray is doing at that time (we are supposed to deliver all of the Lib-Ray rewards in July). If we have anything other than basic fulfillment tasks left in May, that may require another adjustment. One thing I've decided for this year is to proceed on the basis of our readiness and not on a fixed schedule.

This is probably the last full post I'm going to publish on this Kickstarter blog, though I will continue to post links to major developments as we move into production. If you want to follow our progress more closely, it would probably be a good idea to subscribe to the newsfeed on our main site at http://lunatics.tv  (or one of the social media links from there if you prefer).

This will probably be my next-to-last update.  The DVD data sets are being mailed (all but one of them is in the post, the last one will go out on my next trip to the post office).

What's on the Disks:

There are two disks in a double-disk thin-pack (I know I didn't actually promise a case originally, but I had these already, and I thought they'd look nicer than just sending you a paper sleeve).

Disk 1

Disk 1 is a hybrid video/data DVD. That is to say,  you can put it into a DVD-player and play it like you would any DVD movie, and there is also "DVD-ROM" content on the disk which you can get to by putting the disk into your computer (look in the "Extras" directory).

The DVD features include:

• The storyboard animatic itself (51:30 long, by the way)
• "Virtual Table Reads" for both "No Children in Space" and "Earth"
• Cast & Crew Profiles
• Character Profiles
• Production Art Slideshow
• What is Free Film?
• Series Proposal (very brief)
• And two "Easter Eggs"

The DVD-ROM content includes everything that was on the download website, including:

• Digital sources for the posters
• Various sized desktop wallpapers
• The printable fingerpuppets we used in some of our presentations
• The entire "Artbook & Writer's Guide" in PDF format (which includes model sheets, set designs, a prospectus, the first two scripts, and some other stuff).
• SVG drawings of sets, vehicles, and character modelsheets.
• Video of the animatic in 720p HD video (MKV with VP8 video and Vorbis audio).

It's possible that some DVD players may have some issues with the DVD image I created for this disk -- I had some issues with the automatic compression rate-control for MPEG2 encoding which may cause some lost frames on some DVD players. And something weird happens which made a lot of the menus inaccessible on one Blu-Ray player I tested it on -- I'm hoping that's just a bug with that player. If you have problems, send me an e-mail to let me know -- at the very least, we can hope to improve the mastering for the actual series (and if it's a big enough problem, I might replace the animatic disks later).

This disk is an archival "M-Disc" DVD from Millenniata. It should basically last forever -- or as long as a regular pressed DVD, anyway. That's because M-Discs have actual "pits and lands" on their surface, like a pressed DVD instead of just dye-marks like a DVD-R.

Disk 2

Disk 2 contains a somewhat pared-down "good parts" version of the Lunatics "source tree". This double-layer DVD-R holds twice as much data as an M-Disc (which is only available as a single-layer disk, unfortunately). To get it to fit, I had to delete some intermediate-stage files (renderings) and get rid of stuff that wasn't used in the production of the "No Children in Space" animatic (the original source tree is too big to fit on a DVD at all).

Since this is dye-based media, all of the usual caveats apply -- so keep it cool and dry. It is a high-quality Verbatim DVD+R, though, so it should be about as good as dye-based DVDs get.

What's Left

With these shipped (there's just one more left to go in the mail), the only things left are the three USB/SD-card media versions. These will be nearly identical to the DVD versions, except that all of the data is on one flash-media volume, and I plan to add a complete, prototype "Lib-Ray" image of the animatic and extras, based on the same menu design as I created for the DVD. The feature video file for this release will be the same as the HD video contained on the DVD disks.

I'm officially working full-time on Lib-Ray now, so these will be finished up as part of that project. I'm also ordering the media to send them out on, which will take a few days to arrive.

Well, this is taking a little longer than I planned, due to software problems I don't even want to get started on (I'm having to do a lot of workarounds and trouble-shooting as a result).

But I'm getting fairly close now. Just have to smash some more menu bugs.

Much of the DVD-authoring also serves double for the USB flash drive versions, since it will be basically the same design (for these, I'll be using the prototype Lib-Ray spec, which basically means a small on-disk website with linked videos).

These will be "hybrid" DVDs with additional "DVD-ROM" content accessible by computer. I may have to be a little creative with that, since the whole production source tree is now too big to fit comfortably on a DVD. I'll be paring it down some, and some content will probably be on a second disk.

Meanwhile, of course, the video of the animatic is available on our website:

http://lunatics.tv/Episodes/Pilot/Animatic

Artbooks and Posters

We now have all of the physical rewards in hand (that's the character line-up posters and the artbooks), and we are working on signing and packaging those tonight! I hope to get them into the mail tomorrow morning. Both have turned out beautifully! I'm very happy with "Book One" who was able to print the artbooks with color plates as well as the usual black-and-white content as well as "Smartpress" who has been doing our poster printing. Both have produced very high quality printing for us.

Screenwriter Rosalyn Hunter signing a "Pre-Production Artbook & Writer's Guide".

Data Disks or Flash Media

For the 10 of you that are expecting data disks or flash cards, we are still waiting a bit more (if you ordered a collection, the disks will come later). The wait is because I'm still trying to finish up two promises I made for those disks:

• Storyboard animatic
• Soundtrack with voices

We've gone through a lot of ups and downs on this project this year. On the one hand, I've been much slower in finishing up certain elements like the storyboard animatic and certainly the 3D modeling work. On the other, we actually have a voice cast who is recording for the project right now, which is well ahead of where I had expected to be by now.

I've been frustrated with the available video editors. Kdenlive has a great user interface in principle, but the synchronization problems on playback make it very hard to use for finer work. After several attempts, I may go back to using the Blender VSE for this.

The real problem on the animatics, though, is me. I really underestimated the amount of time I would spend on producing (as opposed to directing). There's an awful lot of communicating, coordinating, and even fund-raising to be done, and this wiped out a lot of the time I had been planning to spend on directorial work like the animatics. So, I'll have to chalk that up to my being inexperienced and try to improve on my future estimates.

But of course, I knew there would be surprises, and there are no show-stopping problems as yet. We're still moving forward, albeit not at the pace I had hoped for (eventually it will be a serious problem if we can't speed things up, but not yet).

Also, because of the unanticipated good fortune with the casting, I should be able to include a complete soundtrack with music and final (or at least nearly final) voice tracks -- which is more than I promised. So I'm hoping this will sort of balance out against the lateness of delivery.

Every time I listen to the actors working on this project, I am really stunned by my good fortune. These are very talented people putting in very professional work. And considering that we are not yet able to pay them, they have been extremely understanding! The soundtrack sounds like it will be awesome when finished.

I'm still considering exactly where to draw the line on the data disks. The project source tree is already so large that I'm going to have to actually send you two 4GB DVD disks (the single-layer disks are more reliable than the double-layer 8GB disks, and anyway, I've decided to use Milleniata M-Discs which are limited to 4GB -- but are much more permanent than DVD-R media).

Already included in this dataset are the modelsheets in SVG and PDF formats as well as PNG renderings of the characters. There are some 3D models, including Georgiana and Hiromi character models created by Andrew Pray as well as the 3D models created for the Soyuz Descent Module set. There is a great deal of recorded sound -- including music and sound effects libraries, new effects for the project, and the audacity sound mixing files for several scenes (though some of these are still being edited). There are recordings of the principal cast conference in which we read/rehearsed the screenplays for "No Children in Space" and "Earth" and there are of course full scripts, the contents of the artbook, and so on.

I definitely feel I must wait to put the animatics and soundtracks on the disks. I now hope to finish those by October 1st. If possible, it would be nice to finish the "Teaser Trailer" and include it as well -- I'll have to post a separate update about that.

The big goal, of course, is to fully produce the animated pilot episode. For that, we're going to need to solve some problems in fund raising, team building, and technology. But it will be much easier to do that when we have got something to show for the project. The animatic, voice production, and animated trailer will provide that, and we're still on track to get all of these finished this Fall (possibly in the next couple of weeks). So I remain optimistic that we are going to launch this series in 2013.

Thank you for your support!