GADE

These are two 10-second shots made using the materials, textures, compositing, and rendering techniques we propose to use for "Lunatics!" shots (or very nearly).

Project: http://lunatics.tv

Some details about the shots:

Both were created in Blender, with Freestyle edge-rendering in the foreground and a softer background based on painted textures. These were originally created at 1920x1080, reduced to 1280x720 for upload.

Soyuz Podstaging:

This shows Soyuz pod separation, which occurs at about 50 km altitude.

Spacecraft model created by Chris Kuhn.

Toon-shading materials and textures by Terry Hancock.

Earth-surface, cloud-deck, and horizon backdrops created by Terry Hancock in Gimp.

The flame effect is created using animated meshes with animated textures, enhanced by post-processing with the "glare" filter in the compositor. This also gives some atmospheric lighting to the highlights on the spacecraft, enhancing the effect of harsh sunlight in near-vacuum.

There is also a 3-frame motion-blur applied to this one, which smooths out any aliasing in the animation.

This is NOT the final animation shot -- the camera tracking curve is definitely not final. There is also going to need to be a little sleight-of-hand to separate the pods from the rocket in the tail end of the shot (at the tail end of this shot, they've reached the end of their "rope" so to speak in their Blender rig -- we'll probably cut slightly earlier to a different angle with the pods separately animated).

You might want to compare with the pre-viz version of this shot (the camera track and animation is identical): (VIMEO) (PEERTUBE)

The (Present-Day) ISS:

The space station model in the actual show will be a science-fictional update to the ISS, representing another 30 years of development. But Chris Kuhn has completed this present-day version as an intermediate step, so we're using it for testing. This presented some serious challenges because of the size of the model and the number of Freestyle edges that are drawn. Optimizing the model to make it possible to render with Freestyle was a useful learning experience.

The Earth backdrop here was painted by Timothee Giet's using Krita.

This shot still has some temporal aliasing, because motion blurring was turned off to save on rendering time (since I'm rendering on my present desktop system, these shots can take days to render -- we want to build an inexpensive cluster for production animation).

I hope these will give a much better idea of how we want "Lunatics!" to look when animated on screen. We will be doing some additional tests on interior and character shots, although these require more work (we don't have final rigs for any of the characters yet).

Lunatics Project | lunatics.tv

Preview and pitch-video for pre-ordering Lunatics! audiodrama "Earth", now available for pre-order through our IndieGoGo campaign.

Revised Kickstarter Pitch video for Lunatics! with the much shorter teaser at the beginning.

Lunatics Project | lunatics.tv

A demonstration of animating the "Gagarin Start" launch pad model for "Lunatics!" Kickstarter.

Model by Chris Kuhn, based on photo and drawing references from RosCosmos and NASA.

This was created from three separate animation renderings from Blender (based on the same animation track with three different material settings), composited with Kdenlive.

Created with Blender, Kdenlive, and Audacity.

This is a test of the materials settings for "Georgiana Lerner" -- one of the central characters in "Lunatics!" and the main character of the pilot episode, "No Children in Space".

Currently crowd-funding to create the pilot on Kickstarter: http://kck.st/1bPRPwb

Project site: http://lunatics.tv

Lunatics Project | lunatics.tv

This is a test of toon-shaded materials with the model for Georgiana Lerner, wearing the spacesuit for the launch sequence. From "No Children in Space". Currently on Kickstarter - http://kck.st/1bPRPwb

We're still considering different options for the rendering style for our characters. However, these are the materials used in the teaser trailer we posted earlier.

Character Concept - Rosalyn Hunter

Music is "D10-2000" from the album "D10-2000" by Gregoire Lourme.

All "Lunatics!" published materials are under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, version 3.0, unported.

More info on our project: http://lunatics.tv

Very short (6s) trailer/teaser for "Lunatics!" - Kickstarter.

We are trying to crowd-fund the money to start this series -- we need your help to get it off the ground!

Lunatics is a science fiction animated web series about space development and space colonization on the Moon, being developed on a Free Culture Open Movie basis using Free/Open-Source Software

http://lunatics.tv

Credits for the Trailer:

Music: "Space Zine" by Elaine Walker.

All "Lunatics!" materials are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, version 3.0/unported.

#kozéannou

This is the full video for our 2013 Production Kickstarter(WBM) to fund finishing our pilot episode, "No Children in Space".

See the Kickstarter campaign at the link above.

Lunatics Project | lunatics.tv

The Lunar Transportation System (LTS) is the workhorse spacecraft of the Lunar exploration era in "Lunatics!"

In service since the early 2030s, this spacecraft provides the primary means of supply and crew-transfers for several different entities including NASA, the US Air Force, ESA, RosCosmos, and several corporate operations which maintain large or small stations on the Moon by 2040. So of course it is also how our settlers get to their new home.

The LTS Service Module is an unmanned spacecraft that provides the primary propulsion for the flight as well as providing a lot of secondary services, including in-flight refueling of the Lander. The fuel tanks are disposable elements brought up by tanker flights from Earth, while the rest of the craft is reusable (you'll notice that the tanks are shiny and new while other parts of the spacecraft show some wear).

This model was created by Chris Kuhn based on designs by Terry Hancock (me). Now that I've added materials and textures, this is pretty much how the spacecraft will look in our final production.

As with other elements of the production, we are not attempting to produce a truly photoreal appearance.

Lunatics Project | lunatics.tv