largento

Never say die, Rodney ...until they kill it. :-) I haven't given up at all (and thanks for your pledge, btw!), just being more realistic this go around. I read somewhere that the danger of having a great imagination is that you can imagine something being successful. :-) I've thought all of these projects had potential to go over big and imagined them all taking off, but the reality is that at the end of next month, it'll be four years since I quit my job and with the exception of Stalled Trek, everything has been a loss financially. That's not to say they were unsuccessful in that there were actually 2 or 3 fans of The Wannabe Pirates who enjoyed it and I certainly learned a heckuva' lot in the process, but I think this gives me a gauge to say how far should I go with this. Using Stalled Trek as my only other example. I originally did the Kickstarter to make 200 DVDs, thinking that would be about what I'd expect to sell at local cons. (A conservative number as actual sales bore out.) However, when it went over the goal, I opted to get 1K DVDs made. If I'd looked at the numbers of backers and saw that it was more on the small side, I could have stuck to a lower number and used that extra money to travel to a larger Star Trek show, where I probably would have had an easier time selling it. This time, I'm trying to make use of the info. If it makes it's goal, then I'll consider that in the number of DVDs I order and the way I go about selling it. If it had been a runaway success, then I could have planned for that, as well. As it is, though. If it doesn't go, then that's a pretty good sign there aren't that many people interested in buying them and I wouldn't have the money to make them for them, either. Better to have that info *before* I've spent six or seven months working on a project, rather than after the fact when I can't get that time back. So, not being a defeatist and haven't given up yet (in fact, I'm working on another one of the character models today), just allowing reality to interfere this time, rather than foolishly not letting it into the room. :-)

I wish I could, Gene, but I can't. There's only so much time I can live off of my family and I'm nearing the end of that. My hope was that the reaction to this would be positive enough that I could point to the Kickstarter and justify keeping on the path. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case. If it couldn't even generate the costs needed to produce it, how can I convince my family I'll be able make a living doing this? What's annoying is the Catch 22 I find myself in. If I had stayed at my job, I'd have plenty of money to fund something like this, but I wouldn't have had the energy and time to actually do it. It would be different if I hadn't just spent years doing The Wannabe Pirates and coming up empty.

Thanks alot, Tony! I really appreciate it! Thanks, Gene. My fingers are crossed that it gets the project the needed attention.

Whoo-hoo! I finished the Hospital Sequence and have uploaded it to YouTube! Go see it ! And please don't forget to pass it around and spread the word. I'm halfway through my Kickstarter, but only 1/3rd funded. It's looking more and more like I may not make it to the finish line, which will scuttle this project (and my hopes and dreams!) If you can support, please do! Thanks!

NICE one, Jesse!

Will, there's no question that you have enormous talent and your work stands far and above most people. I hope you go for it (even if that mostly is because *I* want to see it!) I'm honestly not sure what you should do, but reading your comments, I wonder if your Kickstarter could go towards creating the infrastructure for a community Tar web series? In other words, a central hub where those who are interested in some aspect of it, could jump on board and be part of it ...plus a render farm for the community and maybe even A:M licenses for those who qualify. I was just reading about what was said at a panel on web series at SXSW, and they said that people like anthologies, but don't want to watch episode 6 of a 152-part series. They did say, though, on the internet, comedy is king. They also said that they had all tried to go the film festival route, but described it as trying to get your film approved by a panel of five so that it can be shown to 200. They preferred the immediacy of the web and the potential to reach millions of viewers. Of course, they also gave a statistic that every MINUTE, 72 HOURS of video is uploaded to YouTube! Talk about signal-to-noise ratio! If you could find some like-minded people, you could conceivably set up a system to have several episodes being produced over-lapping to allow for an actual series release schedule. The Kickstarter would be a step forward in that direction. I gotta' think people will be blown away by what you can show them. We all are!

Not a lot to show today. Modeled and rigged the hospital version of Recch yesterday and today. Complete with hospital gown and socks. I've got most of the pieces done for this sequence and re-wrote the script today to allow for this being a longer sequence. Going to try to record the dialogue tonight so that I can begin animating tomorrow. My rough storyboards show about 15 shots, but it might be slightly more. It might be two or three minutes long, but probably on the lesser side of that. With luck, I can knock them all out this weekend. Rendering is likely going to take awhile, though. I really want to have this sequence finished and up on Wednesday, which will mark the halfway point of my Kickstarter.

Thanks, David! Did a test shot of the animated flowers. I went ahead and did a full render thinking I might use a couple of seconds as an insert shot. You can see it .

Thanks so much, Kat! I really appreciate it! @Robert, Thanks. That *is* A:M DoF. Photoshop was used to add some glow and film grain and tweak the colors some. @Rodney, Thanks. The flower is really just a one-off gag. In the original the main character's first clue that time has passed is that he wakes up to see the flowers on the nightstand have died. I thought it would be funny to make them little zombies. I was just going to do one flower, but I think I'll make it a bunch of flowers (same model, of course) and have them all moving around, biting at the air.

Because, I'm not afraid to go for a cheap joke, I present: Dead Flower. :-) This was something I just added because I thought it would be a fun background gag, but I may do a cartoon face modeling tutorial with it in the future. It's such a simple and quick character to do. Look at how simple the splines are:

Thanks, Gene! Some more progress on the set. This is actually a larger set that goes out into a hallway, around a corner to a stairwell. Basically all the elements I need for the sequence. So most of my progress has been in putting in all the molding along the floors and doors and that kind of stuff. I feel like I can pack a lot of stuff into this, so I'm going to have fun with it. I'm not worrying too much about matching the TV show. The sets aren't nearly as iconic as something like Star Trek and I wouldn't be able to match them even if I tried. [EDIT] Here's an overview of the hospital set in progress...

Hospital Room is coming along. Still more props to build, plus hospital version of Rick.

Quick & easy hospital bed for puppets. Not sure why, but I like the idea of puppets never having any leg room in these things. (Did the same thing with the Sickbay bed in Stalled Trek.)

Thanks, Curtis! I'm operating right now as if it will succeed. If it doesn't, I'll have to take stock of things and decide. One of the goals this week is to create the hospital sequence and animate it. It's relatively simple in that it's all indoors and just revolves around the main character. Hopefully, it will help give folks an idea of what to expect.

Gerald, I do have a PayPal account and I'd really appreciate the support, but my concern is that there's still a strong chance I won't reach my goal. For that reason, I'd say wait. If it is successful and you'd still like to donate, I'd happily give you the same reward as if it were Kickstarter. The Amazon payment is basically the same thing. You aren't charged until the campaign is completed and the goal met. I'm with you. I haven't used a credit card in over 10 years. A debit card has worked fine for me and kept me from spending money I don't have. :-)

Okay, consider my party pooped.

Thanks, Nancy. I'll grant you it ain't small, but in less than 26 days, the Wobbling Dead part will disappear and what's left will be smaller than what I had before. And sometimes, you just gotta' scream. :-)

Thanks, guys! @Rodney. I'm still figuring out what this is going to look like, but I do know that film grain is going to be a part of it. They shot a bunch of the first season on 16mm, so there's a definite grain visible. @Gerry. That's a great idea. My sig is way out of date, too. Needs updating badly.

The cast is starting to add up!

Really sorry to hear this, Kat. I'll keep you and your family in my prayers.

You could go for painted fur. Much more work, but I wonder if you could create a repeating pattern for it? I was looking to see if I could find an example of how they've done it in The Clone Wars (which uses a painted look for all the textures), but couldn't find a relevant example. But you can see how they handled the long fur of Chewbacca:

I think Mark S. would have the right answer about those sort of things. I think it partly depends on how you go about weighting your character. I tend to grab big areas of influence and then weight the intersections. I know some folks do the auto assign and then fix things that don't work right.

I'm with the others, I don't think losing the hair takes anything significant away from the character. It looked great even when it wasn't textured. It's a necessary sacrifice.

Well, the Kickstarter is slowing down, so any illusion that this was going to be wildly successful has flown away. :-) Still, there's an outside chance it will make it to its goal, so I'm journeying on. I got zonked by vertigo the night I put it up and was basically out of commission. Last night, I felt well enough to work up a new character, though! Here's Drrrl. (He won't get his crossbow until I start modeling props.) Also, my friend over at Subspace Communique wrote up a nice piece about The Wobbling Dead.

Form should follow function. If it's meant to be a scary place, make it scary. Use lots of darkness and may have eerie green lighting coming up from below metal grating floor panels, that cast patterns on the things it lights. If it's a flying saucer, it should be designed to look like it fits within a flying saucer. i.e. rounded exterior walls. If you're going for the whole scientific probing aspect, take cues from hospitals and doctor's offices to give it a medical laboratory look. I haven't watched any UFO stories in ages, but I think there were plenty of descriptions by those kooks that claimed to have been abducted. You might see if there's any common threads in their descriptions and incorporate those. Also keep in mind that the background should ideally make the viewer believe that they are in a spaceship, but also stand apart from the characters, so that the characters are nicely contrasted and the background doesn't interfere with the viewer being able to see them. Just things I would think about if I were approaching this problem.