Mike and I just wanted to wish you a happy new year, and start off the new year with a bit of new information about the project.

2017 became a slightly complicated year for Mike and I, and we are both frustrated by some technical and personal curveballs which were thrown our way. However, the last few months of 2017 were very fruitful, and we are both confident that that this accelerated pace will continue into 2018 until we have a finished product to share with all of you.

We have a final cut we are very confident in, all of our assets have modelled, prepped and laid out for final animation, and further refinements have been made to our render pipeline (including investigating some new render engines to streamline the process and decrease the cost of render time.

We have also engaged an incredibly talented animator to take on the remainder of Conrad's scenes, and are confident that we will have some new content to show shortly.

On behalf of both of us​, I'd like to thank you for your continued support of our project, and confidence in us to complete the film to our exacting standards.

We know that going has been slow, but we have not lost enthusiasm for the movie, nor has our commitment wavered in the slightest. Please stay tuned for some more updates very soon!

We've crossed a few milestones recently, and have some more coming up!

About 2 weeks ago we finished tracking and layout on 99% of the show. There are a few very specific shots left that have interesting demands, but essentially all of our ~120 shots have had their camera tracked, laid out in 3D sets with Conrad and image planes for Laura, and slap-comps to marry it together.

That means, after ~14 months of part-time work since the bulk of the VFX on the actual show started, we are at a stage where every shot is represented and the road to a final film is one of iteration. We have a pipeline buildout stage coming up before we're churning through final shots, but it is very close, and we're very excited to be where we are!

The animation team will be delivering their experiments on their first scene in the next few days, and then we'll unleash them upon the rest of the show. We are working through the typical VFX/post-production pipeline in a very non-linear manner, so having final animation means we can (1) do 95% of the sound work long before the film is otherwise done, and (2) have a final to-do list for our assets.

It has been slow going, but we've been picking up steam the whole time, and a film is finally in sight!

~ Mike, Matt, and the SitG team

Hello dear Friends, Family and Supporters of Shadows in the Grass,

We’re trying to keep the spam low and the excitement high, so here is another update to keep us on your radar! We’ve been hard at work and have been making tangible progress that we’re excited to share with you!

Despite the massive endeavor of moving their offices across the city, the visual effects company we partnered with last year continues to impress us with their enthusiasm for the project. With their help, we have now modeled ALL of our interior assets and Conrad’s design has been finalized, his modelling refined, and his body rigged for animation. Check out the videos below if you want to see a small sample of our modeled assets!

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TL;DR: We are making progress, slowly but surely marching towards a finished film.

Our apologies for the radio silence since the campaign. While our IndieGoGo campaign was quite successful, 60% funding isn't quite letting us work on the film as smoothly and quickly as we had hoped. Matt and I have been doing other (paid) work in order to add to the budget ourselves, there has been time put into grant applications, and we've been meeting with a number of freelance artists and vendors to get the film made within our means and non-linear pipeline.

We are happy to say that it is working out quite well, despite not being able to meet the projected schedule!

At this point we have rough versions of all of the environments, and rough layouts of the entire film. We're working on near-final layouts (e.g. camera tracking and placement within the environments relative to the characters) so that we can make final calls on the environments and move forward in the pipeline.

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We were nervous before the campaign started that it would flop, and we wouldn't be able to finish the film. While we didn't hit 100% of our ideal goal, we certainly have the means to finish! We will need to be a bit crafty about it though.

I think Matt and I both have some other work we've been neglecting during the campaign, so now that the pressure is lower I need to refocus for a bit. I'll get back to you in the near future with our thoughts on the timelines for the film, the timeline for perks (some of which need us to finish the film first, and some do not), and what we need from you for the various "colony" perks.

My biggest thanks to the 275 generous people who are helping this film happen!

~ Mike