Thought you should know that we've hit another milestone:
We've completed slap-comps with results from the final light/comp pipeline on (mostly) the whole film!
This video is one massive marathon session in which I do the actual slap-comps of the last few scenes in the film.
This means that we have layouts, animation, basic lighting, rendering, and compositing all at least started, and most of the remaining work is iteration of those. It is a huge milestone for us because we're finally working on what will ultimately be the final film. There are a few stragglers, but they are one-off shots that we will pick up later when similar shots are nearing completion.
This is our timeline of the final edit. The pink layer is the slap-comps; there are only a few small holes.
Big thanks to Lofty Sky Entertainment who has been letting us (ab)use their render farm for this. This rendering load has been the most intense that their farm has seen in a while, so we're having to watch it closely to make sure we don't break it.
Here you see us bring up the temperature of the room a few degrees while it provides ~13 minutes of CPU time per second!
The larger plan was going to be to iterate enough so that we could deliver a version of the film for sound design far ahead of completion, but we've been advised that we might want to hold off for a while because revisions on sound work could be very expensive.
So, instead, we're intending to focus back here for a bit.
You may have noticed on our Twitter and Facebook that we've been going back-and-forth with the patch and sticker manufacturers since August, and we now have our first box of swag!
The patch was a very late addition to the IndieGoGo rewards (and the stickers are completely new), but we've decided to send patches and stickers to many more supporters of the campaign as a token of our thanks for being so patient and understanding as our timeline stretched out. If you contributed at or above the $20 level, we will be in contact with you regardless of if you paid us for shipping or not.
Since it has been more than 2 years since the campaign, we will be in contact to collect or update shipping details with you before we do so.
Since we're about to start working on the motion graphics in the film, we're going to pull the trigger on collecting names and photos for the various "Colony" (and above) perks.
We need to investigate how to collect these various things, and then will send out another IndieGoGo update when we're ready.
Thanks for your continued support! Please feel free to reach out here, Twitter, Facebook, email, carrier pigeon, wherever.