Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)

Terry Hancock is the director and producer of "Lunatics!" and the founder for "Lunatics Project" and the associated "Film Freedom" Project. This is the professional account for updates related to the free-film projects and related discussion.

Public Key

npub1knepl6k6ukq2nwe2r6ru2td0tdyhcs2qpyn8cqpsleh75rjrdwjqn56ueq

NIP-05 Address

TerryHancock@m-filmfreedom-net.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqstfuslatdwtq9fhv4pap799kh4kjtug9qqjfnuqqc0uml2pepkhfqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsnpmxd3

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1knepl6k6ukq2nwe2r6ru2td0tdyhcs2qpyn8cqpsleh75rjrdwjqn56ueq

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Last Notes

2026-10-29 23:23:55 UTC

Okay, I think I have negotiated a defensible truce with Kdenlive.
I am manually editing the documentid property in the files, to give them unique numbers:
777 = prefix for Lunatics, so I know it's one of mine
01 = "series 1"
01 = "episode 1"
0n = scene sequence number (TR=01 ... SF=07)
(00 for top level, 11 for end credits, main credits get a library #)
nn = role-based: 01 main, 02 sync, 11 desc audio, 2x for BTS extras
And THEN I am deleting the "storagefolder" property, because it isn't necessary. I don't see any way to do this in the GUI (the obvious thing, to set the radio button to "default" does not do it), so I'm just doing it in the file. Apparently, if you never changed the cache folder, this property is never added, and it seems to work fine to delete it.
That seems like the best option for portability, because it won't hard-code my own directory structure.
It does seem to be hard-coded, though -- it doesn't use the default location I set in the Kdenlive settings, but always $HOME/.cache/kdenlive.
But it'll do. #Kdenlive #Cachefiles

2026-10-29 14:55:01 UTC

This Kdenlive cache folder behavior is getting VERY strange. They apparently have some very odd ideas about document identity and data security.
Okay, so here's the thing, as far as I can tell:
When you make a NEW document (File->New) it (randomly?) selects a hash number -- it seems typically to be a 13-digit decimal number (why 12? why not hex? why does it matter? WTH is not just the G-D filename, you duufus?!)
Okay... now let's say you've made a nice video edit, and you want to make a SIMILAR edit of something else, right?
What do you do? You do "SAVE AS" the new filename, and then start making edits. This is an easy way to carry over all your title clips and stuff, so you don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. It's the simplest way to do serial content.
So, naturally, Kdenlive will make a new document id and a new cache folder when you do the SAVE-US, right? Right..? RI-IGHT...? (Annakin / Padme meme goes here).
BECAUSE - NO!!!
It's the same damned ID, used over and over again. I have literally HUNDREDS of Kdenlive edits using the same document ID (and therefore cache storage folder), apparently without issue.
:ani_baka:
(Which makes "documentid" start to seem like a bit of a misnomer).
I should probably mention that searching "documentid" in the Kdenlive documentation portal turns up not a single damned mention. They apparently think this is a hidden implementation detail that users shouldn't have to worry their pretty little heads about.
IF ONLY THAT WERE TRUE! :ani_baka: #Kdenlive #Cachefiles

2026-10-28 04:01:32 UTC

Ah. Kdenlive is being dumb again. :ani_baka:
There are tools to move the cache folders it uses, but they behave in really dumb ways.
Setting the "default location" for your Kdenlive installation does NOT change the "default folder" presented as an option when you open your "project settings". The latter is apparently unchangeable, and stuck in your "home" folder.
What's more, when you save your cache in a different location, it generates a hash name for the folder. This is apparently completely unchangeable afterwards.
So if you set it back to the default (home folder -- because the application default is basically completely useless, at least for already existing projects), then it bitches that the hash-name that it came up with "already exists".
"Well, yes, that was kind of the point, you idiot machine. I wanted to re-consolidate my cache files."
So it jumps back to wherever it was before.
I'm sure there's a way to fix this by directly hacking the project file.
I'd file a bug in the bug-tracker, but the bug-tracker is currently throwing 500 HTTP errors, and has been for months.
I get notifications in my email about bugs I was following, but I can't see them because I get server errors when I follow the link in the email. Can't complain, because it's a no-reply email address.
What are y'all doing here, guys..?
:uhm:
Going to bed. I'll screw with this thing tomorrow. I'm sure there's some way to force it to behave.
#Kdenlive #BugTracker #CacheFiles

2026-10-27 19:38:44 UTC

Another thing that comes up as I'm diving through the images in my source tree (which get used as textures, animation cels, and backdrops) is where the line is, exactly, between a "reference" or an "inspiration" (which doesn't strictly have to be attributed or licensed, because it falls under "fair use"), and "original work" for things that are legally derivative (also, more-subtly, what is a "new, derivative work" versus a "copy of the same work" -- because the former triggers the clause in Creative Commons licenses that allows you to upgrade the license, while the latter does not.
There are NASA photos that I used. These are "copyright free", which is apparently, but not quite, the same as "public domain", depending on whom you ask.
There are a lot of Google satellite and "street view" images that I used for reference in creating sets. These are almost certainly not "free licensed", but also this uses is probably "fair use" anyway, so it shouldn't matter (also when you get to remote sensing images -- they are really just albedo data arranged in a grid that maps to the surface. Which means that they might be considered a non-copyrightable "database" of scientific data under US law).
There are also screen captures that I used for screens in Mission Control. I made an effort to only have "free" stuff on screen, and in general, screen captures like this are regarded as fair use, anyway.
But it's all stuff to consider when making the big list of all contributions to attribute. #LunaticsProject #Painting #TranformativeWorks #FairUse #CreativeCommons

2026-10-27 16:49:51 UTC

Ah. I DID consider using AI (stable diffusion) in Lunatics for background art in 2022. I was thinking about using SD mainly just as a proof-of-principle, since it wasn't really necessary.
I found one case where they were arguably better than my very simplistic/impressionistic hand-drawn solution. At one point I was going to stick it in just as a proof-of-principle of using a new technology (since a lot of this project is about learning, that usually made sense).
I was searching my source tree yesterday to find any image attribution and licensing that had not yet been included in our credits files, and I came across these, still sitting there.
I never actually used them in the shot, but I had made these background plates to replace the much simpler, more impressionistic original (which is what is in the final version of the two shots in the "central universal market" in Baikonur).
In the end, I couldn't see that they were worth the extra trouble, and as the backlash to AI art (and my own distaste for it) has increased, I resolved that it was probably better to not use any SD elements, and be able to say that without dithering.
The first image shows the original (and final) art that I drew in Inkscape.
The second image is one of the background cels I made using MidJourney in 2022 (which means "stable diffusion" generative AI, based on prompts).
The other two show the (original Inkscape-drawn) background in the two composed shots. You can see that it wouldn't make a huge difference either way -- it's little more than a splash of color in the background.
I'll probably pull these out of the source tree and put them with the other 2022 MidJourney experiments I did. I might try putting them into the shot to get a comparison still to include there, for completeness. #LunaticsProject #MidJourney #Experimental
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/6d3f8f54-1f93-4553-bcf0-5218e9f13eb6
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/9cbf34cf-2631-4daf-9300-4907b2576ee6
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/baccf4ad-2210-4db7-b942-0ec15c549d8a
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/7e0bda00-83b6-44b7-9e59-40cfd1a3644f

2026-10-26 15:33:38 UTC

Going to be revising episode credits soon.
Should I add a "No AI" statement in the end-credits..? Right now, I just have the usual legal disclaimer about it being fiction.
I have mixed feelings about this.
It is a fact that there is no LLM or SD contribution to this animated film. Even had I wanted to use them, most of the animation was completed before 2022, so I didn't really have access to them. Since then, I've pretty much decided I just don't like them much.
I think my biggest concern is that using AI would introduce subtle biases into my work, and also remove the authorial fingerprint of myself and other contributors. The "voice" if you will.
Arguably, I have used "AI" to transcribe audio for behind-the-scenes video subtitles, although this is a quite different type of AI (apparently Vosk uses a neural-net system. If I switch to Whisper, that's a transformer architecture, apparently -- I do not actually understand the difference myself, FWIW).
I also have an interest in using machine-learning to aid in asset-management (e.g. it would be cool to have a DAMS where I could throw in my images, and then ask "show me all the shots with Hiromi Lerner in them" or "find fast paced music in the soundtrack archive"). I don't have this, but it seems like it could be useful, and remove a lot of laborious effort tagging files by hand.
I kind of hope it goes without saying that this was made by people and not humans.
And yet, there is no question that there is a great deal of automation here. I mean, that's how computer animation works. It just wouldn't be possible without it.
So I'm not at all sure I want to make any sort of promise (explicit or implicit) to never use AI tools. It seems like that could be a rash promise.

2026-10-25 21:42:41 UTC

I have written a "Guide to the Fediverse" on my Production Log. It's a little over 7200 words long, with diagrams.
I couldn't possibly cover everything, but I've tried to hit the highlights of available software, how federation works, and some of the social and management challenges (and advantages) of federated social networks.
I started writing this last year, got distracted in the middle, and then came back to it just this week. Hopefully I haven't made too many typos or grammatical errors in here.
https://lunaticsproject.org/2026/10/25/guide-to-the-fediverse/
#Fediverse #Writing

2026-10-25 00:57:39 UTC

I started a "Guide to the Fediverse" article on my blog last year. Working on it again. Maybe I'll get it finished!
It's impossible to be comprehensive or truly finished with such a thing, though, because the Fediverse is very much a moving target! #Fediverse #Writing

2026-10-24 01:11:33 UTC

"Royalty Free" stuff is, in general, NOT "Free Culture" compatible. They put extra terms in that are incompatible with Creative Commons licenses and definitely hostile to making your work open source.
Avoid.
(I was reminded because some of those small archives of "free" sound effects are actually "Not That Free").

2026-10-23 17:08:22 UTC

Feeling an incredible sense of relief that I have just located a trove of smaller free-culture sound archives that I have had stored for years.
These are things I collected back in 2012-2013. Of course, I don't have the entire archives -- just the files I had downloaded. But this is likely were some of my "mystery" sounds came from.
A lot of these sites have been gone for years now.
I am going to have to find a good way to host these, now, I guess.

2026-10-22 16:46:25 UTC

I did an "unboxing" video for some toy figures from @nprofile…ckyh for my video log this week, so also, I'm just making it public (I usually put these up early as a Patreon perk).
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/kCo4PTjx1p7npBfPCH2wse
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/db3d8b5a-f604-42f0-a5ca-430ff1a5c196

2026-10-21 23:28:38 UTC

Well, I have upgraded my YunoHost, which I believe took care of both the certificates issue and the PHP vulnerability.
My only question is that I seem to still have PHP 7.3 on here, though I'm not sure any apps are using it. I guess it would be used by the "custom webapp" app, since it gives you a choice of PHP versions?
But I don't think I'm using that anymore. I wonder if I can safely remove the Debian packages for PHP 7.3..?
#YunoHost #PHP2Shell #Debian

2026-10-21 16:43:59 UTC

So.... Misskey upgraded. Let's see if the image upload is still broken in this version.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/b3de3e94-d48c-4e50-9fe3-e260d4f840e5

2026-10-13 22:19:31 UTC

Going to have to set up a teleprompter system if I really want to do scripted videos. I tried working from a script on my e-reader, and well... it shows. :ani_dunno:

2026-10-07 05:28:26 UTC

Recorded three takes for the episode descriptive audio, based on the script I wrote earlier:
Take 1: Basically practice.
Take 2: Dramatic Read (Slower)
Take 3: Fast Read
The fast read is so I have short versions I can squeeze in if there isn't enough time for the slower take to fit. It has to keep up with the animation.

2026-10-04 16:23:56 UTC

Well, I had recently been hoping I'd be all done by now, seeing as it is now World Space Week (Oct 4-10).
But I'm not. :ani_dunno:
WSW commemorates the Sputnik satellite mission in 1957, which kicked off the Space Age:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Space_Week
#SpaceFlight #Sputnik1 #WorldSpaceWeek

2026-10-04 01:28:24 UTC

So we have screened the episode of Lunatics, "No Children in Space" for our family. :smug_dance:
(Or put another way: for the Writer, the Director, the voice actor for Georgiana, and her supportive brother).
We were pretty happy with it. There's only a few notes about fairly nitpicky stuff -- mainly sound-balancing stuff (some foley is too loud, others are too quiet).
It IS rather slow paced. That is by design. In fact, I have made it just a little bit slower during the editing process. This is much more "cozy cinema" than it is "action/adventure", and that is no doubt going to be a tonal clash for some sci-fi viewers.
But that tonal change was an objective.
And my son pointed out a visual glitch I had not noticed before. It remains to be seen whether I'm going to fix that or ignore it.
:leftsharkdance:
A case can be made that I really should focus that energy on episode 2 at this point.
There is also the matter of online and IRL premieres, signing up for film festivals or conventions, DVD mastering, and a whole lot of other promotional work. #Cinema #Animation #Anime #ScienceFiction #LunaticsProject
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/b49669d7-a720-4f48-96fe-b107955efbe9

2026-10-03 11:00:38 UTC

And I've got a 7th draft episode now. :ani_dab_l:
* Foley sound added throughout
* Additional effects sound
* Additional ambience, particularly with the surround channels in mind (though this is still just stereo)
* Japanese and Russian subtitles added (burned in on this render)
Have to go watch it and sit with that for a bit, see if I'm done or not.
Actually, I know I'm not quite done, because the credits have to be revised. And I still need SRTs with all the lines.
Also need to record the descriptive audio (I wrote the script for it
recently, though -- I just need to read it/perform it).
Almost there.

2026-10-02 22:10:23 UTC

It is SO easy to lose the attribution on sound effects clips! You use so many of them, often in complex, modified ways.
And in software like Audacity, the original file names get lost, because you've copied the data and then destructively edited it.
I keep finding that I did not propagate the source file catalog numbers (if I have those, the name and author are usually pretty easy to look up).
So, for example, the "shroud separation" effect used in our "Soyuz Flight" sequence has been in Audacity since about 2012 or 2013, when I created the "Teaser Trailer". And sadly, my Audacity file just says "FX1", "FX2", "FX3", "FX4" (top to bottom in the picture).
FX1 is some mechanical switch flips. I have a bunch of those. I think these are the same ones I used earlier in the "LA-Launch" sequence.
FX2 is a series of small "pop" explosions. Probably a row of firecrackers? Used to represent explosive bolts firing. I may have added some filtering or reverb.
FX3 is, I remember, extremely slowed down from a much higher-pitched/faster sound. I think it was a car door slam, IIRC.
FX4 is three beeps from a longer recording made of some kind of children's digital game (these aren't very common anymore, but before everyone had smartphones, there were a lot of electronic game gadgets that beeped a lot with a simple piezo buzzer -- I personally remember "Merlin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_%28console%29 ).
Pretty sure these were all sourced from FreeSound, and I probably have them in my library. But I will have to search -- and it'll be harder with the ones I've edited, because they won't sound the same. Some of this is still reliant on my personal recollection of what I did.
It's important to KEEP NOTES on these credit-impacting decisions. Remember: CC By is "free" but only if you attribute correctly! #SoundDesign #OpenSource #CreativeCommons #Attribution
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/dd902e91-0b6a-4d3a-aeb3-c3d85276db80

2026-10-02 08:12:55 UTC

This is pretty cool. Rachel Talalay, interviewing a very low-budget indie director, Karen Lam, about her film process. She did a road movie, mostly with miniatures.
There's a kind of "mentor"/"mentee" vibe here, seeing as Talalay is an experienced TV and film director.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HKo3yDrUmo
There's a real love of the medium here. She clearly had fun making this movie. Also, some interesting thoughts about screenings, distribution, and promotion for a little film, which is obviously interesting to me. #Film #IndieFilm #MiniatureEffects #FilmMaking

2026-10-01 16:39:44 UTC

I think SoundTransit . nl is lost media now.
I have maybe a couple of dozen files downloaded in my clips collection, but I can't find the sound archive anywhere online. The next step would be to email one of the project creators and see if she knows of an existing archive or can get me access to it so I can re-post the files somewhere (I suppose they could be uploaded to Internet Archive or FreeSound -- they had a blanket CC By license for contributions).
All the references I can find are old, and the links to any data are broken.
Also... searching for "Sound Transit" now turns up the a Seattle train authority -- a reference to "Puget Sound" (the waterway), no doubt.
The Internet is haunted by the ghosts of this site, still. But no substance seems to remain.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160318122436/http://archive.turbulence.org/soundtransit/
There used to be about 2000 field recordings ("phonography") submitted from all over the world there. It was a very useful site, and a lot of fun to browse through. #LostMedia #Phonography #SoundTransit #Archives #CreativeCommons

2026-09-30 20:33:23 UTC

Damn.
I have a clip in Audacity that I'm fairly sure I remember being from the "Sound Transit" project, which was a collection of By-SA licensed field recordings.
Alternatively, it might be from FreeSound, but it's a longer clip and most of those were from Sound Transit.
Anyway, the title for the clip seems to have been lost -- that would sometimes happen when mixing tracks in Audacity.
The file name would have included the ST number, author name, and license code.
But WHERE IS IT? :uhm: :mastodon_oops:
Is it still on my hard drive somewhere?
Is there an earlier version of the AUP file in the SVN repo from 2012?
I just don't know.

2026-09-30 18:19:28 UTC

Takes time to just listen to new audio recordings.
It's hard to get isolated sound. I'm trying to improve the sound for what is a big diesel powered train, moving very slowly, with a heavy load, in the desert, far from any traffic or signals.
But most of the train recordings have environment noise -- the one I'm listening to now has a very loud railroad crossing claxon dinging continuously.
There's no good way to get rid of that. :ani_dunno:
The original sound was actually from a truck, IIRC -- but also I'm trying to track down the original file. I seem to have lost the label, which is bad, because it'll need to be credited or else I can't use it.

2026-09-28 03:24:28 UTC

Broke down three original recordings into individual FX clips with Audacity.
I used the "Export Multiple" option to export each track to a separate FLAC file.
I discovered that if a track is muted, it doesn't export it!
I would've been pretty upset if I hadn't noticed that it only exported 23 files instead of 47! But I did notice. So I don't think I lost any work there. :ani_dab_l:
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/8a501c0f-6c35-42a8-98d6-d59b13b0aa73

2026-09-26 17:44:30 UTC

This scene "Launch" has to be the most complicated audio mix. Basically, we have everything going on here: voice, ambience, effects, foley, and music.
I did five takes for foley -- most of it was in the first two, but I added some extra effects in the later takes, so I've used at least a little bit of each of them.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/bbb62e54-2eac-4c30-9c2a-f3320f9e97dc

2026-09-26 03:23:28 UTC

Foley synchronized and mixed into three more scenes today.
Here you can see the tracks -- with Foley A to Foley C -- with the parts that I've selected from each enabled, for one scene "Suiting Up", which has quite a bit of foley sound in it. There's also music, dialog, ambience, and effects, of course.
I'm still not really happy with the balance between the stems -- there's clearly competition between the different elements to sort out. But it's coming along.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/6a14dc10-caca-46b4-bc99-8c938298a1cf

2026-09-23 05:36:45 UTC

Well, I have just recorded foley for all scenes in the episode.
I already mixed the Train scene, and the foley I recorded for that seems to work. So I got the rest, and I think they're probably going to be adequate. There's a certain amount of time-shifting and shaping I can do in Kdenlive, so it doesn't have to be an exact match.
I'll start on remixing all those scenes tomorrow.

2026-08-20 03:52:20 UTC

- reply

Oh good. I fixed the image uploading.
It seems it was this:
https://github.com/YunoHost-Apps/misskey_ynh/issues/218

2026-08-20 03:51:37 UTC

Hmm. Oops. I may have found a visual problem.
Do I just let it go? Or do I rerender this shot? I guess I could do a "salvage" render again, without redoing the Freestyle lines?
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/d29db342-bf2b-44bc-a68d-d47449d9606d

2026-08-19 18:00:59 UTC

I am still working on Lunatics, but mostly on infrastructural/process stuff that's not very interesting to write about. I have created several foley tracks for two scenes out of seven. I'm actually working from the simplest scenes to the more complex ones for foley -- I'm hoping that this will give me some practice so I'll be better at it when I get there.
I also have recordings to make a couple of hard sound effects that I want to create.
Still can't upload new images here. I haven't seriously tried to troubleshoot that. But they'd all basically look like this one, which is an Audacity screencap from my foley session for the "Soyuz Flight".
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/2a8f3f14-6930-470d-a80a-7e658845d6e6

2026-08-06 16:28:20 UTC

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Update. Problems uploading images again. I wonder if I have screwed up my "drive" settings for Misskey again..? IDK. Anyway, I'll sort it out.

2026-08-06 16:27:40 UTC

I believe I am back on the net.
I have just completed migrating from the accidentally-oversized Digital Ocean droplet to a smaller, better organized droplet ("droplet" is their branded slang for a VPS).
I did this by recreating an earlier snapshot image of a bare YunoHost 12 install, then backing up on the source and restoring on the target.
I ran into frustrating problems with node.js versions not matching up. Misskey would restore, but not run; and PeerTube refused to install. Essentially from the same issue. I don't really understand the engineering reasons, but it seems that node.js is managed kind of peripherally by YunoHost, and things can fall through the cracks, requiring hand-editing of service files and stuff to get it working.
This was an immensely stressful experience. Particularly as I kept hearing the sound of quarters dripping out of the sky due to the overpriced droplet that I couldn't shut down until I was finished. I was panicking.
Well, it's done now, and my stress level is back in this dimension again.
"Probability 1:1. We have normality."
"Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."
-- Trillion, from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (TV)

2026-07-22 02:19:26 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…zmk6
"Penny's" yes. But I think we said "Kroger".

2026-07-21 20:04:51 UTC

This is pretty much my own feeling on the subject of generative AI in art.
I'm not entirely opposed to the concept in general. But in the specific, I have found it disappointing, mainly because it's "hard to drive".
The main source of exhaustion in doing artistic endeavors for me, is the decision fatigue. You make dozens, maybe hundreds, of little decisions. Each time you do, there's a little nudge from the "cliche shelf" of obvious and trite things to do.
Sometimes that's fine. It's just not the point, and you don't want to be original everywhere, because that gets distracting.
But when something outside of you is making one choice much easier than another, you start to slide into it. I noticed this when I was storyboarding. I'd be thinking about different possible shots, but there might be one that "would do" and was easier, because I had a photo of it. But choosing that means the photo is driving the choice, not me.
The AI brings industrial-scale automation to the cliche shelf. What was a gentle breeze becomes the backwash from a jet engine. It's pushy. It's cliched. And it is very dedicated to its cliches. It is actively difficult to get it to show a less-cliched thing. It's probably impossible to get it to do anything really original.
And unless you just fight continuously, you're going to give up and just follow the wind.
But we don't do art to do the easy thing. And we don't appreciate for that. We want to feel the artists' vision. No machine is going to give us that.
Even in some hypothetical future, where the machines are genuinely intelligent, instead of the stochastic gibberers we have now, it'll a be a machine vision, not a human one. And we humans are still going to want that human perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9krnJCEBy8

2026-07-18 20:41:51 UTC

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@nprofile…gydz
It's the same authoritarian bullshit as arresting people for "vandalizing" the reflection pool in DC. They're trying to get people to blame anyone except them for their own mistakes.

2026-07-17 21:28:00 UTC

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Yeah, well, that's the conclusion I came to, which is why all these are really old now. :ani_dunno:

2026-07-17 00:43:52 UTC

Slowly reconstructing playlists.
I also decided to add a separate "Lunatics Tutorials" channel. We used to have a lot more tutorial content, but when Blender started bolting past us, after they abandoned the Blender Internal renderer, I started to wonder if there was much point creating Blender 2.79 tutorials any longer.
It's going to be a project to catch up to the current status of Blender. What little I've seen has been mostly positive, but also, the UI has changed enough to be confusing.
I may have to do some sort of project specifically to learn Blender 5 (or whatever we're on by then).

2026-07-16 01:21:49 UTC

- reply

Hmm. I still have a lot of playback issues. I wonder if everyone sees that from my site..?
Is it a PeerTube problem? A problem with the VPS host? Or my ISP? IDK.

2026-07-16 01:19:00 UTC

Well. I have finished re-uploading all the broken object-storage videos in my PeerTube. It did take days. Not weeks, at least.
I will have to rebuild playlists, of course. All the video URLs will have changed, so any embedded links will be broken. I will have to check my Wordpress Production Log for those.
Or just fix them when I find them, maybe. 🙄
Here. Have a Pepper & Carrot episode:
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/t7PKxmo1YQZLwtxBeRkyTW

2026-07-14 16:13:20 UTC

Another fun demo animation from the archive. I was indeed "working on the railroad all day long"...
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/vu8AsAY4Tx3N8HsqPQF5ML
Of course, this is the exterior set for the "Train" sequence. It is mostly seen in reflection in the actual scene. We see very little of it directly.
I had also done a big comparison test on how to handle the weeds on the embankment. My first attempt was with low-poly 3D modeled plants. But a manageable number and vertex count did not look good. So instead, these are a particle system with painted billboards for each plant. There's still lots of parallax from the movement, because there are many individual billboards at different distances.
This became the model I used for vegetation for most of the episode.
Sadly, I probably won't get much use of this technique on the Moon.
#LunaticsProject #Blender3D #OpenMovie #Sets

2026-07-14 06:29:22 UTC

Continuing to re-upload the old broken videos on our PeerTube.
Here's a silly one for the late-night crowd.
"Learning Curve"
This is a collection of me attempting to animate Georgiana's newly-rigged face.
You'll notice this is not the final version of the character model. She went through some more revisions after this.
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/2JcFmGQVdWM8QfxqmDXXk7
#LunaticsProject #Featurettes #Animation #Blender3D #Characters #OpenMovie

2026-07-13 16:21:33 UTC

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I'm considering creating a side-by-side of this 2013 animatic with the 2026 fully-animated version. It'll require a lot of stretching and squeezing -- some shots were cut, many were different lengths, etc.
But it'd probably still make a good DVD featurette.
We've come a LONG way since this.
#LunaticsProject #ReleaseDVD #Featurettes
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/7d3fbc8b-b19f-41af-9377-b076ba1fe4e0
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/6966be92-6532-4a39-a07c-fd944ae37599

2026-07-13 16:12:30 UTC

MY "13 years ago", though, was the release of the first full animatic of our pilot episode. Which has, through, later decisions, become three episodes. I also had to break up the original one-hour pilot into smaller chunks to publish it on YouTube.
And semi-coincidentally, I broke it in more-or-less the same places as the 3-episode breakdown. SO... these videos roughly correspond to animatics for episodes 1-3.
VERY rough work, obviously. These are animatics. This was what we delivered to supporters of the first "Pre-Production" Kickstarter (on DVD). It was actually a bit more than we promised. I had originally said we'd do temporary voices for it.
But in fact, by the time we put this out in early 2013, we had already recorded the real voice work for the episode, so I included that. This version also used upgraded storyboards, where I composited in the best-available character concept art drawings from Daniel to fit the shot, wherever possible. There's also a mishmash of other techniques -- edited photos, Blender animatics (for the moon shuttle in particular), and so on. It's uneven. And SOME of the minor voices are temporary.
Of course, the real purpose of an animatic is not for fans, but to use as a guide for production.
Part 1 - Roughly the current "No Children in Space"
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/mAM35CbtWoAAoJzNELWTUd
Part 2 - Roughly the current 2nd episode, with working title "From the Earth..." But I've also considered calling it "Translunar" or "TLI".
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/2d4JaunhNW99xX9jWtEYbP
Part 3 - Roughly the current 3rd episode, with working title "...To the Moon" But I'm considering "The Landing" or "The Arrival" or "Iridium". Don't know yet.
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/5WK7XfNyyK5yU3Fg5vYTKy
Part 4 - This is mostly just the credits, but includes the dinner-table scene at the end of episode 3.
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/7F7qtL5YPZbJtu7FuHfaK3
As you can see, I am still working on producing these. It is the first segment that I just completed animation on, which is now our 22-minute pilot, "No Children in Space". The titles is a quote from the voice-over that laments that, up to this time, there had been "no children in space", which of course, changes during this episode.
#LunaticsProject #Animatic #PilotEpisode #MemoryLane #History

2026-07-13 15:42:55 UTC

Writing "13 years ago..." always makes me think of Star Trek's "The Menagerie", which was a BEAUTIFUL save of lost material to save a buck.
It wound up looking a genius work. A great exploration of Spock's character. And it looked just like they straight-up filmed a historical drama in the ST universe. Would've cost a fortune if they had actually done that.
I never questioned it as a kid.
Not sure whose original idea that was, but I have so much respect for this kind of thing!
Probably everyone who follows me already knows this, but they recycled the original pilot episode "The Cage", which had distinctly different (and more dated?) style of costumes, sets, etc as the historical footage (from "13 years ago") that Spock uses in his testimony at court martial (for hijacking the Enterprise and taking it to a forbidden planet. Not THAT forbidden planet. No, not that one either. Talos IV. "The only death penalty on the books").
Also features one of the most hilarious props in the series, IMHO. Zoom in on the "Top Secret" document the Commodore shows Kirk. "A Half-Vulcan Science Office". Really? That's RACIST, man! What was his other half..? :trek_spock: Also, don't we usually identify officers by name and rank or something..? Sometimes the Federation just does not live up to its ideals. :trek_badge_tng:
(Of course, the point is, it was the Commodore's line. And you weren't supposed to be able to read it on little 1960s TVs, I think).
#StarTrek #FilmMaking #Television #BudgetProduction
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/11a62154-b3f4-4de5-a8b0-beb850e5b61f
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/b378a624-500c-4cd3-9e4c-f20da8aec374

2026-07-13 13:29:26 UTC

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Oh wait. I just found the old record. So it had been uploaded before. Still one of the broken videos, though. :ani_dunno: #LunaticsProject #PeerTube #History

2026-07-13 13:26:53 UTC

Huh. It appears I never uploaded the concept art video for Sarah, when I migrated to PeerTube. It was in a different folder, which seems to have stuff that wasn't public on YouTube for whatever reason (even though I am extremely careful about licensing, I would still get weird flags on YouTube videos, which is one of the reasons I left). I am really not sure what could've happened to this one, though.
Anyway, it's up now. Hopefully not a duplicate:
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/c9bmY8yXcRPrU2UokLqcf5
#LunaticsProject #PeerTube #History

2026-07-13 00:36:58 UTC

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Of course, the usual practice with a Kickstarter or other crowd-funding campaign is to make a pitch video to go with it. We made this one when we launched the campaign, although we later replaced the video.
I hadn't watched this in years. I was afraid I was going to cringe a bit watching it. I hadn't done a lot of video work back then, especially with me on screen.
Interestingly, Rosalyn does a voice-over, but doesn't appear on screen. I think she did those recordings with the Zoom H1 mic. I don't remember what we used for the live video here, but I remember that it was wholly inadequate to the task; I had to synchronize the sound from a separate mic; and getting sound sync that didn't look like a bad dub was really hard for me. I learned that 1/30 of a second is actually a very noticeably sync error, so it was necessary to adjust the sound by fractional frames to get it right. Also, the camera's timing was not completely stable, so it drifted relative to the audio.
Janky! We've gotten a LOT better, since.
But then, of course, we were proposing animation, not live-action. :ani_dunno:
Also, 16-years-ago me was a whole lot younger, huh..?
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/fWBY4izmphyhhvXjctKBVt
#LunaticsProject #PeerTube #History

2026-07-12 23:02:50 UTC

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It is going to take AWHILE to get through all these old videos.
You may note that a lot of these videos feature music from Jamendo under CC By or By-SA licenses.
I actually spent basically 2008-2010 listening to NOTHING BUT free-public-licensed music tracks, mostly from Jamendo. I essentially gave up listening to pop/rock music on the radio, and just vetted all these tracks. There were hundreds. Many were not good. Many were mediocre. A few were amazing and a few became favorites. My picks are now in a large archive on my local disk.
Sadly, I didn't exactly keep up with this, so they may become a bit "dated" over time.
There are also just a few tracks where I contacted artists who had released under less-generous license terms and acquired permission to re-release under CC By-SA. That included J.T. Bruce's "Bellatrix", which serves as the main soundtrack for the Lunar Transportation System, brash, orchestral, metal, and upbeat. Most of the artists I talked to liked the idea of doing this sort of thing, BTW.
I also uploaded this video from 2012, though that's getting a little ahead of the timeline:
"Bellatrix" TLI Mix (this is a cut-down from a much longer track)
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/5Y7ZhSJU5oJCrdTnfA6q6u
#LunaticsProject #PeerTube #Music

2026-07-12 22:41:44 UTC

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In 2011, Kickstarter was getting a lot of hype, and I thought maybe I'd try crowdfunding. I also recognized that my own attempts at character design were sadly lacking. I remembered Daniel Fu, who had worked on a previous project, and I thought I'd approach him with an offer to commission the designs.
This would be the bulk of the funds from the Kickstarter we'd set up. I would also work on the mech side of the Concept Art and continue developing process, storyboards, and direction. Rosalyn Hunter and I would finish writing the screenplay for a pilot episode (this evolved quite a bit after that).
So I started specifically producing video content to use in the Kickstarter campaign. I also did an initial commission for Daniel to create character concept pages -- the idea was to use these in the pitch, get funding which would then pay him for model-sheets and other "serious" character design art, which would then be the input for 3D character modeling.
Likewise, I would begin drawing up set and mechanical plans, as well as finishing the storyboards for the entire pilot episode. The final work product would be the concept art / modelsheet drawings, and a one-hour pilot episode storyboard animatic.
Of course, I reused the videos I had created for Free Software Magazine, but I made several new ones. I just re-uploaded these:
Georgiana Lerner Character Concept Art
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/h8ac5KVezRxw9pNGsiSvyi
Lo-Fi Proxy of the Lunar Transportation System "Moon Shuttle"
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/wxgFQnNa865wUBkD8LgQSZ
This model was entirely by me. My Blender skills were pretty basic at the time.
Hiromi Lerner Character Concept Art
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/9YFUig9aeegbV6t9kk8uEy
Staging Spacecraft with Moving Camera
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/w76hb5yhqrDi77uBQZAipk
This was a technique test in Blender, using constraints to move the camera during a spatially complex shot. This was mainly to go with a Free Software Magazine article, but was closely related to Lunatics.
Josh Farmer Character Concept Art
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/i5o4DVZvZgUFSZngrk7Y5p
Yes, it's a little on-the-nose that our agricultural expert is named "Farmer". All the characters kind of started out as satire, and gradually developed more layers during writing and production.
#LunaticsProject #PeerTube #Video #FilmMaking #PreProduction

2026-07-12 22:26:40 UTC

I have begun re-uploading early project videos. So, why not have a little "memory lane" posting, while I'm at it...
In 2010, I was not fully committed to doing this project, but I was playing around with it, and I had posted several experimental videos on YouTube, along with articles for Free Software Magazine, an online magazine devoted to FOSS topics, that I wrote for from 2005 to 2013.
The earliest videos in this set are from that period:
Soyuz Rollout Animatic (Using Reference Photos)
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/grChLqTPPPTa6VXPy2PJPL
(I re-uploaded this one awhile back when the failure was first reported to me).
A Storyboard Animatic Using Inkscape and Blender
(I did two versions of this for some reason -- one has some color. Otherwise, no difference):
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/5525fHVs7kYiQnkF1zDKaE
https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/hqcWUSEFQuLPKVyL1XfcHU
This was the first incarnation of that shot at the beginning of the episode (it's actually the 2nd shot, after the cosmic zoom shot).
#LunaticsProject #PeerTube #Video #FilmMaking #PreProduction

2026-07-11 20:19:04 UTC

Well. This is ugly news.
It seems that every video on my PeerTube from 2022 and before is broken. They were moved into object storage, which has failed.
I can't reupload the video file, because it tries to put that into the object storage, which I think I no longer have access to.
And I can't move it to local storage, because it tries to get the file from the object storage. Which I no longer have access to.
I think the only practical way is to create an entire new record (new upload) for each video.
One. At. A. Time.
I think this is 140 videos. I didn't realize it was so many!
:uhm:
It would be a little faster if I could just replace the object storage video file with a new upload to local storage, rather than having to copy and paste all the metadata across browser tabs. But I don't think there's a way to do that.
At least I'm pretty sure I DO have the original videos on my workstation, although I will have to identify each of them individually.
That's going to take me several days. Possibly a couple of weeks.
I'm also not sure how much larger that's going to make my local storage requirements.
I really am EXTREMELY disappointed with the PeerTube object-storage experience. Particularly the part where it was very hard to back up.
I DID run the script to move object storage videos back to local storage, over a year ago. But I guess it didn't work..?
#PeerTube #ObjectStorage #Video

2026-07-10 21:38:20 UTC

A little "Lunatics!" 2026 status update:
This has been a long, hard road -- over a decade, in fact, with many bumps, side excursions, and detail that will require several chapters in a book I plan to write to actually explain, but...
:ani_dab_r: ANIMATION ON EPISODE ONE IS FINISHED! :ani_dab_l:
:smug_dance:
I AM NOW TRANSFORMED INTO A "SOUND GUY".
:ab1nzyblob2::kermit_shout::microphone::audacity::freesound::archive:
At least for awhile.
(Posted to pin). #Animation #Audio #SoundDesign #Audacity #Ardour #Foley #Ambience #SoundFX #Introduction #LunaticsProject
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/0c21e78b-b98f-4d05-840c-00f8c7c6df85
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/2a8f3f14-6930-470d-a80a-7e658845d6e6
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/9357d977-0640-4459-8b43-b3995c79cf15

2026-07-10 21:16:43 UTC

Okay, I should probably be promoting my Patreon content more. This is the first of the new log videos, with a tour of our available microphones for production recording.
This is shared early with all the "Download" and above tiers. Although a week later it goes public.
https://www.patreon.com/lunatics/posts/video-log-2026-1-163373894?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/9a37ae0d-c248-420e-a767-eaedd206151c

2026-07-10 10:57:49 UTC

I decided to divide that long video up into several shorter videos, after all. The first one will be going up on our Patreon tomorrow:
https://www.patreon.com/lunatics
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/37b8f2af-873a-4638-999b-d68741f6e008

2026-07-09 01:06:42 UTC

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Still revising subtitles. Vosk has me saying some weird stuff.

2026-07-08 09:50:22 UTC

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I'm still working on editing this log. It is now a half-hour special. I had a lot to cover. I did the recording in the sound booth, and then added sound and video clips to it, along with the usual slides. I think it's going to be pretty good. Might be one for the DVD featurettes. :ani_dunno:
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/47ed1124-7c5b-46ff-bdf6-dea9e92b0ed4

2026-07-07 17:39:11 UTC

A terrifying array of microphones for today's video log.
I wanted to demonstrate what they all sound like, under similar circumstances. I've never tried this before. On the one hand, I hope they all get good, faithful recordings. On the other, I hope you can tell the difference! We'll see.
Since I'm now covering sound production, I thought I'd move into the sound booth, so my voice is easier to isolate (no cars, planes, wind, or cicadas for competition).
FWIW, my video logs are my main Patreon perk these days -- you get them a week ahead if you pay, and they go public with my monthly summaries a month or so later.
My goal has been to try to record these (about) once a week. I'm getting a little more regular with them. With this one, I'm trying to switch to publishing on Wednesday, instead of Sunday. The previous schedule was getting in the way of my weekends (becasue of course I would edit them at the last minute).
Of course, next week I'll probably just pick a single mic to use!
I probably don't do enough to promote the project Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/lunatics
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/9357d977-0640-4459-8b43-b3995c79cf15

2026-07-06 07:47:34 UTC

I recorded my first actual foley track for this project today.
Just shaking some stuff around to go with the seats moving, but it's an actual foley performance. Not just lots of F/X recordings cobbled together, which is what I've done hitherto.
I did manage to get a nice sonic boom / rocket pass sound, though, mixing recordings from FreeSound.
With all this, I'm lowering the music a little in the mix. I think it's working.
These are now loaded into Kdenlive. I've got audio stems for "VOICE-XX", which is the original-language version of the dialog, "VOICE-EN" for the English-only dub alternative (which is mainly for kids and also helps with making the subtitles), the "FX" track has hard effects, and now there's a "FOLEY" track as well. Then I do have music here, although later I plan to move that into the episode edit.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/2a8f3f14-6930-470d-a80a-7e658845d6e6
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/7c66ab7e-1649-46cb-a66b-9ace482ef7df

2026-06-25 18:52:18 UTC

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Not 100% decided on my design choices. There is a pretty intense color contrast between front and back covers. And the spine is just kind of functional. The prototypes just had tape there.

2026-06-25 18:51:08 UTC

Working on the color wrap-around cover for the Coloring Book.
I sold one of the B&W zine prototypes, but I figured I should actually get it printed, particularly if I want to sell it from our website.
And that would mean I can put a color cover on it, which I think will make it spiffier, as well as giving some hints about which crayons to pick, for those wondering.
So far, this is the only book version of the pilot story, although we were planning to make more of a real book. It does tell the story, though, with line-art you can color.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/41597990-38a6-4dcb-80a1-34c36311d397

2026-06-20 20:28:24 UTC

Well, anyway, the big news is that I have "picture lock" on the pilot now -- no more visual changes. Just audio.
:smug_dance: :ani_dab_l: YAY! :ani_dab_r:
Of course, there's plenty of audio problems to fix, but also, they usually take less time.
Also, Squid is working for me, and I can now get to FreeSound. I already collected most of the sound clips I was looking for -- mainly I wanted some things I really cannot record for myself, like the sound of a supersonic jet passing at close range. I've definitely heard that sound in-person at air-shows, but it's a rare opportunity.
Fortunately, some kind people with FreeSound accounts have recorded such things.
I found no better sound for the gantry than what I recorded on my Zoom mic, so I guess I probably should also upload those recordings, now that I can login!
:lunatics_georgiana: :lunatics_hiromi: :lunatics:

2026-06-20 19:28:32 UTC

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@nprofile…u8fp
Temporary work-around until I figure out the images problem, I guess.

2026-06-20 16:36:32 UTC

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But just posting in text seems to work okay.
Hmmmm.
What else could be going on here...

2026-06-20 16:35:36 UTC

Okay. I thought maybe reposting from a fresh browser would matter. Misskey has a heavy client, and it can act weird if it's not in sync. But I still get a lot of disconnections -- and it always disconnects when I try to upload an image. What is that about? First thought was file permission on the "files" folder, but they seem to be correct.

2026-06-20 04:41:32 UTC

Still can't upload images. I don't really know what's going on here. I figured it would be a permissions problem for the "files" folder for Misskey, but I think I've tried everything to fix that, so maybe that's not really it?

2026-06-19 22:49:27 UTC

Well. I have upgraded this server.
Already had one major problem -- all my "drive" files vanished. I believe I have recovered them now. But that's clearly not supposed to happen.
We shall see how well this holds up.

2026-06-18 00:51:04 UTC

I ran into the weirdest Freestyle problem today (in Blender 2.79).
In this shot, a SINGLE FRAME did not render the ink from Freestyle.
It threw a Runtime Error on the console in one frame (1814) out of 1601 in this shot (it runs from 800 to 2400).
Having no idea what the hell was going wrong, I added a keyframe to the camera position, then shifted it by 0.001m (i.e. 1mm) in X.
This fixed the problem -- the frame renders. I don't imagine the 1mm nudge will be a problem in the shot.
But I am still kind of stunned at this glitch. I've been using Freestyle for years and never noticed a problem like this before.
Anyway, I just rendered the one frame to repair the shot. Technically, that keyframe will have slightly shifted camera positions before and after this. So I guess it IS possible that I will have created a similar glitch on a different frame by doing this..? :ani_dunno: I hope not.🤞
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/5122a5ba-099d-4a46-8de4-cfc745945a8f

2026-06-16 18:04:04 UTC

Assembling a 5th pass on the pilot episode. Tightened up some shot timing, updated composites (including masking some stray Freestyle ink lines), fixing a dirty render problem (while not having to re-render the Freestyle, which took forever on that shot). And including a couple of subtle rig/animation updates.
I.e. "polishing".
To save the LA-1-B shot (first picture), I made a special "salvage" version of the Blender camera file, hacked so that the Freestyle ink was drawn from the previous render (node system in the last picture), and not rendered again. This made for a much faster re-render. What I was doing didn't change the basic ink render, but I needed to re-render the masks, and I wanted them all output to the same EXRs.
So basically, it renders the paint and masks, pulls the ink from the previous run, and puts it all into the output EXR stream.
I do believe this worked!
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/4d12ae88-40a4-4bc2-9546-7a50f2833634
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/d235855e-bec7-41e8-a63d-76bea9ce002a
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/9c2b5871-724b-4a21-acfa-0121ca9e5f34
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-03d349a7-9641-4edc-9d9c-7bfef3315b56

2026-06-14 07:17:19 UTC

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"base" position, not "based".
I really need to upgrade this server to a version that allows in-place editing.

2026-06-14 07:15:58 UTC

Refining some remaining shots. I wasn't happy with how much glare was visible on Georgiana's helmet -- she's supposed to be reacting to the Sun shining in her face, so it needs to be pretty bright.
So, I amped up the lighting and used a reflector panel to create a strong effect.
And Sergei was a little high in the previous shot -- his head was noticeably above the seat. So I shifted his based position down a bit.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/ae982d60-98fa-418f-88f7-599249694220
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/e1804834-10a9-4ee1-b28f-f680e7b52193

2026-06-10 06:39:08 UTC

Last minute character animation refinements happening.
Needed some more blending of an NLA strip, and had to move some keyframes to smooth out some motions.
Thought I was done with this stage, but no. Not quite.

2026-06-09 16:56:24 UTC

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@nprofile…lel8 @nprofile…udxw
Yep. We have those on our lunatics.tv site, too. I did struggle over whether to keep the tiny 88x32 format, or increase the resolution for modern displays. In the end, I went with a bit of a mixture, but I still have a lot of these little "badges". A nod to early web kitsch.

2026-06-07 06:41:23 UTC

Rendering a 3rd assembly edit to review.
Lot of fiddly fixes completed. Some of them not even visible on screen -- I rerendered some shots just get the PNG-stream filenames to be consistent.
But also, I found some edits weren't actually using the clip source I thought they were using, so I had to fix that, of course.
Just did a last-minute fix on a bad wipe transition.
But I know there's still going to be some stuff that needs more polishing.
I really understand that remark about how "films are never finished, they're just abandoned." [I don't remember who said it, and I might be paraphrasing].
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-5f473fdd-dabe-4958-90f6-6ca7fe01c532

2026-05-30 06:57:55 UTC

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I moved the SkySystem (Including the Moon) to a non-inked layer, and that fixed it up nicely. Decided to leave the Moon in there, although I'm not sure how much it adds to the composition.
Obviously, the Moon's distance is not to scale in this model, but it is pretty far away -- I didn't want the size to change noticeably because of the camera moving around on the set.
I did try using a spherical model for the Moon, but that was a disaster -- it seems Blender had geometry problems with an object that far away. Floating point rounding errors, I guess? Anyway, the billboard worked much better.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/ef199480-3546-48d3-9d34-33be3bb91e4c

2026-05-27 17:36:36 UTC

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Okay, I guess this was an easy fix. I just moved the whole "Sky System" to a non-inked layer.
I'm not sure if including the Moon was intentional or not, but I'm going to just leave it in there.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/32d8cd36-23db-4742-b324-52e862671aa7

2026-05-27 17:31:51 UTC

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This is part of the problem of letting a project go on for so long. I forget things.
There's no question that I bit off more than I could chew with this project. Of course, the original idea was to have more help and work faster, but that fell through, and I pressed on anyway. So I have that decision to blame, I guess. :ani_dunno:

2026-05-27 17:25:06 UTC

Huh. The UFO in the elevator shot isn't part of the elevator or attached to the camera. It's my billboard Moon in the far background.
So, either I have to figure out why the billboard is getting inked (and fix that), or I could just move the Moon, I guess. Did I put it there on purpose, like for art reasons? I honestly can't remember!
Also... check out the cool sky rig I made. I did that years ago. Haven't looked at it in quite awhile! I forgot how cool that was.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-8449bc00-9234-4e4b-8aed-6d047799da25
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-1cdaf315-536a-4706-926a-e9a3512ebc7d

2026-05-26 19:03:52 UTC

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In deference to Mastodon viewers, I broke this into two posts. Here are the remaining 3 scenes, which address the actual spaceflight. Our travelers don and test their spacesuits; walk out to the pad; get in; and launch into orbit.
I wanted to present this in a fairly matter-of-fact way from the train to orbit. The only science-fictional element in this episode is that Georgiana is only 7 yrs old (and the special acceleration couch and spacesuit to accommodate that).
The rest is just a pretty standard Soyuz launch, but with a level of detail that is not normally given, and as much as I can, through the eyes of a child.
What would Georgiana get out of this extraordinary experience? It is a pretty big deal, and full of scary elements. But also, ALL new experiences are exciting to kids, and then they take them in stride.
[2/2]
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/ae7523a3-8564-4173-9866-fca747cac2b4
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/cc9d698e-85fa-4bd4-8466-ba2a80e394e6
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/ff7dd592-eb5f-461d-a456-011bb9b5a3f7

2026-05-26 18:46:46 UTC

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I did finish titlecards for all seven of the scenes. They are all essentially abbreviated storyboards, so it also gives a little bit of a sneak preview of the episode (better than the screen capture of the Kdenlive timeline, anyway).
This story started as an extended before-credits teaser for an hour-long episode, so I decided to put all the titles at the end, which I have seen has become a fairly-popular style in the age of web streaming shows, anyway, where they don't need opening titles to grab an audience or identify the show.
Later episodes will have a more conventional format, with a short teaser and then main title.
[1/2]
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/0aa72a60-c88f-4e72-bbca-8135ed33f6b9
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/212df758-1eac-4682-b6c2-1cd246ea4219
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/8da2b781-73c0-4031-9699-21da937641ce
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/e40f53dd-f15a-4c87-8458-ed43f46af7bf

2026-05-26 04:31:34 UTC

This is somewhat exciting: I now have a complete episode of "Lunatics!" :ani_dab_l::sintel_excited::lunatics:
There's still some brokenness, but nothing is actually missing. All the shots are here. I made a few tweaks just now, and I'm going to look at it again.
I have a little list of nitpicks to fix, so it's going to go through another cycle, but this does feel like a breakthrough.
Oh, and with credits, it's now 23 minutes long. 30 seconds of that is a brief Patreon promo spot and a teaser for episode 2. It might shrink slightly if I feel I need to tighten up some transitions, but I'm getting very close to "picture lock", after which I'll need to worry about cleaning up the soundtrack.
This is happening. :smug_dance:
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-86052ded-cc05-468d-8ce2-0da1e15d6846

2026-05-26 04:15:22 UTC

Well. Thanks to some feedback I got this weekend, I have discovered that some of my older videos on PeerTube are broken. I don't know if those just broke when I upgraded to v8, or if they've been like that for a long time. I suspect it's the latter.
Probably due to issues with failed migration away from object storage. This will take some tedious tinkering to fix. In the end, I suspect it will be easier to just re-upload new copies of the videos in question (I should have offline copies of them all, though it may take some digging to find which ones I need).
If you find playback failures on https://tv.filmfreedom.net this is probably what's going on. Sorry!
I am but a poor sad part-time sysadmin and only sort of know what I'm doing. #PeerTube #TechnicalDifficulties #FilmFreedom #LunaticsProject

2026-05-24 20:03:30 UTC

One thing about open source production is that it motivates me to make the behind-the-scenes "internal documents" nicer.
I just updated the titlecard for the "LA-Launch" sequence and regenerated "storyboard" clips from the scene (sort of an "after the fact" storyboard for documenting the source tree -- I do also have the real, crufty ink-pen storyboards I drew before all this!
There isn't room for all 23 shots in the scene (let alone the extra stills I storyboard for long moving shots), but I selected 17 good ones for the title card, which is about all that fits.
The practical use is just to remember what's in this scene. But it also looks good on the Work-In-Progress channel if I post the rendered scene there.
#Kdenlive #Animation #Inkscape
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/fbba9efe-96fc-481d-a1b6-7b32ed2092b9

2026-05-24 07:31:15 UTC

I'm quite pleased with myself for this cheesy transition in Kdenlive. It's just a couple of title clips, with SVG "eyelash" images for top and bottom, a little bit of box blur, and then animated with the "title scroll animation" feature.
:ani_dab_l:
Just 5 frames (1/6th of a second at 30fps), but I think it sweetens the transition and sells the "blinding light" idea much better than a hard cut.
#Kdenlive #Animation
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/2819fc87-0fd1-4f0a-9878-a02bea54d859

2026-05-22 16:57:13 UTC

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Fortunately, I have some compositing controls that seem to work to tone this down (I wasn't 100% sure they would behave as I hoped, but it looks like they do).
The dust is three layers of Voronoi textures, with strong color ramps, with the rest done in compositing. By shifting color ramps in the composite, the range of sizes and intensities can be used to select fewer or more grains to emphasize. I wasn't sure this was going to work, because I wasn't sure I had a smooth gradient in sizes, but it looks like it.
#Blender3D
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/0dc95c45-2ccd-45ae-be41-fec902c2e359
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/4fcc5469-e2f8-4d33-b253-e0b9739b11ac

2026-05-22 16:35:28 UTC

I may have overdone the dust effect now. :sparkles_anim: :ani_dunno:
Kind of looks like it's snowing in there. #Blender3D
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/5c3687af-bb07-46d7-ab7a-d79d491261a3

2026-05-22 01:25:41 UTC

✨:sparkles_anim:Sparkles!:sparkles_anim:✨:smug_dance:
Getting closer. This is the fully-composited shot in Kdenlive, with the animated backdrop, and the compositing effects.
I'm making the dust a little sparkly. It's kind of a delicate balance between boring and discoteque.
Also I think I need to tone down the Fresnel effect on the sunbeam material -- it's not filling in enough. Of course, I'm faking a volumetric effect here with a manifold shell shape (Blender 2.7 does have some ways to do volumetrics, but I'm not using them here).
#Blender3D
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/b657cfc0-026a-45a4-9c6d-56b490ffb88d

2026-05-21 07:32:39 UTC

7 minutes to render a frame, and I can't really see if it's working until I look at the fully-composited animation. These are SLOW iterations. Tweaking this shot is taking awhile!
#Blender3D
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/e5916c32-78a2-4ed6-83b0-645b83308790
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/9c760e67-0395-4bc2-973a-f8de9671dd58

2026-05-16 07:33:02 UTC

It is never a good animation day when the word "depsgraph" is on your mind. #Blender3D

2026-05-13 19:39:06 UTC

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I think you can see here the problem with dystopian science fiction, as also pointed out by the "we built the Torment Nexus" meme.
The problem isn't so much bad intent as it is a failure of imagination. We as the creative storytellers are naturally better at imagination (at least more practiced!) and we tend to overestimate how much people will imagine based on what we present.
But the problem with the "cautionary tale" science fiction is the same as with telling a toddler "don't eat the cookies!" All they can picture now is eating the cookies. Likewise, if we just show dystopias, that becomes the only future people can imagine!
I want to make stories set in a future I want to live in! Not necessarily utopias, but you know, improvements.
Fear is easy. Hope is harder work.

2026-05-13 19:04:14 UTC

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Yeah, I'm sold on the change now. It's definitely better timing.
The music also adds a slight mood change that works better for the upper stages of the flight, where things get smoother.
Basically, the boost phase gets you out of the atmosphere, and the rest is getting to orbital velocity. Which is about 8X the delta-vee needed to clear the stratosphere (which is why real astronautics professionals kind of scoffed at Blue Origin and SpaceShip Two taking people "into space" -- because that's not actually the hard part).
You have to have enough fuel left to accelerate to about 8 km/s. Which works out to something like 26X the speed of sound at sea level. If you don't reach that speed, you fall back down. :ohno:
The fact that we can do this on such a regular basis in the 21st century, is one of the more remarkable feats of engineering that we take for granted.
I think that Soyuz is actually a bit smoother ride than it looks in our animation. But I'm calling that for creative license!
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-964517a9-c1c9-4df0-ac86-8b5d601b797b

2026-05-12 04:20:23 UTC

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I had been trying to cut down the animation to fit the music, but it felt like I was cutting too much. And when I recreated those two shots I've been hanging onto since 2012, I made them both longer.
Indulgent?
Well, maybe.

2026-05-12 04:19:09 UTC

Well, I think my pilot episode grew another minute, more or less.
I had more animation than was fitting the soundtrack.
So I finally decided to add some more music.
I think it's better.
Going to go watch the longer scene a few times to convince myself one way or the other.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-88d95f7d-2937-4536-b56e-b434f8609b27

2026-05-12 03:53:25 UTC

This did not go how I thought it was going to go, and suddenly became a lot more inspiring, especially if you're a storyteller of any kind...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzOMmMFQZWs

2026-05-07 19:12:28 UTC

I just got a shotgun mic in the mail today. Going to see if I can do my videolog outdoors with that!
I've also got a wireless lapel mic set around here somewhere, but I have misplaced it.
Eventually, it would be cool to try an actual live-action film project. We almost got there a couple of years ago, but it fell through, due to timing and conflicting obligations. Volunteer projects can be like that.

2026-05-06 15:15:40 UTC

I haven't worried too much about it in the past, but I wonder if bad things will happen to my server bills if I make a 25 GB Nextcloud share available to the public..?
The amount of legit traffic shouldn't be a problem, but I wonder what will happen when the robots find it..?
:monkey_see_no_evil:
I did this a few years ago, and after a brief surprising interval when crawlers found my Gitea archives, I shut it down with robots.txt.
But of course, robots.txt relies on the politeness of the crawlers. Is that a thing, anymore, in this cyberpunk dystopia we have created..? :lunatics_allen:
I'm wondering if I should use some kind of guest-password process that would be harder for a bot to discover. Something like: use a password, but just tell people what it is in the text..? Unless LLMs are smart enough to get past that nowadays...? :ani_dunno:

2026-05-06 04:06:24 UTC

Today was a lot of GL previz renders for shots in the Soyuz Flight sequence. A few clicks; about an hour to render; then a few more clicks; repeat...
I always have a problem staying on task with that sort of work. I can't just sit and watch it. But if I go and do other stuff, I easily forget come back to it.
Fortunately, my daughter was marathoning Community, so I just launched renders in between episodes. That worked pretty well for me.
Anyway, I think the animation is just about correct now. Or as correct as it's going to get, anyway.
And now I do a set of test frame renders, and then send the shots to render on the server.
I'm feeling impatient, but I can't skip steps, or I could waste a lot of cycles on bad animation renders.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/9ff1e186-914f-49d0-ab15-bfad36947f4e

2026-04-26 06:33:37 UTC

I'm still confused every time I mess with the NLA editor in Blender.
I get the basics, but there are weird behaviors that enable or disable action strips, and it's hard for me to keep track. I often wind up with some animations just not animating. Seems like I have to relearn it every time. Just doesn't stick.

2026-04-25 02:41:34 UTC

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Zooming out, the whole compositing node system constructs the Ink & Paint for the interior shot (upper left), and the Ink & Paint for the exterior (lower left), and then puts them together. The cutoff trick described above, makes the interior shot become blank after the end of the render, so that the exterior shot is left unmodified.
This composite is probably pretty close to done now.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-0abee098-e843-41d6-95b4-08dee228829b
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/6c717606-9fdb-42db-8a02-84386d88fb93
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/23b0e922-6fb3-4e97-b1bf-71e16fd63e35
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/67894a7f-a168-4d96-b208-e603a8f63ebd

2026-04-25 02:07:25 UTC

For my compositing workflow, I have renders as Multilayer EXR streams.
I read these in with the "Image Sequence" file input node.
But sometimes, the ranges don't match. So what happens past the end?
Well, it seems that Blender just keeps using the last available frame.
In my case, though, I needed to stop the output from the background, otherwise it'll show up outside of the mask later in the shot.
So, I needed to set it to instead give me blank frames past the end of the render.
At least in Blender 2.79, this isn't super-intuitive!
As you can see in the attached image of the nodes, I used a "Value" node, with the special expression "#frame" where you'd normally type a number. This appears to create a driver expression, and fills in the current frame number.
I then use a math node with the "Less than" operator to specify the end of the render. Above that, the operator will output 0, and that is used to shut off the render input, substituting a blank image (with the constant color value of black/transparent, or R,G,B,A all set to zero).
This method works.
https://m.filmfreedom.net/files/webpublic-e0989ee2-5735-4cf0-8871-c21b158ed9b8

2026-04-19 02:19:56 UTC

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@nprofile…rh6u
I am no marketing expert, but is there ANY solid evidence that audience segmentation through surveillance actually delivers value over content-sensitive segmentation? This seems to be taken entirely on faith, from what I've heard.
ISTM that context selection should be all you need. Advertisers should simply decide what they want to sponsor.
The whole value proposition for surveillance advertising is counter-intuitive to me. It's a customer-hostile adversarial approach, which encourages your audience to actively evade you. You want to get people to come to you, not chase them into dark alleys and threaten them.