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Hey Everyone,
WHAT A WEEK!!! I've just returned from C4 (arrived this morning but I'm only now functional)
Now that I have easy access to the net I'd like to clear the air and the rumors about Tales of the New Republic.
Firstly and you know this one, it's nothing to do with Lucasfilm, it's not official, it's 100% a fan project. I can't call it a fan film because there is no film, or series, or whatever. It was purely meant to be a 'what if' and in no way meant to confuse people regarding the new Clone Wars series. I was very surprised at that part of the confusion as I thought it was very clear and very well promoted by Lucasfilm that they were doing a CGI Clone Wars series and a Live action show set between Ep3-4. For that very reason we stayed away from that era.
It was quiet amazing to watch the reactions, and yes we did hold back on saying exactly what the project was, just because we were interested in peoples comments.
So what was the point/reason for doing it...
Simply put, because we could and we wanted to. I've been wanting to make a CGI short based in the Star Wars universe for about 7-8 years (When I was working on the Roughnecks series), I even contacted several people at LFL, but they were “not interested in TV and were too busy with the movies” So I just figured one day I'd do my own short. And while I'm a big fan of Genndy Tartokovsky's series (I was at the Emmy's the year he won both animation category's) I was always more interested in the 'what happened after' of the Expended Universe.
Fast forward to this year, the 30th anniversary fast approaching and Gentle Giants Animated statues. When I saw these and especially the Leia and R2, I decided that something HAD to be done with them. The design and look took all the great ideas from Genndy's 2D series, made them 3D and then applied that to the original trilogy characters. The problem was that time was short. So instead I thought, lets make a short teaser trailer and see if people like this idea.
And that's what we did. Will we go further, I'm not 100% sure, but it's possible, a lot of people liked the direction we were going.
So how was it done. All of the modeling, animation, lighting and rendering was in Newtek's Lightwave 3D www.newtek.com The compositing was mostly Adobe After Effects with a little Digital Fusion.
Now to the DAVE School (www.DAVESchool.com) bit. I work at the school but this wasn't a class project, most of the work was done by both current and graduate students however. I invited a small group of graduates to help me a few months back. We made some good progress but May25th was coming at us fast. So I started asking more and more students to help. Some put in a few hours here and there, some put in weeks of work. The problem with making a 'preview/trailer' is that it needed to look like it's from a large vast production and you're just showing a few bits from here and there. With about 10 days to go, I think we had 3 or 4 of the 40 shots finished. Most of those were the simpler ships shots. Luckily for me one of the classes needed a filler project for 3 days and I was able to recruit them. Then for the final week it was mostly down to a small team of 5 to complete all the shots. We basically moved into the school and hardly left until it was done. Without the support of the School, the students and the equipment there, we wouldn't have been done in time. Sure the animation isn't groundbreaking, and many of the shots DO need more work, but for the short time we had, it's not bad. Anyone who has worked on a project like this will better understand what goes into it.
During this final week I started uploading a few teaser images onto the website in the hopes of getting people to return on the Friday (25th) and watch the video. We emailed a couple and I mean just a couple of people a link to the site and off it went. Over the next 2 days it spread, I forget the exact numbers but I think 20,000 people or so had visited the site before the video was uploaded.
My goal was always to have it done for the 30th anniversary on May 25th. At 11:59 EST the video was uploaded, a short time later a smaller version for YouTube was uploaded and then it was off. The next morning I headed to C4 with some DVD's to hand out in the hope of getting some fans to watch. By the time I landed in LA things had gone mad! Sites like www.Aintitcoolnews.com had picked it up and the website, along with the YouTube video we're being downloaded by the truckload. The problem was a lot of people thought it was a real production, unfortunately it's not. I emailed Harry at AintItCool, even put a disclaimer on the website, but that didn't slow the downloads and the rumors. We were the #1 Animation video on YouTube last weekend and the website had now way passed 100,000 visitors, with over 2 Million hits.
It's a real shame Lucasfilm had it removed from YouTube, we had over 170,000 views in 3 days and was going well. I've no idea what the problem was as they didn't say, never emailed, never contacted. I was under the impression that LF supported Fan projects, allowing use of Logos, music etc. I see them all over YouTube, Atom, TheForce.Net etc.. Of course no profit was ever intended or expected. It's also odd as there are currently no less than 10 clones of the original video still on you tube, so this seems like a targeted response, again no idea why. Maybe someone will enlighten me. I did state clearly on the video text that this was a "'what if' teaser in the style of a cartoony animated Star Wars show"
For the moment (until I hear otherwise) our website for the project is still up at www.TalesOfTheNewRepublic.com I do plan to add more stills and a complete description of each model and shot, plus FAQ and other bits to help everyone know what we are up to. I'll also include more about the people that work on this (once they are ok with that).
Many Many Thanks for all the sites that linked to us, spread the word and ALL the comments, both good and bad! :-)
and May the Schwartz be with you....
All the best,
Lee Stringer
www.LeeStringer.com
www.TalesOfTheNewRepublic.com