(Please excuse the rant, impatient readers are encouraged to skip to the “Why I Post” section)
About a year ago, I was getting good wind on a project I called “Convergence”. It’s an open movie project (yes, yet another), but I am not here to assemble a team, so don’t worry. What I am here for is to announce my reboot of the project. Back when I was picking up some speed on the project, I suffered the one most devastating computer meltdown I have ever had. I found out that computers can actually catch fire (well, the thick puff of smoke made me assume fire somewhere), and that external backups beat internal ones, hands down. I lost practically everything. The discussion from back then can be seen here and here.
I was miffed, to put it nicely, and as I recovered other work (like, “for making a living” kind of work), Convergence got buried and slipped away. Until now…
The Project, now and then
Convergence is rather big. I have done professional short animation (commercials, demos and the like), and wanted to punch through to something else. The storyline script is already written, though with a lack of finishing touches that are planned to be filled in when details look better. The challenge ahead of writing was simple, in theory: Take a few dozen of my personal favorites from sci-fi, fantasy and horror and unite them in one mean flick. The script has Terminators hacking Stargates while fighting rebel Jedi on the run, and that’s just the first few minutes… From Hellraiser to LotR and back to Robocop, it’s in there!
The process back then was that I developed tools as I progressed, making constant improvements along the work of the film, so that when I reached the end, things would look, well, acceptable (“saturday morning cartoon quality” was the phrase I used). You can see the results here. Sadly, the workfiles for those are gone in that puff of smoke…
I am doing things a bit different now, hoping to bring a production process known as “heaping” into the community. I will rant on that in the near future. For now…
Why I Post
I am looking to regain my footing in the model-archive community around Blender. I managed to retrace a few(!) of my old models to online archives, but to no surprise, I need more. I am looking for ships, buildings (interiors and exteriors), vehicles, gadgets and character props (helmets, especially) from any of the following fiction franchises:
Star Wars (both the new and the old)
Stargate
Terminator
The Matrix
Alien
Predator
Star Trek
Battlestar Galactica (primarily the new version)
Firefly
Andromeda
Farscape
Chronicles of Riddick
Judge Dread
Robocop
Event Horizon
There are more franchises included, but they have limited non-organic content (they mostly have cool characters, like Pinhead, orcs and Wolverine). At the moment, please do not start attacking the project for how impossible it is, I will deal with defying reality :RocknRoll:
And if you are wondering if a certain model or archive is worth submitting, just submit it. A lot of the current needs are simply for better visualization (you do not want to know how my Stormtrooper helmets look right now… okay, they look like white metal asscheeks:o). HOWEVER… all models involved must be entirely public domain, with some link to the statement that they are. I cannot use models that may not be freely distributed, since, well, they will be.
Status updates will be posted here, slowly at first then hopefully quicker. Current status is about 20% of the full movie storyline has been put into a really bad animatic.
And as stated, no, I am not looking for people to invest themselves in any way. I believe in putting your/my “money” (well, effort) where your/my mouth is before even hinting at that, and even then the process I use is completely counter to the usual “I need people to vow upon death that they will do my work for me” mentality. I would not vow that, nor would I dare ask anyone else to. I only ask that people who know where good, freely usable models are let me know.