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Star Trek:Ascension needs help from fellow artists

Solarbaby

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
ascension_by_goanimator-d4izdt1.png


Star trek Ascencion an animated DS-9/Voyager era spin off series needs your help.


For 300 years the United Federation of Planets has been a peaceful society endeavouring to improve the quality of life, expand knowledge for its citizens and the interstellar community, exploring the unknown regions of deep space. However, beneath this utopia lies a deadly organisation that undertakes extraordinary measures to protect the Federation no matter what the cost. It’s existence is not acknowledged, but it has absolute power, and answers to no one. The Starship Swiftwind is their defense during a bloody war the Federation is losing.

One man must uncover a terrible secret, face adversity amongst his peers and stop the most devastating weapon conceived from falling into the enemy’s hands. But success often comes with huge sacrifice.



I am Solarbaby creator of Starmada an animated series I made using goanimate Star Trek Templates. Over 3 years I learned how to use flash to animate my own stuff. I'm ready to leave GoAnimate and animate my own series

I have written an outline for a spin off series set on The USS Swiftwind an experimental ship that is under control of Section31 until events lead the ship on an amazing adventure into another galaxy. I wanted to explore the darker side to Trek that DS9 opened up. I also wanted to set this series away from the milky way entirely- to explore totally new stories and not be bogged down with canon. This is absolutely not a Voyager remake. There is an overall story arc that will explore the lives of it’s motley crew in flashback to explain how they came to serve on the ship.

This is definitely NOT going to be a section31 series. That would get boring. Instead it’s going to have a crew pushed together under extraordinary circumstances. Some have very colourful and murky backgrounds and have been recruited in a last chance effort to save their careers. Some are good officers who have come unstuck or hit rock bottom. Some have made bold choices for their beliefs and defied Starfleet. Some were simply just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I am going to deal with an issue Voyager royally screwed up. The friction between 2 crews forced to coexist. No reset buttons. No cosy wrap up resolutions at the end. At times it might get uncomfortable, at times it will take you places no Trek series dared to go.

Yet at the core of this series it is a ship on a mission of exploration with a story arc that will remind you this is Roddenberry’s Star Trek.

I have an overall arc written and the pilot. I have yet to write the script as I am still tweaking the plot.

Here’s where you can help.

I need 3D modellers, musicians, voice actors, flash artists, web designers and story editors, audio engineers, FX creators Although I pretty much have the series laid down, I'm open to suggestions to improve story, dialogue, character development etc. I haven't really done anything for the series animation wise- except for designing the ship http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/quantum-class-starship.php. I hope to create a modern marvel comic style look to the characters.

If you are interested then please email me with examples of how you can help at goanimator at gmail dot com

Thanks a lot peeps. Live long and prosper
 
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You certainly have people's attention... when I went there there were 21 people online at that website... wow! Also, both you and RoTV have now moved on to animation formats outside of Go!Animate.
 
I've watched a couple of your Starmada episodes and they are entertaining...My suggestion is, if at all possible, is to find yourself a professional storyboard artist, one that could help you with better choices of camera angles.

You sometimes chose some extremely wide shots, for example in Starmada season 3 episode 13, for basic dialogue shots, when some head and shoulder shots on the speaking character might have saved you a lot of unnecessary animation work on the other characters.

Also the fight scene between the two women characters could have been more interesting to watch, had it not been concealed by McCoy working a console in the foreground.

Someone with some storyboard experience (doesn't need to go as far as full detailed boards, some live-action directors draw their own very rudimentary boards for reference). If you plan to again use GoAnimate, that approach could work, and be a time-saver.
 
I've watched a couple of your Starmada episodes and they are entertaining...My suggestion is, if at all possible, is to find yourself a professional storyboard artist, one that could help you with better choices of camera angles.



Also the fight scene between the two women characters could have been more interesting to watch, had it not been concealed by McCoy working a console in the foreground.

Someone with some storyboard experience (doesn't need to go as far as full detailed boards, some live-action directors draw their own very rudimentary boards for reference). If you plan to again use GoAnimate, that approach could work, and be a time-saver.

Thanks for the advice. I know what you mean about storyboarding. Its not something I have done before but I am very familiar with it. I would have studied the technique further or get someone else to do it. Using GA studio is in itself storyboarding.

Regarding the camera angles; I guess that's director's choice more than a right or wrong way. And I didn't mind spending time animating backgrounds. One of the things I hated about 80s/90s cartoons was they often used as little animation as possible to save money and reused same clips over and over again.


You sometimes chose some extremely wide shots, for example in Starmada season 3 episode 13, for basic dialogue shots, when some head and shoulder shots on the speaking character might have saved you a lot of unnecessary animation work on the other characters.
Take a look at this

studio_by_goanimator-d4j0iuz.png


I wanted McCoy in the foreground because the workstation he was using was displaying a scrolling text that the air supply ducts were opening. Since he was releasing a sleeping gas.

Plus those fight actions were made entirely by me recreating the entire character to match the ones the I made with the GA character creator. I don't claim to be a great character drawer and I was hiding the flaws behind the workstation lol.

The thing with close ups on GA is that the tighter the zoom, the more CPU is used which can make the animation play sluggish. Sometime you have sacrifice something more artistic for something practical on GA. The studio is a great starting tool but it does have it's limits.

But I definitely need to storyboard. Thanks
 
I've been a huge fan of Starmada and ROTT

Big production:techman:

I'm no flash artist but I'd be willing to voice act in such a masterpiece. Or even a story editor. I write a LOT of stories and I edit them A LOT. Seeing all these pictures and previews is giving me goosebumps! WOW! :hugegrin:
 
I've done script editing for both Starhip Excelsior, and ST Mariner, as well as submitting character designs for Mariner, and scripting an upcoming episode of Excelsior. I've done a little flash, and . I'd be happy to lend a hand and do voice work
 
If we can work it out, I'd like to volunteer to do some voice work for your project. Just let me know when you get the details sorted out.
 
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