What do you get when you combine a good story with ground breaking motion capture technology, High Speed Fiber, High performance computers, state of the art animation software and GPU processing? Magic of course!

The wonderful thing about animation is we can focus on talent. Nina Foch said “By the time actors are finally good at their craft, they are too old to be photographed!” We get to use experienced and novice actors and work with them to use motion capture to bring each character to life. We have an experience crew of producers and directors who know their craft. Once we get the story started we can work through the script and capture and animate–in minutes–complex movements and gestures that would have taken months to key frame animate by moving each finger, wrist and elbow joint by hand. We can review the results in real time and have the actors make adjustments until everyone is happy, with everyone being the director and a small group of artists and actors, keeping the costs affordable. In parallel the director, other artists and the cinematographer can work out lighting, settings and details so we only need them hours a day. They can work remotely via the internet thanks to our high speed optical fiber connection via Lit San Leandro, and be here only when they need to be, a few days at a time not six weeks or more.

Once we get the story started we can work through the script with talented actors, and capture and animate–in minutes–complex movements and gestures that would have taken months to key frame animate moving each joint by hand. We can review the results in real time and have the actors make adjustments until everyone is happy, with everyone being the director and a small group of artists and actors, keeping the costs affordable. In parallel the director, other artists and the cinematographer can work out lighting, settings and details so we only need them hours a day. They can work remotely via the internet thanks to our high speed optical fiber connection via Lit San Leandro, and be here only when they need to be, a few days at a time not six weeks or more.

Tower of the Dragon is also a project to showcase innovations in storytelling with advanced tools, making it affordable to make a rough cut, and then iterating until we get it right. We are creating a new animation studio with the help of Lit San Leandro High Speed Fiber, PhaseSpace, Nvidia, Autodesk and HP to allow us to work with talent all over the world. We hope to work with colleges and schools to show them what can be done with a whole lot of creativity, and planning. (See our video below with Sul Ross University) The latest tools allow anyone to tell their story so we hope that you view this as a “how to” guide and we’ll share our techniques with everyone via the DVD.

We will be doing at least 10 test renders with the expectation that each screening will have YOU the test audience making good suggestions. We will give prizes for the best suggestions along with a special credits section for GREAT IDEAS STOLEN FROM THE FOLLOWING. Additionally if we use your idea, we will invite you to be in the movie as a character and give you credits. Your ideas and help are essential to make this a success.

Take a decent story, ask two hundred people for several suggestions, select only the best, and we are still going to get 200 good ideas to use, from industry professionals, educators and people who want us to succeed. Mix that into the latest technology and a team of experienced professionals who aren’t sitting in meetings more than they are working, and we will make magic.

We will raise $50,000 for the first pre-visualization (previs) screening in San Leandro California. All contributors will be invited. If we raise $100,000 we will do two screenings, and for every $50,000 we will do another screening until it is time to render in high resolution at 120 blazing frames per second to make this the most spectacular 3D animation ever shown on a digital screen. If we get two or more screenings, we’ll arrange showings in LA and SF as well.

We will take advantage of the High Speed fiber and use cloud based rendering to give us glorious images that make each scene a work of art. The goal is to make a fun story that entertains as well as enlightens, and is as much fun to watch a third time as it was the first.

We expect production to cost about two million dollars – a tiny fraction of the average costs for a full length 3D animated movie. We will raise additional funds with local businesses, partners and overseas distribution. (Drakes and a few others have already committed, we want to make them happy, they make us happy!) We need to create an awesome trailer and pre-visualization or animatic to show these funding sources that we can make a 3D movie in San Leandro. This trailer and animatic will give life to the script and allow us to judge the action, dialogue, jokes and songs in a way that realistically represents the final movie, and make changes and cuts without involving the entire cast and crew, allowing smaller incremental changes. Repeating this one or even ten times allows each iteration to be closer to the final product and gives several opportunities to be even more creative and add more details that weren’t obvious before.  This kickstarter is the starting point for this process and you get to be part of it!