A look back at Lunatics Project work over the year of 2023:

• Migrating Production Sources from Git/Gitea to Nextcloud.
• Moving to VS Codium, from Eclipse.
• Ragdoll Rig for the "Space Bunny" doll.
• Consolidating Self-Maanaged, Fediverse-Based Site (Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, PeerTube, Wordpress, Nextcloud, Gitea).
• Purchased and Prepared a server for colocating our project site in a datacenter.
• Refactoring LunaGen static website generator.
• Tried out doing "real time screencasts" (but dropped this as too time-intensive).
• New "PLSS Control Panel" prop.
• Website / Virtual Studio Revisions.
• Collected more CC-0 Audio F/X clips.
• Tested configuration for Disk Duplicator robotics driver development.
• Animated the pod-staging shot with updated assets and rigging.
• Several updates to the all of the Soyuz Flight exterior spacecraft animations.
• Tested direct and virtualized installations of virtual studio site (Debian, Proxmox VE, and YunoHost).
• Caught up on the 2023 Creative Freedom Summit.
• Learned (more) about Computer Networking from FreeCodeCamp.org class.
• Installed a new high-efficiency heat pump in the studio for heating and cooling. Much easier to concentrate!
• Began work on reconstructing the TR "Train" sequence (there were a number of technical problems with these files).
• Used Inkscape's new font folders feature to organize my fonts and speed up my design workflow.
• Started developing my EXR Compositing workflow (what I need to do after rendering).
• Created a new testing system for Anansi Blender Extensions (ABX), to make supporting multiple versions of Blender easier.
• Revised several shots to get better pacing.
• Completed assembly edits and review of all of the sequences in the pilot episode to determine what's missing and adjust overall pacing.
• Started using the server machine to do rendering, which has been a huge speedup.
• Added "billboard extras" and "crowd panels" to shots that require them.
• Finished rendering many shots that had only been in the GL "animatic" stage before.
• Documenting optical disk technology for Bunsen / Lib-Ray projects to create a better fixed media format for free-culture releases.
• Much additional character animation in the LA "Launch" sequence (I'm getting a lot better at this).
• Documented the 2023 state of our Virtual Studio / project website.
• Created plans for the 2024 colocated dedicated server version of the Virtual Studio.
• Multiple versions of Blender (2.71, 2.79b, 2.83LTS, 2.93LTS, 3.0.0, 3.6.5LTS, 4.0.1) installed and working on my workstation (from blender.org binaries).
• Also installed these versions of Blender on the server for use in rendering.
• Finally re-animating the shots from the 2013 "Teaser Trailer", but with new assets (character models, Soyuz interior set, etc).
• Fixed problems with the video texture rigging in the Soyuz control panel, and changed to a combined single video texture, so I can manage synchronization in Kdenlive for easier animation in Blender.

Did not quite get our pilot episode finished, but I think I'm actually close now. Hope to finish that in the first quarter of 2024 now (i.e. by April).

Lunatics is a team project, despite having dwindled down to me for now, so please check the credits at lunatics.tv for contributors.