Thanks :)

Regarding YouTube: all in good time. We'd prefer to release a properly-edited trailer rather than single shots out of context.

You have a Serenity Model? Where did you get it? Me want.

He will be, Or has already got one(I have been out of the loop due to not being in the province) from Elfsar in Yaletown.

Sera's correct - the Serenity Ornament is now available from Dark Horse, through comic book retailers. I got mine at Elfsar, which is a very ITB friendly store.

The ornament is 5 or 6 inches in length, and can either be hung from a string, or displayed on a stand.

It's pretty slick.

Hehe, maybe the Captain would be willing to have himself laser-scanned :D I hear it's not that painful if you wear good sunblock.

Sure, why the hell not? I'm not above a little sunburn for my art :)

I'm compositing with After Effects 5.5, though I've been experimenting with CinePaint and Jahshaka lately. AE will probably be the main compositor for all my ItB stuff, just cuz I'm familiar with it.

I use Maxon Cinema 4D 9.6 for modeling, animation and rendering, and Photoshop 7.0 for textures.

Once again, there is no ambient light on in this scene (or any other). The entire thing is lit by two omni lights. You'll note that in the 4th pic there is a large shadow cast by the wing in the lower-right corner, which is pitch black. I never use ambient lights. All the planetside stuff will be rendered with radiosity, obscene render times and all.

When I now look at it again, it actually looks pretty good. I think It is just that I was brought up with B5 and they went to extremes in non-existant ambient light and razor sharp shadows.

Either way, I can't wait to see something high-res and full-motion of this little darling.

Actually, that's because it just looks exactly like that in deep space. Just as Firefly kept consistent with silence in the space shots. I'm guessing you'll be doing the same?

It doesn't look as deep space now as the stars layer might be a little too bright, the sky looks cluttered with stars now.

Any chance we might see shots with Samsara's own lights on? Can't wait to see some nice flickering strobe/anti-collision/landing lights :)

First off, our space shots will be silent. It's appalling how few sci-fi shows figure that one out.

Secondly, it's really hard to pick a brightness for the ship, stars, planets and shipboard lights. In deep space the ship would be black, the running lights incredibly intense (if you bothered to have them on at all...) and the stars would be bright and would fill every inch of the sky.

However, no part of the Firefly verse ever approaches deep space. They are confined to the single system, so deep space conditions would only be approximated in the shadow of a planet. So the ship is illuminated by a pair of co-located omni lights to approximate sunlight. Only the brightest stars are visible, though in this case there would really be no visible stars at all, as the ship is so brightly illuminated. But having a black sky would be confusing to some, and also makes it very hard to convey a sense of motion without reference points in the background, so I keep the stars artificially bright so the animation doesn't look weird. It's unfortunate that physical accuracy so often conflicts with what "looks right", and forces this kind of compromise.