Production Update (Nathan):
This week, we put out some more written content and went through several drafts of scripts for the podcast. Sifting through all of the comments about the first episode our ArkNet discord channel was a blast! The conversation really got rolling, with tons of fantastic input from a lot of really smart people. I’m really glad that we decided at the beginning that we’d go with the most reacted-to and echoed sentiments, because dang, a lot of the suggestions were awfully persuasive. But the final decision about “the railgun or the telescope?” has been made, and boy, are we excited for what’s coming in the next episode! We made changes not only to the story based on the feedback we’ve been getting, but also on the types of questions we’re asking and how we’re presenting information about the world, based on how this first round went. I expect that that course-correction process will continue as we keep feeling this thing out. Research this week involved looking into internet radicalization pipelines, rhetoric, business management, and game design. My favorite quote this week was “It takes a lunatic to start something like this, but even greater lunatics to get on board with it.” I’m excited to see how this second episode lands!
Animation Update (Brianne):
We had another exciting week of writing, discussion, and planning for the upcoming podcast episode. We’ve had a lot of fun incorporating the feedback and discussion from our community discord server. A lot of research has gone into this next episode, so that’s where I’ve primarily been involved in addition to preparing motion graphics for the next episode.
Technology Update (James):
I am still making progress on our “secret” project. Hopefully we will be able to talk about it soon, but for now there isn’t a whole ton that I can report. The Discord bot has been a great success! We are very happy to have a way for our writing team to interface with our audience between podcast episodes!
Community Update (Christine):
We had a really busy week this week community-wise! Like Nathan said, we had to lock in the decision this week about “the railgun or the telescope” and it was a lot of fun to go through everyones comments and see where the conversation went. There were some incredibly well thought out ideas and it was a lot of fun to read through! Also with the finalization of the script for the next episode, I have spent this week getting things ready for the next big question for discussion in this episode. It’s going to be intense, so I hope you all are ready for this! I also spent a good amount of this week preparing for a Memorial Day gathering with our whole creative team. Because of Covid, most of us had never met in person – only virtually! It was a lot of fun getting to know our team better and get a chance to share the vision we have for Celestial Horizons with everyone.
