The Stars Await Us


(3D rendering provided by Samuel Crider)

The Stars Await Us, my second film project, is currently undergoing preliminary preproduction work. This film is still in the early planning stages, but a few facts and a bit of a teaser I will speak of now.

  • Projected running time of 25 minutes
  • Dialogue, hopefully English & Japanese bilingual
  • 6-8 minutes of 3D computer animation for spacecraft movements
  • Inked cels for character motions, scanned and computer painted
  • Backgrounds either painted directly in Photoshop or airbrushed scans
  • Original soundtrack (my own music, plus other composers)

    This film is set about 50 years into our future, when the European Space Agency has managed to construct two interplanetary explorer ships, the Ticonderoga and the Trafalgar, as well as the orbiting research station Serendip which shares the same design. This film tells the story of one mission undertaken by the Trafalgar and the ultimate result of the Trafalgar's chance discovery. If you watch the opening titles to No Enemy But Time very carefully, you may be able to deduce what that discovery is. This story is my "how we get there from here" concept of making the transition from isolated world to a spacefaring people. It involves quite a bit of our world coming to terms with a shameful discovery--a realization about ourselves in juxtapostion to the universe.


    The Stars Await Us / Christopher S. Rider / syzygy@mcs.com