“So, let me get this straight. You want the four of us to do a full-length machinima feature about a marionette production of a Film Noir adaptation of Sherlock Holmes in a small town puppet theater fighting for survival, with three main characters that critique the play and each other, and are finally saved by a corporate stooge turned do-gooder? That pretty much it?” Bunraku trying to take it all in.

“Yes.”

“Red, you know I love you, but that’s too ambitious.” Even Bunraku’s optimism had its limits.

“Which is why we’re going to do it Open Source.”

The three standing around him, lacking a retort.

Bunraku the first to re-engage. “Not sure that’s a good idea. We want something that’s ours, not an unholy mess of creative control.”

“We open up only the engine mods, the models and the sets, but not the screenplay and the final cut. We give our engine, models and sets back to the community, get contributions in return, but maintain copyright over the final product.”

“So, that means…”

“…we’ve got to do four marionette characters: Holmes, Watson, the King of Bohemia and Irene Adler. Four people characters: Nigel, Stella, Carson and the Stranger. And three sets: the inside of the puppet theater, Baker Street, and Briony Lodge on Serpentine Avenue. Creating those, and the storyboards to begin with, would be you and V. Silenz would do audio engineering and music composition. We all do voices. We’ll shoot in real time using the engine once we got all the assets. Figure six months soup to nuts if we can all put in 20 hours a week.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” Shaking her head, counting off on her fingers. “We have never worked together seriously. We have never worked on machinima. And only Bunraku has ever worked on a full-length feature. Could we be less qualified?”

“Fortune favors the brave.”

“Yeah, yeah. Carpe diem. I know, I know. Just remember, he dies at the end of that movie. We are not ready for this.”