Felicia Day

The Chronicles of Humanity is an original science fiction series that’s animated using a technique called Machinima. What’s Machinima you say? It’s created by using graphic engines from video games! Hooray! Specifically, in this case, The Sims 2 and Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. With the footage from those games and a very talented group of voice actors, including fan favorite Miss Felicia Day, the series was made possible. We spoke with the series creator Damien Valentine about the project and working with Felicia. See that interview below, but first: the trailer.

Buffyfest: Can you tell us a little bit about The Chronicles of Humanity? What’s it about?

Damien Valentine: The Chronicles of Humanity is an original science fiction animated web series, set in the 24th century. The idea is we’re only just starting to get out into space and colonize new worlds. There has never really been any conflict, which is why the whole situation on Titan is dealt with so badly in the first episode. This first season really deals with the aftermath of that, which we’ll be seeing from the perspective of three sets of characters. The story itself is planned out over a three season arc, although I can’t really talk about the other two just yet, I don’t want to give anything away.

B: We understand you approached Felicia Day to be appear pre-Dr. Horrible. Great timing!

DV: It was perfect timing and she was great to work with. The recording session was handled online between Felicia, Elizabeth (playing the part of Katherine) and myself. She was professional but also friendly, so we all enjoyed ourselves. Between takes the three of us chatted about all sorts of things, from The Guild to Star Wars and video games.

From that session and subsequent discussions, I’ve picked up quite a lot about producing video for the web, hopefully that shows up in the series.

She’s in four of the ten episodes. The first one already released and the other three are later on in the season.

B: How was working with her?

DV: It’s a great pleasure to have her involved and I hope she’ll be back for the second season.

B: This is your first original Sci fi series (after working on quite a few Star Wars films.) Any plans for a Whedonverse one?

DV: The first time I tried this sort of animation, Angel had just ended so I tried my hand and a story with vampires and slayers called Consanguinity. It came about after talking to some online friends and wondering what it would be like if we were vampires. What can I say? Joss brings out the real geek in me. I may revisit those characters someday, if I can think up a good story for them.

New episodes of The Chronicles of Humanity are released every Tuesday (that’s today!) and can be found on the site: http://www.chroniclesofhumanity.com/