I guess most of the help I'd need is rigging and sequencing. Some form of particle effects (at least mimicking) would be helpful too. I am no where near being proficient with the lip synching. And any improvements or suggestions on models would be great too. I'd like it to be a collaborative project. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but that would be my ideal scenario.
I've been involved in a zero-budget collaboration for some years now, and from a CGI artist's perspective the most critical things are a story/script and a visual storyboard. As you would be aware, developing 3D imagery is VERY time consuming, any artists wanting to get on board with a project will need to know that the work they are doing is "right" and they're not wasting time designing, building, rigging, animating and rendering assets that don't fit the story and won't ultimately be used. In my case the writer/director provides descriptive but relatively low-detail storyboards, or searches the web for images that have the right kind of feel for what he needs. Without these I would have left the project a long time ago.
Putting together a 'development team' to throw around ideas and build concepts into a script and storyboard would also be worthwhile. As a real-world example, the author of The Martian book (and movie) crowd-sourced a lot of the science in the story, since he wasn't particularly science-literate.
As johnar says, and as I can attest from experience, it is a huge job driving a collaborative project of this sort. You are likely to have artists drop in and out of the project so you will want to have a central location for assets (we use a Google drive extended to 100GB) to ensure you don't lose anything. I have seen great projects crash and burn due to a single participant going AWOL and taking their models with them.
I am over-committed with projects at the moment and wouldn't be able to assist in any direct way, but if you are really keen to do this (and you will need to be really keen) I encourage you to do it. It can be fun, inspiring and rewarding, however you need to remember that there is nothing in it for anybody in any real sense, other than a sense of achievement, seeing your name in the credits and, if you're lucky, maybe picking up a couple of awards here and there. The more work you can do up-front with the story and storyboard the more likely you will be to attract and keep artists in the project.
With nothing but sincerity I wish you well and I hope it does happen, it's been a while since I've seen a collaborative project based on Anim8or and with recent developments to the platform I think it's long overdue.
