October 30th Update

Another week and more concept art, this time a business woman:

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I had a bit of fun with the colors with this one, the suit colours are the same as the last extra but I wanted to make the hair a bit more out there, especially since this set were based on exotic birds. I’ve been doing research on extras in animation, and it would seem my estimate of six per sector is pretty on the money, check out this analysis of star wars rebels I found:

This has actually given me a lot of hope for the future, since I’ve found the take of designing extras a lot more intimidating that the main characters, just through the sheer volume that I’ll need to do. That being said, I’ve been trying to focus on taking this one template at a time, but its still going to take a long time, I’m giving each district 6 template characters, and I have 21 districts including a black market sector, so in total I have 126 templates to draw, so my main concern is which districts I can reuse extras on, the areas I have are as follows, with the human areas called sectors and the Otherkin areas called Districts:

• The Government Sector
• The Business Sector
• The Commercial Sector
• The Military Sector
• The Residential Sector
• the Industrial Sector
• The Entertainment Sector
• The Processing Sector
• The Research Sector
• The Agriculture sector
• The garden of Remembrance (a human owned area)
•  The Upper District
• The Mining District
• The Factory District
• The Business district
• The Residential District
• The Industrial District
• The Warehouse district
• The Market District
• the Focus Training Dojos (Otherkin Owned)
• The Lower district (or the slums, Neutral for both Humans and Otherkin)
• The Black Market (Also Neutral)

There are some smaller areas as well, but I’m planning on reusing templates there, over the next week or so, I’m going to see which of those areas I can get away with re-using templates in so I can reduce those 126 drawings, For example, the Mining, Indrustial, and Warehouse districts will all be using Otherkin Labourers, so I may use the same six template extras for those three areas. I’ll have a list in the Next update for all the extras designs I’ll be needing.

Speaking of templates, I’ve started work on the new female template:

You’ll have to forgive the gap in the middle, I’m only building half the model and copying and flipping it to give you guys a better idea of my progress, it looks very similar to the original templates, but under the surface is much cleaner for animation, the eyes and mouth have a lot more detail in them and the mesh structure around the mouth and eyes will look more natural when I’m animating it. I’ve been working off youtube videos, but its actually amazing how few people using blender take into account the muscle structure of the face when modelling and focus on only the appearance of the model, as a result the models look great up until the point were you move the features. That being said even my own model could use work, but its definitely been a lesson in “choose your teachers well”.

Speaking of learning I’ve been looking for ways of story boarding, so far the only thing that seems reliable is drawing the boards myself in photoshop, but that’s adding to my drawing workload, which from above is pretty extensive as is. there seems to be plenty of software out there for story boarding, but its all insanely expensive, and honestly seems more limiting then just drawing them myself, so for now I’m just sticking with that, Drawing in photoshop, and creating animatics in flash

That’s all for this week, till next time.

Marc Out~~

October 23rd Update

Bit of a different update this week, my first batch of extras:

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I’m pretty happy with how different a simple palette swap make them, The Otherkin in the story are similar to the faunus in Rwby, in that the have at least one animal trait, but unlike Rwby, I’m planning on having the animal trait be varying in how predominant it will be from person to person, these three look pretty human, I’m going to try have the next batch look a little less human. But I’m happy with the speed I got these done, I should be able to mill though these in less time than i thought.

In 3D news, I’ve figured out how to make the graffiti! I won’t bore you with the technical details, but basically the Problem was That I was mixing shaders, rather then the image colours, here’s the finished result:

It doesn’t look like much, but this opens up a world of options for me to help set scenes, Dirt, signs, moss, even blood smears, I don’t have to make custom textures every time I want to have an interesting wall, so I’m pretty pleased with this development.

That’s all for this week, till then.

Marc Out ~~

October 9th Update

One of the most inhuman looking characters Kusanagi Tsurugi (yeah the name is a total mouthful!)

I wanted to have a character that shows the ranges of humanity Otherkin have, so I wanted one that was barely recognisable as human, he has heavy influences from the Saurians from outlaw star:

I toyed around with the idea of giving him hair, but I could tell even without colouring it it looked kinda ridiculous, so I left it at that. I’ll have to nearly make a custom model for his head, but I’m learning that its far easier to animate snouts than faces, so it shouldn’t be too much extra effort. I also decided to curl his wings out backward, but I’m not sure I like the look of that, I may change it once I’m doing the model.

As to the updates on the new template models, I am working on them, but the only one I have I’ve done in Maya, and i still don’t know how to render and export in it yet, so you’ll have to wait for that, its a little stylised for what I want (I was following a tutorial, in class) I’m working to get some notes from my lecturer so I can remake it in blender.

I have one more character that’s relevant to the story I’ll be concepting, then I plan on moving to background extras, up until now I’ve been using these concepts to practise my posing and proportions, but luckily I’ll be working on that regularly in college. So I’m going to cut a few corners to get the ideas on paper faster. I really want to bump up the speed on this pre-production so I can get to the cool looking parts, but I have to be careful not to let the quality of the production slip as a result.

Lot’s of planning this week, but with next week’s character I’ll be hitting my first Character milestone, I’m looking forward to it

Till then

Marc Out~~

September 26th Update

Here is this week’s character concept, Sakata Kintaro:

I really liked the story behind his name sake, and it was this character that inspired basing the support cast around Japanese mythology. there are little aspects I added from a gender bend version of the old legend that I decided unbend back into a male character:

if your thinking the image is a little washed out, that’s the style of the whole film, Kai Doh Maru, honestly I don’t suggest watching the film, but I really liked this character’s design, in particular the tattoo on the left arm.
As much as I like the design I made, I’m probably going to change it to look more European, the same with Haru and Sho from previous posts, to help highlight the differences between the two species, but I’m still going to post up all version here to document the evolution of the designs.

Also in concept news, I’m finding college very time consuming, so I’m giving warning that these character designs are going to get a bit sporadic, I have next week’s done, but after that I’m not sure I’ll have one done in time, I’ll still post every week, but it’s probably going to be more experimenting with Blender and planning my next step.

Speaking of Blender and 3D work I’ve added a tiny bit more to the blue business district in my city:

Its not a huge change from last week, just a few buildings at the lower side of the district, but its that area filled.
I’ve also been thinking in how i’m going to add more detailed buildings to the city when its all full, I think the best course of action is to take an orthographic render, make some template buildings and use the render as a blueprint to place them, its a puzzle I’m still working on.

Also I’ve started planning the second season script out, it might be early days for it, but I really want to hit the ground running with this project, I’ve decided that I want each season to have a theme, and each theme is a step in the hero’s journey, so the first season was the ordinary world, so this season will be the call to adventure, will I do each stage of the hero’s journey? Probably not, as far as I know, there is around sixteen stages, and I haven’t got the story even close to that well planned out to do a season for each, but I really enjoy applying the hero’s journey in different ways to tell a story and the different ways of using it for the foundation of a plot. Basically my little writing challenge in Fade is to see if I can use it to tell both an over arcing and season to season story at the same time. Time will tell.

That’s all for this week

Marc Out ~~

September 19th Update

This week’s character is Commander Izanagi, the counterpart of last week’s character:

I wanted to show a contrast between him and Izanami, so I took a number of European military uniforms for insperation

While it really wasn’t my intention he actually ended up looking a lot like Credo from devil may cry:

I think there may still be enough differences to have him considered “original”, plus Devil may cry is going to be a BIG influence on the animation of the series, so I think I’ll be keeping him as is.

In other news I’ve added more to my city:

Nothing major other then filling up the Otherkin business district (light blue) and the lower sector (black) I’m still trying to think of how I’ll do the final detailed view of the city, but I’ll worry about that once I’ve done some concepts of each district

Finally I’ve started my animation course, which I’m really excited to get my teeth into, learning to use Maya is a bit jarring, especially with all my blender muscle memory, and I’m having a little trouble with the life drawing, but all in all it feels just right for me, challenging, but achievable, I’m planning on placing my work on my tumblr page: Which you can find here

I can’t wait to get good at it

Anyway talk you you guys next week

Marc Out~~

September 12th Update

One of the first characters I drew for fade, Commander Izanami

This was one of the first characters I sat down and drew. I would have put her up first, but I wanted to place the main characters and supporting cast of the story up first. Overall I like the design, but I’m not sure it fully fits the character, she’s from the non-human side of the conflict (I should have pointed it out on the image, but the face markings are not makeup or tattoos) so I wanted to have a real contrast of cultures, but many of the characters previous to this one have Japanese influences so I might have to rethink a few of them. I was going for a imperial empress look with her and used a lot of traditional kimonos in references

in particular this image inspired the head piece, which I really like, and I think will stay in the design regardless of the changes I make

In other developments I’ve added a slum area (which I’ve coloured black) to my city along with a few other changes:

While these are still very rough, it was fun coming up with how to visually show this area, so I decided to place the roads in this part, to show how densely packed this area is supposed to me, I think I might do something similar in some of the other areas. I’ve also increased the height of the central tower to make it more visually striking, and finally I’ve added a few more buildings to the blue business district.

Finally in non-fade related news, I’m starting my animation course tomorrow, this shouldn’t affect this blog too much, but the size I usually make these blogs may shrink a bit. I’m actually hoping that I’ll be able to use the course to work on show with better equipment and make some contacts that will be willing to help out, not to mention get some do’s and don’t’s for concepting and animation.

Wish me luck!

Marc Out~~

September 4th update

I’m going with a new way for naming my post updates, because eventually I’m going to run out of concept art to show at some point, that being said here is this week’s character Sho:

his full name is Sho Tsukuyomi, like Haru from last week he’s based partially off of a Shinto god, in this case Tsukuyomi:

However I also took a lot of ideas on the color scheme from the shin megami tensei versions:

I kept with the Japanese inspired look from Haru, and worked on making a male counterpart overall, while its a little plain in comparison to previous characters, I really like it.

In other news I’ve been adding rough building to my city, and its starting to fill up nicely:

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I’ve added buildings to four sections of the city: a residential sector(yellow) , a warehouse sector (brown), a dojo region (Purple) and a factory area (Orange, which looks a little off because of the shine), and I’ve started adding a second business sector which is light blue.

I’m Also trying to decide the best way to move ahead with Rigging my template models, I have two options: A) Pre-rig the models with a complex rig for talking/body language and a simple rig for fight scenes and rapid movement, or B) do only the simple rig for templates and create the more complex rig for after I create each character’s unique appearance, and customise it for each appearance. Its a choice I have to be careful how I approach because it could lead to slowing my work flow later on. Either way I’ll keep you guys posted as I go.

Till next week

Marc Out~~

Haru and 3D Models

Here are two possible designs for the first support character of the story, Haru:

I’m basing her largely of Amaterasu from Shinto, but also slightly from Okami too:

I’m pretty on board with the colour scheme, its just how to apply it, I feel the one on the left is a bit more distinct, but the one on the right looks better overall, and since she’s a less important character I feel that she doesn’t really have to be that distinct

In other news I’ve basically got as far as I can go with the modelling of my male template, and its looking pretty good:

I’ve already placed seams on him for UV unwrapping and texturing, the next step is said texturing and rigging, hopefully that will stop them looking like aliens finally!

I’ve also done a little bit with the city, I’ve added a road and rail system to my rough map, and it has made a real difference, in the new area I’ve been adding:

The roads aren’t visible yet, but it’s helped to place buildings in a manageable way rather then just plonk them downs anywhere. I also think the rail system is going to add a nice touch to the city for the big sweeping fly-bys. I’m going to be spending time building up the different structures of the city over the next few days, so all those empty planes are going to fill up rapidly now, knowing were all the roads go automatically lets me know where plazas and open areas should be, and will really help the place look authentic!

I’m really looking forward to working on it now

Until next week!

Marc Out~~

The masked man and template update

Here we have the character that I was looking forward to designing the most, the Villain of the first season, The masked man:

I really wanted to go with something simple but striking, so I started with the Mask and worked outward, so the mask would be the main focal point of the whole design. The Mask itself is a combination of two masks, The Court of Owls from batman, and the white half of Shuuya’s mask from Mekakucity Actors:

When i looked at Shuuya’s mask I got the idea of the black teeth and used it to make the court of owls mask look more beast-like, I also toyed around with the idea of giving the mask nose holes, which I think I’ll keep it gives it a more skull like appearance and sets it apart a bit more from the court of owls.

In other news I’m making steady progress on my male template, partially thanks to my earlier female template, all that’s left is the hands, a little more definition around the legs and once again softening the face again:

Overall I’m very happy with the result, but I have always found modelling guys easier than girls, after this I’ll have to work on texturing, I’ve largely been putting it off with the female template, but once I’m done with the Male template model I’ll have to cross that bridge. I’m also predicting a few problems with rigging, in particular the face and fingers and with creating Hair, in particular eyelashes, Blender has a few robust hair simulator, but that’s really only for larger masses of hair, rather than finer, more detailed ones. I’ll be looking up a few tutorials online, and if I find any good ones I might link them in future posts.

On a final note I’ve decided to rethink the city layout from a few posts ago, partially due to a massive oversight on my part: I forgot to include roads. It’s a pretty hilarious thing to overlook but it wasn’t until I was actually placing down blocks that I realised that I wasn’t leaving any space for people to get around! But I’ll keep you guys updated as I detail it out.

Till then

Marc Out~~

Anguis and template progress

The final blindfold code member Anguis:

I really like the design of this character, I wanted to have one character in bight colours to really highlight the darker colours of the others, he’s based largely off of Shuuya and Hibiya from Mekakucity Actors.

I also really liked the mask shuuya has in several pictures of him, so I’ve used it as inspiration for another character I’ll be showing at a later date. The One thing I don’t like is my actual artwork, I’m really not at a professional standard, and while it works for concepts, its going to be a pain if I ever need to do any 2D artwork. I have an illustrator who said they would help, but until I have some way to pay them, I really don’t feel comfortable having them do the massive amounts of artwork that may be required. I’ll update you guys as I brainstorm this.

In 3D news I’ve been working away at the male template character, which is coming along nicely:

Most of the work went into the face, which I had to rebuild a couple of times to make it easier to unwrap later, but so far its really benefited from my work on the female template. Like with the female template I’m planning on leaving the hands and finer muscle detail till nearly till the end, but overall its progressing nicely.

So now that our villains are out of the way what’s next? Well next week I’ll be going into the supporting cast of the show!

Till then

Marc Out ~~