June 11th update and 3rd year Anniversary recap

Another Landmark concept this week, this week for the entertainment District:

I really liked the idea of a Ferris wheel against the city’s skyline, but I wanted to make it a bit more interesting, its faint but inside there are orbs, I vision these as chambers that contain a floor that stays level no matter what way the wheel turns, so people can stand and look onto n the city.

 

In other news the 3rd anniversary of this Blog was on the 6th of June, I ended up missing it, which disappointing me greatly. I feel those kinda of dates are important. But none the less it doesn’t take away from what I’ve accomplished this year.

The biggest thing was completing the base building concepts which was frankly something I had been dreading, and I can honestly say it really did try my patience but thankfully that has lifted somewhat with the landmarks as I’ve been making them.

Overall I have two years to reach my milestone of the first episode, but unlike last year I’m not so confident I’ll reach that deadline in the time I have with the workflow I currently am using, but my schedule with college and other responsibilities prevent me from working faster.  Its something I’m very frustrated by, I’ve been wondering how I should go about making things easier for myself, I have a few options:

• Firstly I could do the storyboards before concepting the interior sets, so I can plan them out more efficiently but this could delay my completion of the interior concepts and prevent me giving proper care.
• Secondly I can start story-boarding the first episode while I’m working on the Interiors but this will tighten my already tight schedule.
• Third only concept the interior scenes for the first episode before moving onto the storyboards, this would speed up the development of the first episode and reduce my initial workload, but drags out the development of later episodes significantly since those concepts will have to be drawn and built at some point.

I still haven’t decided which of these approaches I’ll take, I have seven landmarks to complete, so I have seven weeks to decide, but I’m leaning toward the third option, since it will help me keep to my original deadline better and break up the work into something that feels more achievable.

I’m still working to follow my initial plan:

But I think in the next year I’ll be tweaking it, moving Marketing to a later in the chain, but I’m still not sure as to where, its a big part of the process and something I’ll probably spend money on, but my initial attempts to gauge my audience from animatics hasn’t gone well with some of my personal animatics. Where I’m going to market it will take some thought too, I don’t want ride on Rwby’s coattails and frankly I think the story can stand up on its own, so I want to find alternative avenues to find the audience.

I still maintain that once I’m done with the concepts I’ll be able to progress very rapidly, I’m faster at 3d modeling and rigging than producing well rendered art, so I don’t thing those parts of the plan will change much.

Overall I feel I’m going into next year with a more realistic outlook in the project, recently the show took some bumps, but I felt I learned from that, and I’m still optimistic for the future.

Anyway that’s it for this week, the progress list is as follows:

• Character Concepts
  • Background extras:42/42
  • Main Characters: 13/13
  • Main character re-designs: 5/5
  • Secondary Character: 14/14
  • Secondary Character re-designs: 5/5
• Weapon Concepts
  • Main Characters: 12/12
  • Secondary Characters: 7/7
  • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Landmarks:8/15
  • Exteriors:39/39

Thank you all for continuing to follow the show’s development, until Next time,

Marc Out ~~

2nd Year Anniversary and Review

Well its June 6th, which means that I’ve been posting on this blog for 2 years now and working on the project for 3 years, and like Last year I’m planning on doing a little review of what I’ve done over the year.

So the biggest milestone I completed was the background extra’s concepts, which I’m glad to have out of the way, out of all the concepts I had to do that group was the most numerous, even more so than the buildings I’m working on now, it was the most intimidating thing in the project so far, and if nothing else I’m proud of the sheer amount I was able to get down on paper.

The Second big milestone was finishing the main characters and their re-designs, which was satisfying to see all the realised characters on paper, I still want to draw a group shot showing differences in body type and height but for now I’m happy to just have usable reference for modeling each character.

Tying in with that was the completion and re-design of the weapons, this was a big detail character wise to complete since I feel in a fighting cartoon, weapons help show personality, and having reference for each weapon is going to be so useful in the future.

Not everything was good news this year though, I had to part ways with my volunteer composer Maxim, after realising that he wasn’t the best fit for the project, we didn’t fall out, and I’d love to work with him again on a project better suited to his style of music, but it does feel like a frustrating failure on my part for being unable to direct him in the way both he and the project needed. I’ve realised that honestly the only real option is to keep searching and save money to hire someone who can fit the j-punk/anime tone of the show.

Overall 3 years into my 5 year goal I’m actually still confident I can meet the deadline of producing the first episode, I’m actually well over half way through the conception stage, which is by far the most difficult to get through for me, since its working from practically nothing. once they are done I have a jumping off point for everything.

The overall plan still remains the same as last year, if any of you guy remember the spaghetti sprawl:

since last year I have realised a few things are going to be more difficult than I first pictured, like the marketing, but I’ve learned a lot about 3d Modeling and rigging since last year. but if all goes according to plan, I may be able to move onto a few of the next stages in this upcoming year.

Its been a productive year and hopefully I’ll continue building momentum.
Here’s to the progress to come!

Till Next week

Marc Out~~

April 24th Update

Last redesign this week, Ash’s weapon:

There wasn’t a lot to really change with this design, the handle placement was a bit awkward, I also wanted to change the handle colour,

I’m still not sure if I should give it a grip texture, but I’ll have to wait and see when I model it.

And that’s it for character concepts, I’m officially past the halfway point of the concept process, next up is the environment concepts, I’m a little apprehensive to start these, since I’ve so little experience drawing places, but if this project has taught me anything, its that the best way to learn is to jump in headfirst!

So starting next week, we’ll be starting the different sections of the city, I’ve broken it down into four building per section, one landmark building and three generic buildings to break up the background. for sections of the city that won’t be central to the story I’ll still have to provide a landmark to identify the section when wide shots of the full city are shown, but I’m going to place hold them with buildings I’ve already made.
For the progress list I’m going to I’m going to add a separate section for the landmarks, since they’ll require more detail and approach the generic buildings in sets of three, similar to what I did for the background characters.

So, for this week the list is as follows:

• Character Concepts
  • Background extras:42/42
  • Main Characters: 13/13
  • Main character re-designs: 5/5
  • Secondary Character: 14/14
  • Secondary Character re-designs: 5/5
• Weapon Concepts
  • Main Characters: 12/12
  • Secondary Characters: 7/7
  • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Landmarks:0/15
  • Exteriors: 0/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

 

April 2nd Update

First of the four weapon redesigns, Naga’s:

I basically combined the elements I liked from the previous designs into one, and honestly I’ve think I’ve got the best of of the three in one design

I wish I had more this week, if I all the redesigns go as quick as this one I could potentially do more than one, but I hit a pretty major wall of creative resistance, which doesn’t happen often, but thanks to the deadline i give myself each week I was able to power through it.

Which makes me realise I haven’t talked much about my creative process in general, so I will a little now.
The first an most important thing I want to point out is that everyone has different ways of working, some people might have more efficient ways, but this is what works for me.

I go to college in Dublin, when I get home I only really have two hours to myself after I’m done with homework and such, and its very easy to sit and watch movies or play games until I have to sleep, so I make a deal with myself, I sit down and try to work for  one hour. The key word here is try, and its really important, creativity sort of comes and goes like the tide, its very easy to say that you don’t have motivation and give up on working, don’t do that, its a trap. You might not get much done, but it is very important to get something done, anything you do get done is something your won’t have to do next time, even if its a line or two of a drawing or a word or two of a script.

The second thing that’s important in my work is limitations, I have a lot of this story planned out, but I’m only focusing on the parts that are urgent, I’ve had people disagree with what those urgency are, but these ultimately need to be done eventually, but in this project its important that certain elements do get a second look, particularly designs involving main characters, so I need to limit how main times I go back and tweak things, for concepts I’m allowing myself one loop of redesigns and for storyboards I’m going to allow two.

Finally comes the balance of scope, and this is a tricky one, Fade is a big project for one person, and keeping a view of the overall vision of the project is important, but in order to not get overwhelmed it has to be broken down into smaller steps, and again into sub-steps, a small step is far easier to achieve than a large one, but you’d be amazed how many people only see the big steps when I talk about this project. But there are down sides to the small steps too, if there are two many it can feel like the project is dragging on, and complicate planning, so its important to step back and view the larger scope again.
All in all, be adaptable, and be productive and things tend to slot into place

So there we go, I don’t know how many people will read this, but I hope it helps those that do.

Anyway, here is this week’s progress:

• Character Concepts
  • Background extras:42/42
  • Main Characters: 13/13
  • Main character re-designs: 5/5
  • Secondary Character: 14/14
  • Secondary Character re-designs: 5/5
• Weapon Concepts
  • Main Characters: 12/12
  • Secondary Characters: 7/7
  • Weapon Redesigns: 1/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

February 19th Update

The Next weapon concept, Sho’s Weapon:

I’ll be honest, I rushed this one a bit, I was very limited on time this week, so I largely took the idea of the chakram from Xena warrior Princess, recoloured it and made them split apart into two dagger like blades.

I’m not overly concerned about it not being very original, since Sho doesn’t have many fights in the script, but I wanted to include it for completeness sake.

In other news I’m thinking of doing a few redesigns with the weapons like with the actual Character designs, I’m going to finish the current weapons on my list though first, I really don’t want to be that kind of creator that keeps going back a tweaking things and never finishing the project, but going back and revising designs is an important part of my plan:

At each stage I have to be willing to go back and make sure everything works before moving forward. That being said, this is the most time consuming part next to the actual storyboards and animating, it’s essentially the foundation for everything, so its important to get it right early on.

Anyway, here is this week’s progress:

• Character Concepts
  • Background extras:42/42
  • Main Characters: 13/13
  • Main character re-designs: 5/5
  • Secondary Character: 14/14
  • Secondary Character re-designs: 5/5
• Weapon Concepts
  • Main Characters: 12/12
  • Secondary Characters: 2/7
  • Weapon Redesigns: 0/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

June 19th Update

Last of the blindfold code followers, after this one I only have six more background extras to do!

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Its pretty exciting seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on a big milestone like this.

I also love the the logos I designed for these followers, I’m going to for a punk anarchist look with them, so that’s kind of inspired the logos as well. I’m going to really focus on using these for inspiration when I’m re-designing some of the blindfold code members.

I’ve also bee brainstorming how I’m going to handle concepting the environments and scenes of the show, and I think I have an idea, I’m going to handle it in a similar way to how I’ve been handling these background extras. I’m going to start with just buildings and draw only three or four buildings for each section of the city. However I’m still going to hold off on those until I have all the character concepts for season one done.

So here is my current status on concepts:

• Background extras:36/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 1/5
• Secondary Character: 7/12
• Secondary Character re-designs: 0/4

These numbers may rise and fall as the series develops, but I’m going to start including the milestones on whatever I’m doing with each post from here on out.

That’s all for this Update
Until next week

Marc Out~~

First year Anniversary and Review

So today is the Anniversary of the blog and I want to look back over the progress I’ve made in the year. No Images with this post, but maybe in future anniversaries, for now I’m just going to reflect on what I’ve learned.

The Biggest thing I’ve realised is the importance of networking and delegating, things like writing a script and and thinking about ideas are easy, but implementing them often takes more effort than you realise and anyone you can find with a speciality to take some of the weight off you is worth their weight in gold.

After that I’ve learned the motivating power of money, when I started this blog I was hoping that I could find volunteers willing to do it for free, but I realise now that this was a bit naive and honestly unrealistic, which at first was very disheartening. However I’ve also learned that the ways of getting a budget are actually fairly achievable, it just requires a bit  extra work, some networking and a bit of planning.

Speaking of planning that leads me nicely onto the next lesson I’ve taken from this first year of working on Fade, not to jump ahead of my steps. My old plan looks a bit like this:
Scrips->Assets->Storyboard-> Animatic->animate->edit->Market->release to public
This plan is only good on paper, and is hilariously simple, this is what my current plan roughly looks like:

that complicated mess looks more disorganised but is a lot more realistic, and encourages me to go back and edit if something isn’t working. I’m also aware that this plan is going to change again, probably multiple times as I get better overseeing and more importantly finishing projects, which this blog has been essential to teaching me, by giving myself this weekly deadline, I’ve learned how to put myself under pressure to finish things.

Finally I can report that I’m nearly done with my character concepts, which is the brunt of the work I’ve done this year, since I’m so close to finishing off the background extras I’ll do a separate post when I finish them all. At the time of writing this I have 20 images of the main cast and 34 templates with three variations each coming to a total of 103 images of extras leading to a total of 123 concepts done which in one year I think is pretty good.

I still have a lot to do and a long way to go even before I start marketing and gaining a budget. But its been a fun ride so far.

Till Next week

Marc Out~~

May 29th Update

Missed last week’s update unfortunately, College project got in the way, but for the next few months I’m free, so I can promise it won’t happen again. So without further delay, onto the last Businessman extra:

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I decided to go for a richer looking design, so I decided to add a waistcoat, which I think adds an elegance to the design, The colours are recycled from some of the earlier designs but I decided to darken them to help them fade into the background better.

In other news I’ve been looking into project management and figuring out how to let people keep track of the project without having to decipher the massive amounts of notes and spreadsheets, and I found a project managment App Archmule, which will let you know exactly what I’m working on at a given time, you can check out the objective list here:
https://archmule.com/@marcconroy/fade-season-1/

I was also planning on starting to gather voice actors over the summer, but after listening to another episode of tip of the tongue (Which I totally suggest you check out) Made me realise that I was jumping ahead of myself again, so I’m altering my pipeline a bit to compensate, music and Voice acting will be left till a bit later, and for now I’m going to continue producing concept art, the hope is that I can build an “Art Bible” for the show, so if I can bring on other people to model and animate I can just show them the rough ideas for assets and they can build them. I’m also going to redouble my efforts for the story boards and animatic, since I can use temp music and my own voice to work out timing.
I’m reluctant to use temp music, since I wanted an original score and honestly I wanted to avoid it, but in the efforts of producing a proof of concept it’s a necessary evil. The great thing about keeping everything just to an animatic is that their far easier to edit that a rendered animation.

That’s basic plan for the next two or three months, next week we’ll be onto a new background extra template.

Till next week,

Marc Out~~

February 27th Update

A double helping of concepts this week, first up a set of chameleon slum dwellers:

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Not really much to talk about with this one, I based the coat off of Yukine’s from Noragami

The Colours I just experimented around to try get some neutral colours, but I might dull them down so they don’t distract from the main characters.

The Second batch is a set of fox girls:

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I based this design off of Kitty from No Evil, a great independent animation series based on old native american legends and fables, its pretty entertaining. But with this second template concept I am now not only done with Slum dwellers, but I am also exactly half way through my background character concepts! It’ll be great to finally be done with them and back to the more interesting things, like the other scripted characters.

In other news I’ve been working on a budget for the show as a whole, and even when I take on most of the process myself it still turns out insanely expensive, Voice actors is the big one, because even hiring people who treat it like a hobby  is going to cost me at the very least a grand, and that’s being very optimistic. This gives me two options: A) build up money and hire one voice actor at a time, or B) Approach hobby voice actors and beg them to do the work on faith or for free. Both this options have signification cons to them, Option A will cause the project to slow to a snail’s pace, and its already at a crawl. And Option B will leave the project at the mercy of people who will have no investment in the project’s completion, or may be unreliable.
I’m also tempted to try crowd funding, however Fade has no real fan base yet, and without a trailer or first episode, there is no proof I can actually do what I’m setting out to do, so the odds of a kickstarter or patreon succeeding are slim at best. Honestly this isn’t a urgent problem yet, but it is an important one. So I’ll probably bring it up again when I’m closer to needing voice actors, but I am curious to hear all of your idea’s because there is very likely something I may have not considered that would help me bring other people on board without breaking the bank, so please don’t be afraid to comment.

That’s all for this week, next week, Military personnel!

Till next week

Marc Out~~

February 13th Update

Last set of human slum dwellers this week:

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I based this design of Eldore from white knight Chronicles(In particular when he first appears with his hood up and his cloak around him), but I feel I altered the design enough to make it unclear that’s what I used:

The Other two colour schemes are based off of Yato and Yukine from Noragami, which if you know the Series is really fitting to make them slum dwellers

Seriously Check out Noragami, its going to be on of the main inspirations for Fade.

In other News I’ve been organising what environments I’ll need to concept when I’m done with the background extras, I’ve counted up the interior scenes and I have 24 rooms to do, not including exterior scenes, and I’ve realised how I’m going to do this is tricky, I could concept them like I’ve been doing with the characters, however its going to take me a lot longer than drawing characters, another idea is to just build them in 3D and design as I go. Its something I’m going to do some research on, but I’m curious to get opinions or alternatives from you guys.

Next week is Otherkin slum dwellers, I’m looking forward to designing them, all the Otherkin I’ve been designing I’ve been making purposefully human looking, I’m planning on making the slum dwellers lean more toward the more animal looking side, so till Next time!

Marc Out~~