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 ~~

Happy New Year!

I’m trying something a little different this year, this is the third New Year’s day this blog has hit and I want to start acknowledging certain holidays a bit more, Christmas I usually take a break on, but I decided to do something special for today, some group art of the Team:

Its been a very long time since I’ve been able to sit down and draw the main four which I’ve really missed, but this art has purpose too, the about page has been very bare, and I haven’t wanted to use the concept art since A) those are only really good for my reference and B) not a good representation of the final look of the show, but this is far more a step in the right direction (and a better example of my abilities)

For those of you who started reading in 2018 I thank you for your time, and I hope you’ll stick with me through 2019.

Until next time

Marc Out~~

July 16th Update

Last Human Residential building this week, honestly I’m glad to be done with these buildings and moving onto some new ones:

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I thought it might be a good idea to vary the skyline of this section of the city by adding not just single family residences but Apartment buildings as well, it is a city after all, plus while unintentional I like how this took on a bunker like look while still matching the previous two buildings.
The building itself is inspired by these two buildings I found on Google:

The key thing I noticed was the balconies on both, so that was the main focus of this building.

The next thing I want to talk about is a bit more abstract, but its been on my mind lately and I feel its important to talk about, I’ve been feeling my motivation for the project waning lately, this doesn’t mean I’m quitting, far from it. I regularly get these blocks of creativity, and I consider myself quite good at getting over them but this one has been particularly bad, which prompted me writing this as a means of both helping anyone that stumbles across it, and a means of visualising the problem.
Now one of the first things I’ll say to anyone suffering from it is that Motivation is a lot like the tide, it comes and goes, so a lot of what I do is wait it out, this leads to a lot of procrastination on my part, which many people believe is laziness, but I see as an essential part of my creative process, which I have found out recently that science is backing me up on that, but its important to identify the differences between productive procrastination and good old fashioned laziness.

I spend a lot of time looking for inspiration, reading looking up references, watching shows similar to Fade, namely Anime and action cartoons, checking out youtube video tutorials and so on, always with Photoshop or a google document open for when I get ideas.

This recent Block has gone through stages, the first one is mental fatigue, I feel tired even though I might be fully rested, I’ll still be drawing or writing, but its tougher than usual, and I usual don’t realise I’m blocked because I’m still creating, the next stage is full on blockage, I don’t want to work and nothing creative is happening in my head, usually for me this lasts a day or two, but this time its lasted about a week. The Third stage I call the incubation stage, I’m motivated but nothing is really clicking, this is easily the most frustrating stage (which is more or less where I’ve been the last few days).
The Fourth and final stage is opening the floodgates where the good ideas have finally come, unfortunately this is the most difficult stage for me to predict, because unlike the others, this stage can interrupt any of the previous stages, or drag out the last stage, which the key is setting myself up to be ready for that floodgate moment.

If anyone reading is suffering from a creative block in anything, be patient, it will pass and some of your best work will come from it. While its far from comprehensive, I hope this helps.

Anyway, 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:0/15
  • Exteriors:12/39

That’s all for this week,
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~~

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~~

March 6th Update

Onto the human military this week, I started with a simple officer:

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The Uniform design is taken from my design of Commander Izanagi I talked about A few Months Back but I removed a few of the details to show the lower rank, the colours I took from different colours of camouflage, with the exception of the white colour scheme which I once again took from Izanagi. I was hoping to have a second template with a more combat based design for this week, but I left myself just that tiny bit short on time. I’m going to see if I can start pushing myself to get two of these concepts done a week , the sooner I’m done with these the sooner I can get back to the main cast again, and the sooner I can get to conception the different parts of the city.

One of the things that I’ve been considering is the voice actors, and primarily how to keep them invested in the project, I am worried that intrest in the project will dissapear the longer it takes me to put all the peices together, I don’t have any kind of real web presence, so I have no real reputation, plus I won’t be able to afford to pay much, at least for this season.  I’m hoping this blog will help, and being transparent about what is currently being worked on, but it’s still a large concern of mine. Hopefully if I can produce even one episode it’ll show I can achieve what I’m setting out to do, but I’ll keep pondering it for now.

That’s all for this week, till next week

Marc Out~~

Yilan and General updates

This update came very close to being late, some non-Fade related stuff took up a lot of my week, but I do have stuff to talk about, the First of which is this week’s concept art, the Blindfold Code member Yilan:

She was one of the first characters I had an idea for she’s based off of Kido from Mekakucity Actors, but also the female inklings from splatoon.

I love the Inkling designs in particular, I’m thinking of using some as influences in some of the character’s casual clothes at some point down the line.

I’ve also finished modelling the template model for girls, the differences are subtle, but I’m largely happy with it now:

The next step is to get it ready for UV mapping and setting up a bone structure for rigging, but that may have to wait until I know how to do more of that in blender

In more personally news, I’ve been dealing with signing up to a college course and obtaining funding for said course, normally I’d keep stuff like this out of this blog, since I only want to use it for Fade stuff, but its relevant because its an animation course. Which is very relevant to Fade. I’m hoping I can use this course to make the Fade Pilot episode for my final project. But this is also a warning that the schedule of this blog my change come September, but for now I’ll still keep working away getting as much ground work done until then.

So tune in next week for more concept art and more updates

Marc Out~~

First blog post

Ok, so I’ve been working the last year on a script for the first season of this web cartoon, and I want to have some way to document it, both for legal reasons, and for my own measurement of progress.
I’ve never really tried making anything of this scale before and its a one man project (For Now) but honestly is something I’m excited to jump into, and I think it could be popular!

So I guess a little back story is in order, I was a big fan of Monty Oum back in the day, and hearing about his death was a sad thing to hear, I heard a lot of people were doing tributes, and I wanted to do something myself. But I wanted to do something that Monty himself would be proud of, so I’m going for a Rwby styled show, Aimed for the off season fans. Right now I’ve scripted the first season, with 14 episodes. I have Ideas for more seasons, but right now I’m going to just work on Season 1.
Currently I’m at the concept art stage, which may take a while, probably the rest of the summer. during which I’m also saving for a new computer and teaching myself animation. In September I’m going to be (hopefully) getting into a animation course, which with luck should teach me most of what I need to start this show.

Well that’s all for now, I’m going to try keep these short and sweet, just short progress updates every Sunday or monday.

Marc Out ~~