June 11th update and 3rd year Anniversary recap

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

TheBigWheel

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:

FadePlan1

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 ~~

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:
FadePlan1

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 20th Update

Quick one this week, this week’s concept is a female version of the solider from last week

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The colours are basically just copied from last week’s concepts, and the design itself is based off of Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the shell:

kusanagi-motoko-full-1519913

I may return to this design in the future since I had to rush it a little bit due to college related deadlines.

I’ve also been thinking a bit about secondary content to help promote the cartoon as I make it, I have a few obvious ideas like table reads and blooper videos, but those require the cartoon to already be made and out in the public. I have my steaming, but I haven’t a clue how to promote a live stream outside of just being consistent. I’d like to open up a suggestion box or something similar to get ideas.

I’ll keep you guys posted as I come up with more ideas

That’s all for this week,

Marc Out~~

 

March 13th Update

I had a lot of fun designing this week’s Background Extra, Armoured up soldiers:

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The design has two influences, the  Ex-Nevec soldiers from Lost planet 2 (Which I also used for one of the colour schemes and to a much lesser extent the Iron avengers from Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
lost-planet-extrem-4e261a8a3640ax_hot902425-700x700

I have another background character in the works, I was hoping to have it done for this update, but I had a lot of non-Fade business to take care of this week so it just fell behind, but like this one I had fun designing it.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about this week is promoting this blog, I want to be able to generate a slow, gradual hype for this show, but I’m a little unsure how to do so. Another factor is social media, I use twitter and Facebook often as a passive observer, but I’m not sure how to approach these platforms for promotion, I’ve heard paying for ads is good for gaining subscribers and followers, but that doesn’t give people who will interact or engage with you, which to me defy’s the point of having an audience. So I want to take my time and come out with a good advertising campaign, I know my target audience: people who want a show like Rwby while Rwby is in its off season as Rooster Teeth make new episodes.
But I’m unsure how to access or market to that group. The Obvious answer is to post the blog onto the RWBY subreddit, but I’ve heard that Reddits generally tend to reject a direct advertisement like that on principle. I’m sure there are other places to show the blog, but at the moment my mind is drawing a blank, so I’m posing the question to you guys: Are there any places I could show this blog where I’d get people that would talk about Fade as I make it? How should I aim to use Social media to engage with potential viewers?

Its still early days yet, so I’m sure I’ll figure something out, but any feedback would be stuff to consider.

That’s all for this week

Marc Out~~