Season 1 Background Extras

As Promised, My first big milestone, the Background Characters on the City, here so I can reflect on the amount I’ve gotten done, The are 126 images in this Gallery.

Looking forward to complete more milestones like this in the future.

Until Next time,

Marc Out ~~

July 31st Update

This is it, the final Background Character!

 

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I focused on making a mouse based Otherkin, and experimented around different outfit pieces. The color schemes were based on Yoko Littner from Gurren Lagan, Ichigo Kurosaki From Bleach and Gamma Akutabi From Zombie powder.

So, What’s next then? The Answer is back to concepting characters relevant to the story again! But this won’t take over a year, because I only have seven to do, there are also a few scene specific background characters I need to do, but I’ll leave them because I really want to get the Secondary characters of the story done. I also have to plan out how I’m going to concept the different scenes and environments, since I’m really not an expert in landscape drawing, but I’m thinking I’ll design one building at a time based on the section of the city and then group them into one image together to make the scene.
If you want to see all of the Background characters I’ve done, I’m going to make another blog post with all of them together, just to admire all the past work I’ve done this year.

Anyway here is this week’s status on concepts:

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

That’s all for this week
Until next time

Marc Out~~

July 24th Update

Another Hojo member this week, only one more to go!

 

 

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This concept is largely based on Dante from Devil may cry, and Ragna From BlazeBlue

I lean a lot more toward Ragna for this design, but the wings were inspired by Dante’s devil trigger from Devil may cry 2:

Also one of the colour schemes is also been based on Virgil from the same series with a few tweaks:

With that I have one last background character template to make, I’m really excited to finally get back to making main characters again! Then it’s onto a round of design reviews and redesigns.

Anyway here is this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:41/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 1/5
• Secondary Character: 7/12
• Secondary Character re-designs: 0/4

That’s all for this week
Until next time

Marc Out~~

July 10th Update

Last of the Human Hojo members this week, only the Otherkin members to do now and that’s the last of the background extra concepts!

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This one is heavily inspired by Cloud, in particular his Advent Children attire:

I decided to make his outfit more symmetrical because it always bugged me that one half was all long and flowing and the other was basically his old outfit, so I gave him a second sleeve and moved the waist covering around to the back, a little more like Tifa’s design in the same movie:

This actually lead me to realise the to outfits actually have a lot of similar elements, which surprised me, such as the leather strips around the thigh of the leg. Finally I brightened up the colours in the out fit to make the first colour scheme, but I am worried its too similar, so I may make another when I review all the extras.

Anyway here is this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:39/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 1/5
• Secondary Character: 7/12
• Secondary Character re-designs: 0/4

That’s all for this week
Until next time

Marc Out~~

July 3rd Update

Just a quick update this week, another Member of Hojo:

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Its probably quite obvious, but this design is based heavily on the Gender swapped version of Naruto:

I always liked the design of this character, I was surprised they never did a what if episode built around it, but I digress. I while the design is very similar, I feel that since this character never really appeared much in the show (and never with clothes) I think I can get away with it. The Other two color schemes are based off of Sasuke from the same show and Midoriya from My hero Academia

My reasoning behind these colours is that everyone in Hojo kinda considers themselves the main character of an anime, Fade is just focusing on Team Fade, and I want it to feel like even the extra’s have stories to tell, unlike the rest of the city, which is just people going through their day.

So here is this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:38/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 1/5
• Secondary Character: 7/12
• Secondary Character re-designs: 0/4

That’s all for this week
Until next time

Marc Out~~

June 26th Update

First off, the final set of Extras: Members of Hojo, the organisation the main characters work for.

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I won’t explain the mean behind the name right now, since I want to save that for when I’m designing the actual building itself.

As for the design of the characters themselves the outfit is based on a combination of the characters Gaara and Sakura from Naruto, which I then varied with colour schemes based on the primary colours red, blue and green:

In other news I’ve started uploading some of the concepts to my deviant art account Which you can check out here.  There isn’t anything majorly new there yet, but I will be uploading previous stuff there in chunks, I was hoping there some way of mass uploading things there, but I haven’t been able to find anything yet.

I’ve also have been searching for good project management apps, and I’ve found one called Trello which is just what I’m looking for, its not as social as Archmule, but its way easier to see exactly where I am progress wise on each item, you can find them both here:

Fade’s Trello

Fade’s Archmule

So here is this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:37/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 1/5
• Secondary Character: 7/12
• Secondary Character re-designs: 0/4

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~~

June 12th Update

Another blindfold Code follower this week, one more to go:

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I’m happy with how these ones came out, like last week their based off of the Main blindfold code members. Making the unique logos were really fun, I went off the idea of someone trying to make their own t-shirts and just doodled some ideas directly onto the shirts.

With this concept I only have 7 out of 42 templates left to do, and its looking like I’ll have them done before the summer ends, although I’m left with a dilemma, I want to move onto concepting environments next, but drawing wise its really time consuming in comparison with drawing characters, and the guy I had hoped to help with the drawing out won’t be free to work on it for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure how to get around this because I want a certain level of quality, but I know literally nobody that specialises in environment art. But it’s early days still, I haven’t reached that stage yet and I may still find someone yet, or I’ll find a faster way of doing it myself.
For now, I’m just righting down notes on each location in the show, both for my own reference and for giving anyone who comes on board direction, which I think will prove really helpful later.

That all for this week,
Till next time

Marc Out~~

June 5th Update

We’re finally at one of the designs I’ve been excited to work on since I started the background character, The goons, the lackeys, The blindfold Code’s followers:

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There’s a few different influences in these designs, mainily because there based off the similarities of the main blindfold code members: Hebi Sapa  Pamu   Kigyo  Yilan  Naga and Anguis and thought about how people would dress if the were copying them. I like the Raver teen look I ended up with.

In other news the first year anniversary of this blog and the two year anniversary of my work on fade is coming up, and I’d like to do something special, but I’m unsure what to do, I was hoping that I’d have time to make a fun picture or something along those lines, but this week hasn’t given me a lot of time. I have until the Tuesday, so we’ll wait and see, more than likely I’ll do some kind of year in review.

Another thing I think I might start doing is changing how I’m titling my Blogs, rather than just giving a date, I might start listing out the progress of my current milestone, so anyone just jumping in can see what state the project is in rather than list through all the previous posts to get an idea.

Anyway that’s all for this week, until next time!

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~~