June 25th Update

Last of the military Sector Buildings this week:

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This was another building I took inspiration from my trip around Dublin, which I based on this building:

Following the same logic as last week’s concept in making the building defend-able so I added the shutters at the top of the windows, I wasn’t able to convey it with the angle I took, but I picture the glass at the top lowering into the main structure, which I think will be easier to show when I model it in 3D.
I decided to keep this design simpler that last week, mainly because I’ve been quiet busy with non-Fade related things, but hopefully I’ll be free to get more done in the next few weeks.

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:0/15
  • Exteriors: 9/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

June 19th Update

Apologies for the day late update! This particular concept took a while to complete, but I think it turned out well:

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The city in Fade is built from the concept that war is a regular occurrence until recently, so many of the building will have some sort of defences, I haven’t shown this previously due to the Human business sector paying extra to hide the defences and The commercial sector being a newer area to be built up, however I may go back and change it later. The military sector however needs to have this feature of the culture be very clear, so the previous design had the Arrow slit Windows and this one has blast covers that lower onto the windows, which is an idea I got from this building in Dublin:

That being said the blast covers were extremely tedious to draw and while I don’t think its noticeable a lot of the perspective is off on a few, I don’t think I’ll be drawing a building this complicated for a while.

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:0/15
  • Exteriors: 8/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

June 11th Update

This week we start on a new set of buildings, the military Sector:

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This is a more functional building that the previous ones, I went out and looked for some real life references to get ideas from, so I took a trip into Dublin city and stumbled across one of the entrances to Trinity College which really stood out to me

The thin windows reminded me of the Arrowslits in Castles, so I decided to implement the same thing into the building design, although I probably made them a little too wide, but I’ll have to see how they look when 3D modelled to be sure.

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:0/15
  • Exteriors: 7/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

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~~

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~~

Hebi and early buildings

Here we have our first villain, The Leader of the Blindfold Code, Hebi:

Most of the Blindfold code are based off of the characters from an anime called Mekakucity actors,I love the urban counter culture vibe from the show, but I felt it fell very short with the story, it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a mystery story of a character driven one, and with only 12 episodes to detail nine characters, it didn’t really have the time to try do both. That being said, each character is vibrant and stands out so I decided to combined and altered to a few be unique, Hebi here is based off of Marry and Kido.

Actually a lot of the female characters have attributes taken from Kido, who has to be my favourite character design! In an medium that seems to love showing off skin, Kido seems to be the opposite, covering up as much as she can, which always gave he an air of mystery to me, and that is what I want to convey with the blindfold code.

On the 3D front I’ve been placing some basic shapes for buildings

I think it shows the scale of the city a bit better, I’ve colour coded them for easy identification, the Green buildings are the Human Military, the grey skyscrapers are the human business sector, the blue is the government sector, the red is the research sector and the cyan tower is something I’m keeping under wraps for now, but I will say its an important location. At the moment the only area that’s dense enough is the Business Sector, but I’m hoping that over time I’m going to build up each area to a similar level, then I can work on concepts for the different sectors.

Hopefully that will tide you guys over until next week.

Marc Out~~