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~~