April 2nd Update

The third Landmark, this is a pretty important one, Its the Team’s main base, Hojo:

I’ve had a really clear idea of this one for a while now, Its human made, but I wanted to make it look like there was an attempt to incorporate the rounder architecture of Altherkin buildings to make a combination of the two cultures. I still want to mess around with the scale of the building in sections, but that rough shape is what I’ll be sticking with.

Secondly I wanted it to match the military district, so I took some of my earlier colour schemes and used them for different elements and I’m very happy with the result.

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:3/15
  • Exteriors:39/39

March 5th Update

Over half way through the secondary characters now, this week its Sakata’s weapon:

Since Sakata was based on the myth of Kintarō I knew I wanted axes to be his weapons, plus I wanted to mix them with rifles to pay tribute to Rwby’s weapons, I was actually expecting this weapon to be difficult to design, but it turns out there are a whole host of axe-gun hybrids:

I’m honestly surprised that its such a rare weapon in popular media, but it made it very fun to design, and found a few really gorgeous designs.

Anyway I’ll keep it short this week, here is this week’s progress:

• 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: 4/7
  • Weapon Redesigns: 0/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

November 5th Update

This week’s redesign is Sho:

This was a tough one to design, because it required removing a lot of details from a design I loved, but that didn’t match the human military style I was going for:

Like the others I based the new design off of the uniforms of the other human Military:

But to keep him unique I decided to veer away from the usual cream colour, however I didn’t want to use the old colour scheme of Sho’s earlier design, since it makes him look a lot like a villain which wasn’t the intention of the character, hes a supporter rather than an antagonist, so I used the blue Human military background character as a start and then took the darker aspects of his old design as highlights rather than the main focus colour.

Now, onto this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:42/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 5/5
• Secondary Character: 14/14
• Secondary Character re-designs: 3/5

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

October 30th Update

Last Update of October, and this week its a redesign of Haru:

I was a little strapped for time this week, so rather than fumble around with the face, I found a reference image that matched the angle and traced it, the final result went a little too realistic for my liking, but it gets the idea of the character across.
The design itself I’m really happy with, I simplified the design down a lot while keeping her looking offical:

A lot of this was done by matching her uniform to the other Human Military designs I’ve made:

This lets her look like she fits with the more Western feel of the Human Military, and by keeping the red from her old design it helps her stand out and retain her individuality.

Now, onto this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:42/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 5/5
• Secondary Character: 14/14
• Secondary Character re-designs: 2/5

That’s all for this week,
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~~

October 9th Update

One of the most inhuman looking characters Kusanagi Tsurugi (yeah the name is a total mouthful!)

I wanted to have a character that shows the ranges of humanity Otherkin have, so I wanted one that was barely recognisable as human, he has heavy influences from the Saurians from outlaw star:

I toyed around with the idea of giving him hair, but I could tell even without colouring it it looked kinda ridiculous, so I left it at that. I’ll have to nearly make a custom model for his head, but I’m learning that its far easier to animate snouts than faces, so it shouldn’t be too much extra effort. I also decided to curl his wings out backward, but I’m not sure I like the look of that, I may change it once I’m doing the model.

As to the updates on the new template models, I am working on them, but the only one I have I’ve done in Maya, and i still don’t know how to render and export in it yet, so you’ll have to wait for that, its a little stylised for what I want (I was following a tutorial, in class) I’m working to get some notes from my lecturer so I can remake it in blender.

I have one more character that’s relevant to the story I’ll be concepting, then I plan on moving to background extras, up until now I’ve been using these concepts to practise my posing and proportions, but luckily I’ll be working on that regularly in college. So I’m going to cut a few corners to get the ideas on paper faster. I really want to bump up the speed on this pre-production so I can get to the cool looking parts, but I have to be careful not to let the quality of the production slip as a result.

Lot’s of planning this week, but with next week’s character I’ll be hitting my first Character milestone, I’m looking forward to it

Till then

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~~