January 15th Update

Another shopkeeper this week, I’m only probably going to do one more of these since there isn’t many shopkeepers in the show as a whole:

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The Colour schemes are based off of Yoruichi Shihōin and Renji Abarai from bleach and Weiss from Rwby, respectively.

Although I am worried that the Bleach character’s colours might make them stand out too much, Once I’m done with all the character concepts I’ll do a review of what I feel does and doesn’t work and adjust accordingly, But I suspect all I’ll have to do is just lower the saturation of the more noticeable colours.

I’ve also decided to upload one of my storyboards, I’ll admit that I’ve been reluctant to do this, since I prefer to only show finished work, but that’s against the point of this blog, and so long as I don’t use spoiler heavy shots then it should be alright.

I’m going to try up load one of these every time I have 15 shots drawn up, that way I can pick the least spoilerish of the batch. If you’d like the template that I’m using I got it from an animator called Jazza that posted up his onto Newgrounds Here. I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting storyboards, because they’re still taking a backseat while I decide on the look of the world and its characters, plus I’m still quite slow at gestural drawing, but I want to give myself an incentive to work at them, so hopefully there will be more soon.

Anyway that’s all for this week, Till next week

Marc Out~~

December 4th Update

Last set of Otherkin templates, next update will be on regular humans:

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This Template was a reference to the Anime Air gear which is another big influence on the show’s overall aesthetic so I’ll be mentioning it again in the future, the over all character design is based around Kazuma Mikura, who’s design I always liked, he feels like he could switch form background character to main character in a split second, which was actually part of his character in the show

The other colour schemes are based off of the Main character Ikki and Simca I think the fem fatal (her role is strange in the show) But if you want an idea for how future environments in the city should hopefully look, check out the show, because the city in Air gear is nearly a character itself (which is appropriate for a freestyle roller blade anime)

In Other news I’ve given Damson a redesign, simplifying his tattoos, adding a ponytail to give him a better silhouette and rearranged the colours in his outfit to balance him a bit better, and I’m much happier with him:

I’ve left the old version of his design up for comparison, I also tweaked his head shape, its still out of proportion with his ears, but I’m glad that I can actually identify what the problem was before, when I first sketched him out I was largely guessing, It let’s me know I am actually improving.

Finally I wanted to clear up something that was pointed out to me earlier in the week by my reader Cillian Flood (Who you should check out because he has a very uniqe view on everyday life) that it was too early to be working on the show’s official opening, which I totally agree with, but that’s sort of not what I’ve been story boarding, the “intro” I’ve been planning is more of a “Pilot”, Teaser or a preview, but I’ve been calling it an Intro all this time because that’s what I was using as a starting point for this Preview, so From here on I’ll be referring to the clip I’m making as the Preview for the foreseeable future. Hopefully that will prevent any confusion in the future.

Until Next Time

Marc Out~~

November 28th Update

Another week and we’re onto casual Civilians, with another double dose of concept art, First up if the Rabbit girl I posted earlier on my tumblr:

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I like how this one turned out, I’m getting a lot better at picking colours for characters that let them blend in with the background, while also looking interesting, the blue one kind of reminds me of Rei from Evangelion, even though that’s not who I originally based her off of, but more on that in a second. For now here is the second design, this time Male:

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I don’t know if I’m as into this this design as the first, but that may have just been the colours I chose, but the Easter egg these two designs will make kinda makes it worth it, the two white designs are inspired by the Characters Doki and Nabi from There She Is!! Which is an adorable series that I highly suggest you check out, the themes of race and love are a part of what helped inspire the story of Fade and if I can evoke even half the emotions that series evoked in me, I’ll be doing a great job.

In other news, I’ve started story-boarding the intro, there very rough at the moment, so I’m not going to post them up here yet until I have a second or third draft of them, but I wanted to talk about them because its a very different experience from just looking at examples online. With Openings in cartoons or Anime I’ve never put much thought into how deliberate each image on screen is, I’ve done about 8 shots at the time of writing this post, and each time I had to ask myself “What should be in this shot? Who should I frame? what should I foreshadow? Where is in taking place?” and so on, basically things we take for granted when watching cartoons, because it’s done in a way that feels natural, and with the TV and Cartoons having been around so long, the people making them have gotten very good at making them.

Anyway, that’s enough nerding out about the subject, See you next week

Marc Out~~

November 14th Update

A double batch of concepts this week, after this I have only one more business district template and then I can move onto another, First up is the Business woman:

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It might be not be obvious, but she’s actually based off of rabbits, a detail that always bugged me in Rwby was an element Blake’s design, She has four ears, two cat, two human, you don’t notices it most of the time, but when I saw it it just seemed odd that no one had mentioned it in show, anyway, I didn’t want to make the same mistake, so you’ll notice that she doesn’t have human ears.

Next up we have the business man:

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I’ve largely worked to make him look fish like, but it could be argued that he looks somewhat lizard like, either way it’s handy because I might be able to use this template in more than one area.

Something I am worried about though is that all these templates might be very bright and attention grabbing, when I’m really sitting down and seriously making their textures I might lower the saturation of the colours to make them all look a little more grey so the main characters stand out a bit more, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Lastly I’ve been spending a large part of this week trying to find music, in particular for the into, I have a very clear idea of the musical style I want, a kind of punky j-pop sound, basically Anime intro music, but its been very difficult to find, at least legally, I don’t want to use copyrighted music, and I can’t afford even the cheapest royalty free music right now, which leaves my options frustratingly limited, I have found a few sites that do some great sound effects, but not so much with the music side of things. At the moment a friend of mine had given me the use of some sound files he got from College that are legal and royalty free to use, and while one is very close to what I want, but its only 30 seconds long, and I was hoping to make the intro (at least for the pilot episode) about a minute and a half, not to mention that for later seasons I’d want to have different intros. So it feels like a temporary solution to the problem. I’ll keep you guys updated as I figure this out

Till Next Week

Marc Out~~