June 11th update and 3rd year Anniversary recap

Another Landmark concept this week, this week for the entertainment District:

I really liked the idea of a Ferris wheel against the city’s skyline, but I wanted to make it a bit more interesting, its faint but inside there are orbs, I vision these as chambers that contain a floor that stays level no matter what way the wheel turns, so people can stand and look onto n the city.

 

In other news the 3rd anniversary of this Blog was on the 6th of June, I ended up missing it, which disappointing me greatly. I feel those kinda of dates are important. But none the less it doesn’t take away from what I’ve accomplished this year.

The biggest thing was completing the base building concepts which was frankly something I had been dreading, and I can honestly say it really did try my patience but thankfully that has lifted somewhat with the landmarks as I’ve been making them.

Overall I have two years to reach my milestone of the first episode, but unlike last year I’m not so confident I’ll reach that deadline in the time I have with the workflow I currently am using, but my schedule with college and other responsibilities prevent me from working faster.  Its something I’m very frustrated by, I’ve been wondering how I should go about making things easier for myself, I have a few options:

• Firstly I could do the storyboards before concepting the interior sets, so I can plan them out more efficiently but this could delay my completion of the interior concepts and prevent me giving proper care.
• Secondly I can start story-boarding the first episode while I’m working on the Interiors but this will tighten my already tight schedule.
• Third only concept the interior scenes for the first episode before moving onto the storyboards, this would speed up the development of the first episode and reduce my initial workload, but drags out the development of later episodes significantly since those concepts will have to be drawn and built at some point.

I still haven’t decided which of these approaches I’ll take, I have seven landmarks to complete, so I have seven weeks to decide, but I’m leaning toward the third option, since it will help me keep to my original deadline better and break up the work into something that feels more achievable.

I’m still working to follow my initial plan:

But I think in the next year I’ll be tweaking it, moving Marketing to a later in the chain, but I’m still not sure as to where, its a big part of the process and something I’ll probably spend money on, but my initial attempts to gauge my audience from animatics hasn’t gone well with some of my personal animatics. Where I’m going to market it will take some thought too, I don’t want ride on Rwby’s coattails and frankly I think the story can stand up on its own, so I want to find alternative avenues to find the audience.

I still maintain that once I’m done with the concepts I’ll be able to progress very rapidly, I’m faster at 3d modeling and rigging than producing well rendered art, so I don’t thing those parts of the plan will change much.

Overall I feel I’m going into next year with a more realistic outlook in the project, recently the show took some bumps, but I felt I learned from that, and I’m still optimistic for the future.

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:8/15
  • Exteriors:39/39

Thank you all for continuing to follow the show’s development, until Next time,

Marc Out ~~

2nd Year Anniversary and Review

Well its June 6th, which means that I’ve been posting on this blog for 2 years now and working on the project for 3 years, and like Last year I’m planning on doing a little review of what I’ve done over the year.

So the biggest milestone I completed was the background extra’s concepts, which I’m glad to have out of the way, out of all the concepts I had to do that group was the most numerous, even more so than the buildings I’m working on now, it was the most intimidating thing in the project so far, and if nothing else I’m proud of the sheer amount I was able to get down on paper.

The Second big milestone was finishing the main characters and their re-designs, which was satisfying to see all the realised characters on paper, I still want to draw a group shot showing differences in body type and height but for now I’m happy to just have usable reference for modeling each character.

Tying in with that was the completion and re-design of the weapons, this was a big detail character wise to complete since I feel in a fighting cartoon, weapons help show personality, and having reference for each weapon is going to be so useful in the future.

Not everything was good news this year though, I had to part ways with my volunteer composer Maxim, after realising that he wasn’t the best fit for the project, we didn’t fall out, and I’d love to work with him again on a project better suited to his style of music, but it does feel like a frustrating failure on my part for being unable to direct him in the way both he and the project needed. I’ve realised that honestly the only real option is to keep searching and save money to hire someone who can fit the j-punk/anime tone of the show.

Overall 3 years into my 5 year goal I’m actually still confident I can meet the deadline of producing the first episode, I’m actually well over half way through the conception stage, which is by far the most difficult to get through for me, since its working from practically nothing. once they are done I have a jumping off point for everything.

The overall plan still remains the same as last year, if any of you guy remember the spaghetti sprawl:

since last year I have realised a few things are going to be more difficult than I first pictured, like the marketing, but I’ve learned a lot about 3d Modeling and rigging since last year. but if all goes according to plan, I may be able to move onto a few of the next stages in this upcoming year.

Its been a productive year and hopefully I’ll continue building momentum.
Here’s to the progress to come!

Till Next week

Marc Out~~

June 4th Update

Last of the Human Business skyscrapers this week:

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I kept things simple this week, I’m eager to move onto the next category of buildings, plus the 2nd year anniversary of the blog is in two days and I wanted to spend some time reviewing my progress from the year, but I’ll get into that in the next post.
The building itself is basically a single tower version of last week’s concept which I worry now makes the first Skyscraper I designed clash with these two, but I won’t know that until I make a scene out of them.

Anyway that’s it for this week, I’ll keep it short, for now the 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: 6/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

May 7th Update

Second week of building concepts, I’m starting to find a flow with the designs:

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Like last week’s concepts I’m working off of a similar colour palette to Twilight town for this section of the city, but I’ve been experimenting with more complex shapes,  I really like this one, but I need to work on my basic perspective with geometric shapes, the windows in the top section look very off, that being said I think I got the basic idea of this building, enough to accurately recreated it in 3D which is the most important part.

Anyway, for this week the 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: 2/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

April 24th Update

Last redesign this week, Ash’s weapon:

There wasn’t a lot to really change with this design, the handle placement was a bit awkward, I also wanted to change the handle colour,

I’m still not sure if I should give it a grip texture, but I’ll have to wait and see when I model it.

And that’s it for character concepts, I’m officially past the halfway point of the concept process, next up is the environment concepts, I’m a little apprehensive to start these, since I’ve so little experience drawing places, but if this project has taught me anything, its that the best way to learn is to jump in headfirst!

So starting next week, we’ll be starting the different sections of the city, I’ve broken it down into four building per section, one landmark building and three generic buildings to break up the background. for sections of the city that won’t be central to the story I’ll still have to provide a landmark to identify the section when wide shots of the full city are shown, but I’m going to place hold them with buildings I’ve already made.
For the progress list I’m going to I’m going to add a separate section for the landmarks, since they’ll require more detail and approach the generic buildings in sets of three, similar to what I did for the background characters.

So, for this week the 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: 0/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~