June 11th update and 3rd year Anniversary recap

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

TheBigWheel

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:

FadePlan1

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 ~~

First year Anniversary and Review

So today is the Anniversary of the blog and I want to look back over the progress I’ve made in the year. No Images with this post, but maybe in future anniversaries, for now I’m just going to reflect on what I’ve learned.

The Biggest thing I’ve realised is the importance of networking and delegating, things like writing a script and and thinking about ideas are easy, but implementing them often takes more effort than you realise and anyone you can find with a speciality to take some of the weight off you is worth their weight in gold.

After that I’ve learned the motivating power of money, when I started this blog I was hoping that I could find volunteers willing to do it for free, but I realise now that this was a bit naive and honestly unrealistic, which at first was very disheartening. However I’ve also learned that the ways of getting a budget are actually fairly achievable, it just requires a bit  extra work, some networking and a bit of planning.

Speaking of planning that leads me nicely onto the next lesson I’ve taken from this first year of working on Fade, not to jump ahead of my steps. My old plan looks a bit like this:
Scrips->Assets->Storyboard-> Animatic->animate->edit->Market->release to public
This plan is only good on paper, and is hilariously simple, this is what my current plan roughly looks like:
FadePlan1

that complicated mess looks more disorganised but is a lot more realistic, and encourages me to go back and edit if something isn’t working. I’m also aware that this plan is going to change again, probably multiple times as I get better overseeing and more importantly finishing projects, which this blog has been essential to teaching me, by giving myself this weekly deadline, I’ve learned how to put myself under pressure to finish things.

Finally I can report that I’m nearly done with my character concepts, which is the brunt of the work I’ve done this year, since I’m so close to finishing off the background extras I’ll do a separate post when I finish them all. At the time of writing this I have 20 images of the main cast and 34 templates with three variations each coming to a total of 103 images of extras leading to a total of 123 concepts done which in one year I think is pretty good.

I still have a lot to do and a long way to go even before I start marketing and gaining a budget. But its been a fun ride so far.

Till Next week

Marc Out~~