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~~

November 21st Update

Last Character concept for now, a redesign of Mayor Grey:

Its a very minor change to this design, but I prefer it, it looks a little more interesting than the old design, which I feel looked a little too bland:

And with that, I’m done with the character concepts, I would like to re-draw a few, there are one or two minor supporting characters, and there a handful of scene specific background characters, but these can wait until after my next two milestones.

Speaking of which, what comes next? Well now that I have the characters, I need a world with objects for them to interact with, which is a bigger hurdle than it sounds. There are two important milestones I need to complete, First I want to design weapons for the main characters, second I want to design buildings for the city, The buildings are the bigger job, and I don’t want to jump straight into another year long milestone right after finishing one, so I’m going to focus on designing weapons for the next few weeks, so I’m adding some new categories to the end of Update list:

• 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: 0/12
  • Secondary Characters: 0/7
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Exteriors: 0/20

With any luck the progress for these new milestones won’t be as slow going as the characters.

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

June 19th Update

Last of the blindfold code followers, after this one I only have six more background extras to do!

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Its pretty exciting seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on a big milestone like this.

I also love the the logos I designed for these followers, I’m going to for a punk anarchist look with them, so that’s kind of inspired the logos as well. I’m going to really focus on using these for inspiration when I’m re-designing some of the blindfold code members.

I’ve also bee brainstorming how I’m going to handle concepting the environments and scenes of the show, and I think I have an idea, I’m going to handle it in a similar way to how I’ve been handling these background extras. I’m going to start with just buildings and draw only three or four buildings for each section of the city. However I’m still going to hold off on those until I have all the character concepts for season one done.

So here is my current status on concepts:

• Background extras:36/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 1/5
• Secondary Character: 7/12
• Secondary Character re-designs: 0/4

These numbers may rise and fall as the series develops, but I’m going to start including the milestones on whatever I’m doing with each post from here on out.

That’s all for this Update
Until next week

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:

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~~

December 20th Update

Second last civilian template this week, This one is based on Ikki Minami from air gear:

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I’ve greatly simplified the character down, and I like how it turned out, I also experimented on the colour schemes myself, and I really like the purple one!

One of the great things about Ikki is he does look like a pretty average guy design wise, all of his character comes from the great dynamic poses in the anime and manga, its another reason the show is a huge influence on Fade.

In other news I’ve been doing a lot of searching for music, and I’ve come to the final conclusion that I need to hire a composer, but I’m hitting a major problem, I have no idea what a reasonable budget for a composer is. If I have a target amount I can save up that’s just time. But as it stands I have no ballpark figure, so any composers I pitch the project to won’t be able to trust me, plus I don’t expect someone to work on a project of this size for free. The same problem also applies to voice acting, I know a few people that might be willing to help, but I’d like to get dedicated people for that goal.

I might ask around on Newgrounds.com , but I’d love to get some opinions on other places to look, or people to ask about this. Even if I have rough figures I might be able to get grants since its an independent venture, I’ve looking online and the basically the answer I’ve got is producing something is easier if you’ve already produced something before, hence why I’m focusing on just a preview of the show, but even a minute and a half preview is still tricky when you have to concept and build all the assets yourself and have no original music to go with it. If your reading this and have opinions that you think might help, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact me!
And the moment I have four main expense areas:

• Pre-production
  • Script by me
  • concepts by me
  • storyboards done by me
• Production
  • Recording by voice actors
  • actual animation by me, and possibly others
  • music composing by a composer
• Post-production
  • Video editing by me
  • sound design (not to be confused with the music, think sound effects like punches footsteps) by me
  •  visual effects and correction by me
• Marketing by me unless I can find an online marketing specialist
  • Illustrating ads by an artist or illustrator
  • Website ads
  • Facebook/twitter/google ads
  • News sites, etc.

I’m still researching Marketing so I’m still constructing a basic strategy for it. Another factor I’m just sort of improvising how the planning is scheduled. I have no idea how long each thing on this list should take, I finished the script in about a year, which I feel is acceptable, and I know when I get around to writing season 2 in earnest I’ll complete it in less time, but the concepts and storyboards are taking much longer than I expected, in particular the story boards, although I’m chalking that up to my lack of experience coupled with my under developed art skills.
On a side note, I’m going to work on producing one story board preview each week to improve my speed since it worked well for my concept art.

That’s all for this week,apologies if this budgeting and marketing talk wasn’t very creatively stimulating, but its what I’ve been working on this week and its important to the project in the long term so I felt is was important to talk about.
I’ll have more visual content next week.

Till next time

Marc Out~~