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~~

July 17th Update

Only two more to go, another Hojo member this week, But this week its an Otherkin:

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I’m a little worried that the levels of contrast in the first two are a bit much, they are based off the colour schemes of two Vocaloids, Miku Hatsune and Haku Yowane respectively :

The Third Scheme is based off of the Anime Black Rock Shooter, which I think might be heavily inspired by Miku:

I’ve also been thinking about the trailer for the show, and while its still a while to go before I focus all my energy on it, its still turning into a tricky task to plan, I want to show off the best parts of my story, but I don’t want to give spoilers, so I have walk a tightrope of what to release.
At the moment I have two options I’m planning:
The First is taking a big plot point from very late in the series, and then flashing back to a short prelude to foreshadow the big event, however I haven’t planned out that big event very much, and I don’t want to release a teaser that might not pay off.
The Second is to to little action preludes showing how each member of Team Fade reached where they are, simlar to the Rwby trailers, which were very successful, the only thing is that I’m worried that this could give too much information and spoil the story ahead of time. I’ll think about it more in future updates, but I wanted to get my thoughts on the matter on paper, but I’d be curious to hear any thoughts on the matter.

Anyway here is this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:40/42
• 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~~

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~~