June 18th Update

Only a handful of landmarks left now, this week is the Villain’s base:
BlindfoldCodeWarehouse.png

The Group hides out in the warehouse district, so I used the colours from those concepts, but then used some of the logos on the blindfold code followers as graffiti to make it stand out a bit more, while still keeping it discrete enough to be a useful hideout. I plan on adding more detail to little things like the boards covering the windows when I’m making the 3d models, but overall I’m happy with it.

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:9/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

Until Next time,

Marc Out ~~

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 ~~

April 2nd Update

The third Landmark, this is a pretty important one, Its the Team’s main base, Hojo:

HojoBase

I’ve had a really clear idea of this one for a while now, Its human made, but I wanted to make it look like there was an attempt to incorporate the rounder architecture of Altherkin buildings to make a combination of the two cultures. I still want to mess around with the scale of the building in sections, but that rough shape is what I’ll be sticking with.

Secondly I wanted it to match the military district, so I took some of my earlier colour schemes and used them for different elements and I’m very happy with the result.

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:3/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

March 25th Update

This was a tricky one to figure out, so many lines:

SpireIndrustiesTower.png

Figuring out how to draw this building was the biggest obstacle, as good as I’ve gotten with perspective, this has several grids warping, so in the end I used a 3D model again, but used the wire frame of the model for the windows.

I had a really clear idea of this building, its for the Human business district, I wanted to find a different way to make this one stand out without messing with the colour scheme like I did with last weeks concept. So I went with making it a unique shape, the buildings all around it are sharp edges, so adding curves in and making it higher than all the other buildings should draw the eye nicely.

As for the company it belongs to, I named them after the Spire in Dublin and since is sounds like spiral I thought it was a good name for the building, I don’t have any plans for them yet, but all I know is I’m planning on having a fight in an elevator in this district, and this building is a good stop for that.

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:2/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

February 19th Update

Nearly done with the background buildings, this week the third last, Mining structures:

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The Mining Sector of the city isn’t particularly dense compared to the rest of the city so chances are I’ll only be using each of these once, Also since Mana, the resource they extract is so important to the story, I felt they had to be striking to an extent. Which is why I decided to make these structures similar to the Bucket Wheel excavators used in coal production.
schaufelradbagger_01_image_w335
Its not clear in the image, but I added small wheels to each pillar, the intent is that each excavator is placed on rails over a borehole as a near permanent extractor. I also wanted a common colour scheme for the more industrial buildings in the city, so I took the colours from the warehouse district.

Anyway that’s it for this week, keeping it short again, 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:37/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

January 8th Update

Last Dojo for this set, I’m actually sad I’m done with these, I think with this design I finally have the idea of what I wanted these building to look like:

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The addition of the curved walls will actually take a little explanation, so originally I wanted to do a larger building, based on the dorm (or Temple) of main characters of Houseki No Kuni (Or land of the lustrous):

land-of-the-lustrous-01

I really liked the idea of a slice cut building, and wanted to apply it to my previous designs, but it was a bit of a drastic change from the previous two designs, but I looked at a few different designs of Asian buildings, and caught the ideas of the corridors usually extending from main entrances:

kh2-land-of-dragons

So I came up with the idea of a Dojo with walls built onto the main building, Sliced at an angle, I’m hopefully going to add in something like a sparring ring, which should give the district a really unique look.

Anyway that’s it for the analysis, here is this week’s 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: 12/12
    • Secondary Characters: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Landmarks:0/15
    • Exteriors:33/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

December 24th Update

Merry Christmas everyone! We have a second set of Dojo’s these week:

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I tried to adapt last week’s design into a more detailed building, but I feel its missing something the last one had, I suspect I should have given the Roof a second layer, like in the Ikenobo Dojo I referenced last week

Rokkaku-dou_Ikenobou_doujou

Other than the roof situation I’m actually pretty happy with this one, I think it’ll fit well when I’m constructing the city proper

Other than that, I’ll be taking a much needed break over the Christmas, but I will do another “Year in review” posts on new years day, I find looking back on what I’ve done and reminding myself how much I’ve actually produced to be very motivating, it can get demoralising when I still see how much I have to do, but I’m over half way with all this concept art and I’m proud that I’ve been able to keep going through out the year.

Anyway, here is this week’s 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: 12/12
    • Secondary Characters: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Landmarks:0/15
    • Exteriors:32/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

December 18th Update

New building concepts this week, Training dojos:

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These are some of the smaller buildings for this area, but these are going to be some of the more complicated buildings hence why I’ve left them for my winter break.

The main inspiration for this week’s concepts that the Ikenobo Dojo in Kyoto:

Rokkaku-dou_Ikenobou_doujou

As for the colours I took some inspiration from Warframe again (I really love the design of that game)

DY0xtyKU8AAdPwq

8SQ0vZI

My concept is a lot simpler than this but unfortunately this is due to my limited free time right now, I have a number of projects which is affecting how long I can spend on the show, which is frustrating to say the least, but hopefully in the next week or so I should be able to get back on track.

 

Anyway, here is this week’s 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: 12/12
    • Secondary Characters: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Landmarks:0/15
    • Exteriors:31/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

November 19th Update

A fairly simple one this week, the First of the Alterkin business district buildings:

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These buildings were a really important experiment for me to draw, the next two will be a bit more complicated, but this design helped me to work out a lot of the process, for example, the squarer human skyscrapers required far less planning because they were simple boxes

Building-construction1.png

However in rounded buildings, extra angles mean added complexity:

Building-construction2

Up until now I’ve been designing very simple rounded structures, single story houses or smoke stacks, so a multi-floored buildings presented a challenge, one I’ve honestly been procrastinating on until now, but now that I have this method I should be able to come up with some interesting designs, and I’m looking forward to getting creative with it.

Anyway, here is this week’s 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: 12/12
    • Secondary Characters: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Landmarks:0/15
    • Exteriors:28/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

October 29th Update

Second Set of government buildings this week:

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After sleep on the last week’s designs a while I’ve actually changed my mind about about them, once again I don’t want to distract too much from the main set pieces, and giving them a more foreboding look isn’t really a factor until later seasons, so I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

One other thing that ties into this topic, which I forgot to talk about, was actually the colours I chose for these particular concepts, which is heavily based off of Russian buildings built during the soviet era:

xkremlin-pagespeed-ic-_jcvbwxgjw

I muted down some of the colours to prevent them from grabbing too much attention, and with the right lighting could be seen as both hopeful and oppressive based on the mood I’m trying to create.

Anyway, here is this week’s 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: 12/12
    • Secondary Characters: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 4/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Landmarks:0/15
    • Exteriors:26/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~