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~~

February 19th Update

The Next weapon concept, Sho’s Weapon:

I’ll be honest, I rushed this one a bit, I was very limited on time this week, so I largely took the idea of the chakram from Xena warrior Princess, recoloured it and made them split apart into two dagger like blades.

I’m not overly concerned about it not being very original, since Sho doesn’t have many fights in the script, but I wanted to include it for completeness sake.

In other news I’m thinking of doing a few redesigns with the weapons like with the actual Character designs, I’m going to finish the current weapons on my list though first, I really don’t want to be that kind of creator that keeps going back a tweaking things and never finishing the project, but going back and revising designs is an important part of my plan:

At each stage I have to be willing to go back and make sure everything works before moving forward. That being said, this is the most time consuming part next to the actual storyboards and animating, it’s essentially the foundation for everything, so its important to get it right early on.

Anyway, here is this week’s progress:

• 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: 2/7
  • Weapon Redesigns: 0/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
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:

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~~

May 29th Update

Missed last week’s update unfortunately, College project got in the way, but for the next few months I’m free, so I can promise it won’t happen again. So without further delay, onto the last Businessman extra:

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I decided to go for a richer looking design, so I decided to add a waistcoat, which I think adds an elegance to the design, The colours are recycled from some of the earlier designs but I decided to darken them to help them fade into the background better.

In other news I’ve been looking into project management and figuring out how to let people keep track of the project without having to decipher the massive amounts of notes and spreadsheets, and I found a project managment App Archmule, which will let you know exactly what I’m working on at a given time, you can check out the objective list here:
https://archmule.com/@marcconroy/fade-season-1/

I was also planning on starting to gather voice actors over the summer, but after listening to another episode of tip of the tongue (Which I totally suggest you check out) Made me realise that I was jumping ahead of myself again, so I’m altering my pipeline a bit to compensate, music and Voice acting will be left till a bit later, and for now I’m going to continue producing concept art, the hope is that I can build an “Art Bible” for the show, so if I can bring on other people to model and animate I can just show them the rough ideas for assets and they can build them. I’m also going to redouble my efforts for the story boards and animatic, since I can use temp music and my own voice to work out timing.
I’m reluctant to use temp music, since I wanted an original score and honestly I wanted to avoid it, but in the efforts of producing a proof of concept it’s a necessary evil. The great thing about keeping everything just to an animatic is that their far easier to edit that a rendered animation.

That’s basic plan for the next two or three months, next week we’ll be onto a new background extra template.

Till next week,

Marc Out~~

February 27th Update

A double helping of concepts this week, first up a set of chameleon slum dwellers:

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Not really much to talk about with this one, I based the coat off of Yukine’s from Noragami

The Colours I just experimented around to try get some neutral colours, but I might dull them down so they don’t distract from the main characters.

The Second batch is a set of fox girls:

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I based this design off of Kitty from No Evil, a great independent animation series based on old native american legends and fables, its pretty entertaining. But with this second template concept I am now not only done with Slum dwellers, but I am also exactly half way through my background character concepts! It’ll be great to finally be done with them and back to the more interesting things, like the other scripted characters.

In other news I’ve been working on a budget for the show as a whole, and even when I take on most of the process myself it still turns out insanely expensive, Voice actors is the big one, because even hiring people who treat it like a hobby  is going to cost me at the very least a grand, and that’s being very optimistic. This gives me two options: A) build up money and hire one voice actor at a time, or B) Approach hobby voice actors and beg them to do the work on faith or for free. Both this options have signification cons to them, Option A will cause the project to slow to a snail’s pace, and its already at a crawl. And Option B will leave the project at the mercy of people who will have no investment in the project’s completion, or may be unreliable.
I’m also tempted to try crowd funding, however Fade has no real fan base yet, and without a trailer or first episode, there is no proof I can actually do what I’m setting out to do, so the odds of a kickstarter or patreon succeeding are slim at best. Honestly this isn’t a urgent problem yet, but it is an important one. So I’ll probably bring it up again when I’m closer to needing voice actors, but I am curious to hear all of your idea’s because there is very likely something I may have not considered that would help me bring other people on board without breaking the bank, so please don’t be afraid to comment.

That’s all for this week, next week, Military personnel!

Till next week

Marc Out~~

November 6th Update

Another civilian template, this time based around a lizard:

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Not sure I’m 100% happy, but for now it will do, I’m very happy with the color scheme of green one which is inspired by the Reptoids from the webcomic Trying Human which I highly suggest you check out for the art style alone, the other two I just got from googling different types of lizard.

I’ve also been planning out how to approach the massive amount of concept art I’ll need to do for this series, I broke it down into civilian types per region, and then cut out the areas that aren’t going to be seen in the first season, then I decided to cut my 6 templates per area into 3 per civilian type, which cut my workload from the impossible 126 concepts to a manageable 40.

If your curious what Civilian types I’m planning to use, here they are:

• Human Military officer
• Human Businessman
• Human Businesswoman
• Human Civilian
• Hojo Operative (human)
• Hojo Operative (Otherkin)
• Otherkin Civilian
• blindfold code follower
• Otherkin shopkeeper
• Otherkin worker
• Otherkin Businessman
• Otherkin Businesswoman
• human Slum dweller
• Otherkin Slum dweller

Now I’m not including the redesigns or side characters I haven’t drawn yet, but in comparison to the load of civilians I have to draw it really quite insignificant.

That’s all for this week, sorry I don’t have more progress made but its honestly been a very hectic week for me.

Till next time

Marc Out~~

Kigyo and milestones

Still experimenting with post layout on wordpress, I don’t want to repeat and image too much in my updates, but I’m going to try another approach, the featured Image will be a preview of the full image, and I’ll place a more detailed view below it, and here it is, the blindfold code’s Tank Kigyo:

He was the first blindfold code member that I ever drew, and i think it shows a bit, he doesn’t fully fit the punky hoodie look of the others, so I will probably redo him, there are aspects of his design that I do like and will be keeping, like the hex pattern on his sleeves, his hair colour, the hood made up of strips, as well as the mask made of multiple blindfolds. His original inspiration was based off of Konoha from Mekakucity Actors, in both his black and normal forms:

I think the main problem is that these two don’t match the designs of the other characters, because they were designed to be a villain rather then part of the group in the anime, so I’ll take a little time to redesign a hoodie for him, which I’m thinking I’ll base off of the segmented hoodie I came up with.

 

I don’t have much to show this week in other area’s, this week was kind of hectic for me, but there is another important subject I wanted to detail this week, my goals and milestones.

I don’t have much experience making a cartoon, even in a team, so I’ve been scouring the internet for any information, and I came across Olan Rogers, who has released a pilot episode of his show, Final space, which I highly suggest you go look up. but in one of his vlogs he mentions that it took him six years to get it made, so I’ve adopted that time frame for myself. Now over the last year I’ve been writing the script which is still in revisions at the moment, and may take some time, but is largely finished in my opinion which took about a year. After that I have started working on concept art, which I’m now about three months into, and I expect to take me another six, but may take longer, due to redesigns and college constraints. After that I move into story boarding, voice acting and animatic building which at my currents speed I expect to take between two and three years unless I can find help. After that I move to animating, which I expect one more year to get the pilot done.

So to summerise I’m ordering my time to hopefully look a little like this

Year 1 – scripting (Completed)

Year 2 – Concept art/begin Story boarding (in progress)

Year 3  – finish Story boarding/ record voice work/ combine story boards and audio into animatic

Year 4 – begin animation

Year 5 – finish pilot

Now, each of these big milestones are being broken down into smaller more manageable milestones, which in turn I’m breaking down into tasks that should take me about week to do, I’m not going to go into each one now, but I will give you an example with my current milestone, Concept art and story boarding.

I’ve broken up my workload into two main sections characters and environments. In characters I have: Main cast, Support cast, and background characters.

In Environments I’ve broken it up into another two categories: interiors and exteriors. Exteriors I’ve divided up into halves of the city: the human half, and the other half belonging to a race called otherkin, which a few scatter neutral areas. The Interior are going to be collected rooms from the script that will be themed around the different sectors from the two halves of the city.

From there I treat treat each drawing as a week’s work to design and detail, for characters this is a single person, for a exterior environment, this is a single sector, for interiors, this is a room. This probably seems like a lot of work, but this breaking down process helps keep me from getting overwhelmed by the bigger picture and focus on smaller achievable milestones, right now I’m focusing on my current milestone: Completing the art for the support cast of which I only half three characters left.

Wow this turned into a far longer post then I expected, don’t worry, next week I’ll be back with more art and 3D work

Till then

Marc Out~~