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 ~~

June 3rd Update

Welcome back, its been a very long time since the last update, apologies for that, I needed to get college work out of the way and I lost track of the updates. But now I’m back now, and this week we have the landmark of the Focus Training Dojos area, the Temple:

TheTemple

The Main influence for this was the Wat Rong Khun or the white Temple in Thailand:

93838844-rong-khun-temple-wat-rong-khun-white-temple-chiangrai-thailand

I would have loved to have added something as striking as that mass of stone hands, but there were a few factors that stopped me, the first was time, I was behind on updates and swamped with college work, the second was style, I want this place to stand out, but I don’t want it to look jarring with the high amount of detail.

So with the final design I desided to simplify it down, round it to make it fit the Alterkin architecture and replaced the lake of Hands with water, but I still quite like this concept in spite of all I removed.

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:7/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

 

April 23rd Update

Apologies for the lack of update last week, things are pretty hectic right now, I got the concept done, I got the concept done, I just couldn’t get around to posting an update. But luckily that means two concepts this week:

TheSmokeStack.png

First up is the landmark of the Factory sector, the Smoke stack, the idea behind this one is that its at least twice the height of every other factory in the area, the smoke being pumped out by it will do well to help the mood in other areas too anytime I want things to look overcast.

 

TruthClub.png

The second is the Truth club in the Upper district, its owned by Indigo and this influenced a lot of the colours of this building, its a pretty important set piece so I wanted to make sure it looked lavish.

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:6/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

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

March 19th Update

Ok, first of the landmarks, this week its the Argrows Shopping center:

ArgrowsShoppingCenter

For the most part I’m happy with this design, its an important location, there are a few things I need to tweak, for example it needs to show it can transform into a bomb shelter for civilians, but the shape and colour scheme I’m pretty happy with, I chose to use a blue-purple colour to make it stand out from the other buildings and a Red for the Logo to show a warning of the conflict which will happen there, luckily Red is a pretty common colour for Logos so it shouldn’t look too forbidding.

A huge inspiration for the protruding segments were based off of the Scottish Parliament of all places:

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I Love this building design, I plan on taking a few different elements from it for different buildings  in the future.

These segments however were a bit awkward, so I decided to experiment with a another method of planning my concept art. I made a rough shape in 3D first and drew over it:

ArgrowsShoppingCenterConstruction

The finally product turned out well, but I’m very  glad I practised a lot doing perspective in 2D first, it made things like the pillars much easier to draw correctly.

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:1/15
    • 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~~

February 12th Update

Apologies for the lack of updates, personal stuff got in the way, but we are done with the entertainment district buildings!

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I wanted to add a futuristic element to these concepts so I thought about holographic signs was something that would happen, especially in the tech based Human regions.

After this I have one region left for season 1, the mining sector, every other area can use place holder buildings since we’ll only be seeing them from a distance.

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:36/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

January 22nd Update

Second set of entertainment buildings, I’m finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now on the building concepts:

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I actually based these a little off of Moe’s tavern from the Simpsons, I wanted to go for a seedy bar feel while still keeping it friendly

imagev1435bf8464d9828f578a3739d3f74007a-w3uw3kw72cfteg6w7r2_ct677x380

I then used some of the colour schemes from the Store and Residential buildings to add some variety and help it keep with the city aesthetic. I am a little worried about the signs grabbing too much attention, but I can mute the colours a bit when I’m doing composition tests in 3D.

The Second thing I want to say is that there won’t be an update next week because I’ll be doing the global game jam this weekend, and a personal thing that will take up the following week.

Anyway that’s it for this week, keeping it short 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:35/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~