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 ~~

March 20th Update

Quick one this week, this week’s concept is a female version of the solider from last week

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The colours are basically just copied from last week’s concepts, and the design itself is based off of Major Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the shell:

kusanagi-motoko-full-1519913

I may return to this design in the future since I had to rush it a little bit due to college related deadlines.

I’ve also been thinking a bit about secondary content to help promote the cartoon as I make it, I have a few obvious ideas like table reads and blooper videos, but those require the cartoon to already be made and out in the public. I have my steaming, but I haven’t a clue how to promote a live stream outside of just being consistent. I’d like to open up a suggestion box or something similar to get ideas.

I’ll keep you guys posted as I come up with more ideas

That’s all for this week,

Marc Out~~

 

March 13th Update

I had a lot of fun designing this week’s Background Extra, Armoured up soldiers:

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The design has two influences, the  Ex-Nevec soldiers from Lost planet 2 (Which I also used for one of the colour schemes and to a much lesser extent the Iron avengers from Avengers 2: Age of Ultron
lost-planet-extrem-4e261a8a3640ax_hot902425-700x700

I have another background character in the works, I was hoping to have it done for this update, but I had a lot of non-Fade business to take care of this week so it just fell behind, but like this one I had fun designing it.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about this week is promoting this blog, I want to be able to generate a slow, gradual hype for this show, but I’m a little unsure how to do so. Another factor is social media, I use twitter and Facebook often as a passive observer, but I’m not sure how to approach these platforms for promotion, I’ve heard paying for ads is good for gaining subscribers and followers, but that doesn’t give people who will interact or engage with you, which to me defy’s the point of having an audience. So I want to take my time and come out with a good advertising campaign, I know my target audience: people who want a show like Rwby while Rwby is in its off season as Rooster Teeth make new episodes.
But I’m unsure how to access or market to that group. The Obvious answer is to post the blog onto the RWBY subreddit, but I’ve heard that Reddits generally tend to reject a direct advertisement like that on principle. I’m sure there are other places to show the blog, but at the moment my mind is drawing a blank, so I’m posing the question to you guys: Are there any places I could show this blog where I’d get people that would talk about Fade as I make it? How should I aim to use Social media to engage with potential viewers?

Its still early days yet, so I’m sure I’ll figure something out, but any feedback would be stuff to consider.

That’s all for this 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

noragami-yukine-cosplay-costume-clothes-men

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~~

February 13th Update

Last set of human slum dwellers this week:

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I based this design of Eldore from white knight Chronicles(In particular when he first appears with his hood up and his cloak around him), but I feel I altered the design enough to make it unclear that’s what I used:
eldore-full-148667

The Other two colour schemes are based off of Yato and Yukine from Noragami, which if you know the Series is really fitting to make them slum dwellers

Seriously Check out Noragami, its going to be on of the main inspirations for Fade.

In other News I’ve been organising what environments I’ll need to concept when I’m done with the background extras, I’ve counted up the interior scenes and I have 24 rooms to do, not including exterior scenes, and I’ve realised how I’m going to do this is tricky, I could concept them like I’ve been doing with the characters, however its going to take me a lot longer than drawing characters, another idea is to just build them in 3D and design as I go. Its something I’m going to do some research on, but I’m curious to get opinions or alternatives from you guys.

Next week is Otherkin slum dwellers, I’m looking forward to designing them, all the Otherkin I’ve been designing I’ve been making purposefully human looking, I’m planning on making the slum dwellers lean more toward the more animal looking side, so till Next time!

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!

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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~~