April 2nd Update

First of the four weapon redesigns, Naga’s:

SnakeSplitter2.png

I basically combined the elements I liked from the previous designs into one, and honestly I’ve think I’ve got the best of of the three in one design

SnakeSplitter

I wish I had more this week, if I all the redesigns go as quick as this one I could potentially do more than one, but I hit a pretty major wall of creative resistance, which doesn’t happen often, but thanks to the deadline i give myself each week I was able to power through it.

Which makes me realise I haven’t talked much about my creative process in general, so I will a little now.
The first an most important thing I want to point out is that everyone has different ways of working, some people might have more efficient ways, but this is what works for me.

I go to college in Dublin, when I get home I only really have two hours to myself after I’m done with homework and such, and its very easy to sit and watch movies or play games until I have to sleep, so I make a deal with myself, I sit down and try to work for  one hour. The key word here is try, and its really important, creativity sort of comes and goes like the tide, its very easy to say that you don’t have motivation and give up on working, don’t do that, its a trap. You might not get much done, but it is very important to get something done, anything you do get done is something your won’t have to do next time, even if its a line or two of a drawing or a word or two of a script.

The second thing that’s important in my work is limitations, I have a lot of this story planned out, but I’m only focusing on the parts that are urgent, I’ve had people disagree with what those urgency are, but these ultimately need to be done eventually, but in this project its important that certain elements do get a second look, particularly designs involving main characters, so I need to limit how main times I go back and tweak things, for concepts I’m allowing myself one loop of redesigns and for storyboards I’m going to allow two.

Finally comes the balance of scope, and this is a tricky one, Fade is a big project for one person, and keeping a view of the overall vision of the project is important, but in order to not get overwhelmed it has to be broken down into smaller steps, and again into sub-steps, a small step is far easier to achieve than a large one, but you’d be amazed how many people only see the big steps when I talk about this project. But there are down sides to the small steps too, if there are two many it can feel like the project is dragging on, and complicate planning, so its important to step back and view the larger scope again.
All in all, be adaptable, and be productive and things tend to slot into place

So there we go, I don’t know how many people will read this, but I hope it helps those that do.

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: 7/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 1/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

January 22nd Update

Ok, getting close to the end of the weapon concepts, this week its Naga’s Weapon:

SnakeSplitter

This was a seriously fun weapon to design, First off I knew I wanted to give Naga some variant of the Seven Branched Sword:

the-seven-branched-sword

After that I started searching for other swords I could combine it with to make it a bit more original, one of the first I looked up was Green Destiny from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which inspired the leftmost Sword in my concepts:

6760

I also over the course of researching came across the Sword of Goujian, which the more I find out about the more like an actual Anime the story behind it gets.

goujian-hubei-provincial-museum-2

Combining the two I came up with the Right most Sword in my concept image, which I think will be the one I go with.

Ok, now onto the bad news, I unfortunately won’t be able to post a blog post next week, due to me taking part in the Global Game Jam as an Animator, it’ll be the first week I’ve missed since starting this blog, but if I can I’ll try to update later in the week, fingers crossed.

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: 10/12
    • Secondary Characters: 0/7
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~