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~~

March 26th Update

The last Weapon design, Kusanagi’s Weapon:
GrassCutter

I didn’t want to get too detailed with this one because he only has the one fight in season 1, but I knew I wanted to base it heavily off of his name sake, the legendary “Grasscutter Sword”

kusangi-no-tsurugi

I also decided to combine it with a Fantasy sword I found online, the Kilgorin Sword of Darkness from Dragon Age:

2159682_120310234822_13_4_orig

So with that done, what comes next, well I have a quick round of redesigns for the weapons, which will take the next for weeks, but then we’re into environments.

Anyway, onto 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: 0/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

March 19th Update

A lot to get through this week, first up this week’s concept and the second last weapon concept for the moment, Commander Izanami‘s weapon:

SheWhoInvites.png

I was searching for ceremonial Chinese swords and came across a number of Dao swords from the Tang Dynasty that I loved the look of

The simplicity of the designs fits the character really well, since she’s a bit of a pragmatist despite the formal clothes. It also contrasts nicely with her counterpart Commander Izanagi’s Weapon which is a bit more technology based. Overall I wanted to keep this weapon simple since it only appears once in the first season.

Secondly, comes the cool thing I was talking about at the end of last week’s blog post, the first animation for Fade’s teaser:

Its a section that comes later in the story, but its a excellent scene for generating interest, it still required some music and some redrawing in parts, but this is a really important milestone for me since its the first thing I’ve been able to show that conveys the tone of the cartoon and shows the key relationship dynamics for three of our four main characters.
That being said there is some extra work to be done, while Ebony’s design is fine for this scene, Ash, and more so Blue have some pretty drastic changes to their looks that I had to leave out. The environment will also need to be planned out, and while I have a good idea of the layout, a few parts I’ll need to find out how to texture and model.
Overall though this minute and a half video I have gotten a much better idea of how to plan out the storyboards of the show itself and over the summer I want to break my work week into finishing environment concepts and storyboards for the Official trailer which will contain scenes solely from season 1. This might seem like jumping ahead when the teaser has only really been started, but in my current situation I’m pretty limited in what I can do technology wise, so jumping into modelling and animating isn’t a good idea, plus with animatics I can actually plan out what I need far better, which will save me building assets I might not actually need, so overall the more storyboards and animatics I do now, the less I have to do later.

When it comes to adding the trailer to the progress list, I’m going to wait until I have a scene list of moments I’m going to include in the Trailer, the idea is the Teaser should raise questions, and the Trailer should answer just enough to make people care, so I want to take my time with it more so than with the Teaser, so it might be a while before I talk about it again, but know that its very much still at work in the background.

Anyway, onto 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: 6/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 0/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

March 12th Update

Only two more weapon concepts left, this week We have Sapphire’s weapon:
Service

This was another fun one to look into, the big inspiration for Sapphire was Virgil from devil may cry, so I knew I wanted a Katana for her, there are massive amounts of cool swords to pick from:

I focused mainly on the Warframe Nikana, and then mixed and matched with the blades till I got designs I liked, I’m leaning heavily to the second design from the top.

Once again I’ll keep it short this week, but next week I should have something cool to show, for now 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: 5/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 0/4
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

Febuary 26th Update

Onto another Weapon concept this week, Commander Izanagi‘s weapon:
HeWhoInvites

Aside from a few cyberpunk ideas I found on google, the two main insperations I drew from for these swords were Nero’s sword from Devil May cry 4, the Red Queen:

red20queen203d20book20views

And Fiora’s Project Fiora Sword From League of Legends:

ba3d74c29415887708

Honestly I love a lot of these designs, so its going to be tough to choose, luckily the Commander doesn’t have any fights in the first season so I have plenty of time to choose, but I still thought I’d design some for the sake of completeness.

In other news my college course has given me a project that’s a perfect opportunity to start story boarding the teaser for Fade, its a scene from very late in the series, I honestly don’t have much planned other than the Scene itself, but its a great point to show people where the story will go without giving the whole plot away, so expect news of that over the next few weeks.

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: 3/7
    • Weapon Redesigns: 0/4
  • 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~~

November 27th Update

First of the weapons concepts and I’m off to a pretty good start, I had enough time to get two done this week, first up is Blue’s:

FairyFangs.png

I started out drawing from my mind, which is how I came up with the leftmost Dagger, but I wasn’t sure if it fit the character so I googled a few images of knifes and did a little adapting, honestly I think the rightmost dagger will be the one I use. I also traced over a reference picture of a person to give an indication of what size the daggers will be, overall I’m pretty happy with them.

Secondly we have Ebony’s:

Wingless

This was actually a really interesting one to design, I started off wanting to give Ebony a pair of swords that would clip together and look similar to Kadaj’s weapon from Final fantasy Advent children:
37ebcefa371a65e32d818fd5a972edd2-katana-swords-final-fantasy

But I couldn’t think of any way of clipping the hilts together in a way that looked good, then I found Sasuke Uchiha’s Sword from Naruto:

d913a04a9a4ea00cca3e00b5e073f200-grass-cutter-samurai-swords

It perfectly summered what I wanted from Ebony, sleek, efficient and minimalist, so I altered the colours to match Ebony’s and added the little wing symbols to give it its own flair. I’m really pleased with the look overall.

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: 2/12
    • Secondary Characters: 0/7
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~