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 ~~

April 9th Update

Second redesign, With Anguis’ Weapon we’re half way through the redesigns:

SnakeSlayer2

Like with Naga’s weapon, I took the elements I liked the most from the multiple weapons and combined them into one:

SnakeSlayer

I’m actually quite happy with the result. It has the adaptability I want for choreography with the sleek style I wanted.

Its a short update this week, largely because I’m spending a lot of time researching architecture for the buildings I’m going to be attempting for the next milestone, which has been tricky since its such a vast subject, but from what I’ve gathered three things are important: The people using a building, the location its built and the purpose of the building, which like most of my research seems obvious in hindsight, but I was planning on jumping into it without thinking about these things, focusing on the silhouette of the building and working in without considering how humans or Otherkin would use the buildings or what problems these groups would encounter when building them. I’m looking forward to brainstorming these things.

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

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

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~~

January 15th Update

Another week, another weapon concept, this week its Yilan’s weapon:

Yanjingshe.png
I’m really happy with how these turned out, I’m leaning mainly toward the second and fourth ones down, which are heavily influenced by Chinese spears and the predator spear:

I knew right from the start I wanted this spear to be extendable, and that really shaped these designs, which surprised me to find very few different types of extendable spears to reference for these design, but I think I got it more or less.

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: 9/12
    • Secondary Characters: 0/7
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

 

January 8th Update

Another Weapon concept this week, Kigyo’s, although its really more of a redesign since I included it in his first design:

SnakeSkin

Its fairly obvious that Cloud Strife’s buster sword and fusion sword are still really heavy influences on the weapon, but there was a few more features that helped make this weapon more original, I knew I wanted it to double as an extendable shield but I also thought that if it could double as storage for the other members of the Blindfold Code’s weapons. So I looked around and found this Concept that I felt I could adapt really well into a Sword:

e7ee39ae5afb432100e8ade756e1ca71

I am a little worried that it still looks a bit too much like Clouds Sword, so I may do another redesign.

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: 8/12
    • Secondary Characters: 0/7
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

January 2nd Update

Happy new year! I took last week off, and recover from new years delayed this post a little bit, but I have another Double set of weapon concepts, first up is Sapa’s Weapon:

SnakeFang

This was actually a really hard weapon to design, as it turns out three-sided Throwing glaives are not a common weapon, so I had very little to work off of, aside from Digital Extreme’s games Dark sector and warframe:

I largely converted four sided shuriken into three sided weapons, these seemed to do the job, but it wasn’t until I started colouring them that the designs started jumping out at me, I’m more than likely going to go with the lower right one, I like the colours a lot and it looks the easiest to fold up and conceal .

Next up we have Pamu’s weapons:

SidewinderAndCerastes

The idea here is that Pamu is going to have two weapons, a butterfly knife and a sword up her sleeve. The knives I made by finding a few combat knives and mixing them with butterfly knife handles, I’m probably going to use the middle one, since the blue tips on the handles would look the best during animation, but I may take some time later and really work on the mechanics of the hidden sword, which was modelled after a combination of the Assassin’s blade and the sword from Attack on titan:

In other news, I’ve got the first Fan art of a Fade Character, so I’ve made a fan art page you can view Here! I may have been made by a friend of my, but it really feels like a step forward, and will hopefully be the first of many!

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

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

December 17th Update

This week is more weapon concepts, onto Hebi’s weapons:

PuppetStrings.png

This one was actually deceptively tricky to design, they had to be elegant, but look nearly improvised, since Hebi in the scripts is working from what she can find, but overall I’m happy with them, I’m leaning heavily toward using the second design from the top, it adds a nice contrast to Blue’s daggers, which are more symmetrical.

I also decided on having the daggers wielded on strings due to Hebi’s Abilities, she can see every possible outcome of a situation, and given enough time can predicted the outcomes perfectly, which would allow her to attack with daggers in a way that would be nearly impossible for you or I without years of practise. I think it gives the character a lot of identity.

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: 5/12
    • Secondary Characters: 0/7
  • Scene Concepts
    • Interiors: 0/24
    • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

October 22nd Update

Apologies for the lack of an update last week, I had a power outage and I didn’t get it back until mid week, so I decided to just add this week’s and last week’s progress together, first up the last on my main character redesigns, Naga:

Naga2

I’m so much happier with this design than with the old one:
Naga

The actual changes aren’t that extreme but opening up the hoodie and changing to cargo pants really highlights the misguided teen style I’m going with, and breaks up the black and green nicely, where as before I felt the black unbalanced the previous design.

Secondly we have the first redesign of the secondary Characters, Sakata:

Sakata2

This design didn’t actually change as much as I thought it would:

sakata

Basically I adapted his armour to match the style of the human military

MaleHumanMilitary1A

I also moved the tattered shirt to the outside, and while I do like the coat I feel it is a bit bland on its own, but for now I’m quite happy with it, since the problem is that I felt his design didn’t match the advance technology of the Human culture, which I feel subtlety it does now, while keeping his individuality.

Now, onto this week’s status on concepts:

  • Background extras:42/42
  • Main Characters: 13/13
  • Main character re-designs: 5/5
  • Secondary Character: 14/14
  • Secondary Character re-designs: 1/5

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

October 8th Update

Another Redesign this week, Pamu:

Pamu2

Most of the design is  largely the same as the original, since I was pretty happy with it, but I decided to simplify the colour scheme:
Pamu

This was mainly because of the changes I made to Anguis last week, so to give her more identity when next to Anguis, I decided to take the brighter elements of her scheme and make them more of a focus.

Now, onto this week’s status on concepts:

  • Background extras:42/42
  • Main Characters: 13/13
  • Main character re-designs: 4/5
  • Secondary Character: 14/14
  • Secondary Character re-designs: 0/5

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~