October 30th Update

Another week and more concept art, this time a business woman:

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I had a bit of fun with the colors with this one, the suit colours are the same as the last extra but I wanted to make the hair a bit more out there, especially since this set were based on exotic birds. I’ve been doing research on extras in animation, and it would seem my estimate of six per sector is pretty on the money, check out this analysis of star wars rebels I found:

This has actually given me a lot of hope for the future, since I’ve found the take of designing extras a lot more intimidating that the main characters, just through the sheer volume that I’ll need to do. That being said, I’ve been trying to focus on taking this one template at a time, but its still going to take a long time, I’m giving each district 6 template characters, and I have 21 districts including a black market sector, so in total I have 126 templates to draw, so my main concern is which districts I can reuse extras on, the areas I have are as follows, with the human areas called sectors and the Otherkin areas called Districts:

• The Government Sector
• The Business Sector
• The Commercial Sector
• The Military Sector
• The Residential Sector
• the Industrial Sector
• The Entertainment Sector
• The Processing Sector
• The Research Sector
• The Agriculture sector
• The garden of Remembrance (a human owned area)
•  The Upper District
• The Mining District
• The Factory District
• The Business district
• The Residential District
• The Industrial District
• The Warehouse district
• The Market District
• the Focus Training Dojos (Otherkin Owned)
• The Lower district (or the slums, Neutral for both Humans and Otherkin)
• The Black Market (Also Neutral)

There are some smaller areas as well, but I’m planning on reusing templates there, over the next week or so, I’m going to see which of those areas I can get away with re-using templates in so I can reduce those 126 drawings, For example, the Mining, Indrustial, and Warehouse districts will all be using Otherkin Labourers, so I may use the same six template extras for those three areas. I’ll have a list in the Next update for all the extras designs I’ll be needing.

Speaking of templates, I’ve started work on the new female template:

You’ll have to forgive the gap in the middle, I’m only building half the model and copying and flipping it to give you guys a better idea of my progress, it looks very similar to the original templates, but under the surface is much cleaner for animation, the eyes and mouth have a lot more detail in them and the mesh structure around the mouth and eyes will look more natural when I’m animating it. I’ve been working off youtube videos, but its actually amazing how few people using blender take into account the muscle structure of the face when modelling and focus on only the appearance of the model, as a result the models look great up until the point were you move the features. That being said even my own model could use work, but its definitely been a lesson in “choose your teachers well”.

Speaking of learning I’ve been looking for ways of story boarding, so far the only thing that seems reliable is drawing the boards myself in photoshop, but that’s adding to my drawing workload, which from above is pretty extensive as is. there seems to be plenty of software out there for story boarding, but its all insanely expensive, and honestly seems more limiting then just drawing them myself, so for now I’m just sticking with that, Drawing in photoshop, and creating animatics in flash

That’s all for this week, till next time.

Marc Out~~

Haru and 3D Models

Here are two possible designs for the first support character of the story, Haru:

I’m basing her largely of Amaterasu from Shinto, but also slightly from Okami too:

I’m pretty on board with the colour scheme, its just how to apply it, I feel the one on the left is a bit more distinct, but the one on the right looks better overall, and since she’s a less important character I feel that she doesn’t really have to be that distinct

In other news I’ve basically got as far as I can go with the modelling of my male template, and its looking pretty good:

I’ve already placed seams on him for UV unwrapping and texturing, the next step is said texturing and rigging, hopefully that will stop them looking like aliens finally!

I’ve also done a little bit with the city, I’ve added a road and rail system to my rough map, and it has made a real difference, in the new area I’ve been adding:

The roads aren’t visible yet, but it’s helped to place buildings in a manageable way rather then just plonk them downs anywhere. I also think the rail system is going to add a nice touch to the city for the big sweeping fly-bys. I’m going to be spending time building up the different structures of the city over the next few days, so all those empty planes are going to fill up rapidly now, knowing were all the roads go automatically lets me know where plazas and open areas should be, and will really help the place look authentic!

I’m really looking forward to working on it now

Until next week!

Marc Out~~

The masked man and template update

Here we have the character that I was looking forward to designing the most, the Villain of the first season, The masked man:

I really wanted to go with something simple but striking, so I started with the Mask and worked outward, so the mask would be the main focal point of the whole design. The Mask itself is a combination of two masks, The Court of Owls from batman, and the white half of Shuuya’s mask from Mekakucity Actors:

When i looked at Shuuya’s mask I got the idea of the black teeth and used it to make the court of owls mask look more beast-like, I also toyed around with the idea of giving the mask nose holes, which I think I’ll keep it gives it a more skull like appearance and sets it apart a bit more from the court of owls.

In other news I’m making steady progress on my male template, partially thanks to my earlier female template, all that’s left is the hands, a little more definition around the legs and once again softening the face again:

Overall I’m very happy with the result, but I have always found modelling guys easier than girls, after this I’ll have to work on texturing, I’ve largely been putting it off with the female template, but once I’m done with the Male template model I’ll have to cross that bridge. I’m also predicting a few problems with rigging, in particular the face and fingers and with creating Hair, in particular eyelashes, Blender has a few robust hair simulator, but that’s really only for larger masses of hair, rather than finer, more detailed ones. I’ll be looking up a few tutorials online, and if I find any good ones I might link them in future posts.

On a final note I’ve decided to rethink the city layout from a few posts ago, partially due to a massive oversight on my part: I forgot to include roads. It’s a pretty hilarious thing to overlook but it wasn’t until I was actually placing down blocks that I realised that I wasn’t leaving any space for people to get around! But I’ll keep you guys updated as I detail it out.

Till then

Marc Out~~

Yilan and General updates

This update came very close to being late, some non-Fade related stuff took up a lot of my week, but I do have stuff to talk about, the First of which is this week’s concept art, the Blindfold Code member Yilan:

She was one of the first characters I had an idea for she’s based off of Kido from Mekakucity Actors, but also the female inklings from splatoon.

I love the Inkling designs in particular, I’m thinking of using some as influences in some of the character’s casual clothes at some point down the line.

I’ve also finished modelling the template model for girls, the differences are subtle, but I’m largely happy with it now:

The next step is to get it ready for UV mapping and setting up a bone structure for rigging, but that may have to wait until I know how to do more of that in blender

In more personally news, I’ve been dealing with signing up to a college course and obtaining funding for said course, normally I’d keep stuff like this out of this blog, since I only want to use it for Fade stuff, but its relevant because its an animation course. Which is very relevant to Fade. I’m hoping I can use this course to make the Fade Pilot episode for my final project. But this is also a warning that the schedule of this blog my change come September, but for now I’ll still keep working away getting as much ground work done until then.

So tune in next week for more concept art and more updates

Marc Out~~