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:

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~~

July 17th Update

Only two more to go, another Hojo member this week, But this week its an Otherkin:

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I’m a little worried that the levels of contrast in the first two are a bit much, they are based off the colour schemes of two Vocaloids, Miku Hatsune and Haku Yowane respectively :

The Third Scheme is based off of the Anime Black Rock Shooter, which I think might be heavily inspired by Miku:

I’ve also been thinking about the trailer for the show, and while its still a while to go before I focus all my energy on it, its still turning into a tricky task to plan, I want to show off the best parts of my story, but I don’t want to give spoilers, so I have walk a tightrope of what to release.
At the moment I have two options I’m planning:
The First is taking a big plot point from very late in the series, and then flashing back to a short prelude to foreshadow the big event, however I haven’t planned out that big event very much, and I don’t want to release a teaser that might not pay off.
The Second is to to little action preludes showing how each member of Team Fade reached where they are, simlar to the Rwby trailers, which were very successful, the only thing is that I’m worried that this could give too much information and spoil the story ahead of time. I’ll think about it more in future updates, but I wanted to get my thoughts on the matter on paper, but I’d be curious to hear any thoughts on the matter.

Anyway here is this week’s status on concepts:

• Background extras:40/42
• Main Characters: 13/13
• Main character re-designs: 1/5
• Secondary Character: 7/12
• Secondary Character re-designs: 0/4

That’s all for this week
Until next time

Marc Out~~

January 15th Update

Another shopkeeper this week, I’m only probably going to do one more of these since there isn’t many shopkeepers in the show as a whole:

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The Colour schemes are based off of Yoruichi Shihōin and Renji Abarai from bleach and Weiss from Rwby, respectively.

Although I am worried that the Bleach character’s colours might make them stand out too much, Once I’m done with all the character concepts I’ll do a review of what I feel does and doesn’t work and adjust accordingly, But I suspect all I’ll have to do is just lower the saturation of the more noticeable colours.

I’ve also decided to upload one of my storyboards, I’ll admit that I’ve been reluctant to do this, since I prefer to only show finished work, but that’s against the point of this blog, and so long as I don’t use spoiler heavy shots then it should be alright.

I’m going to try up load one of these every time I have 15 shots drawn up, that way I can pick the least spoilerish of the batch. If you’d like the template that I’m using I got it from an animator called Jazza that posted up his onto Newgrounds Here. I’m not sure how often I’ll be posting storyboards, because they’re still taking a backseat while I decide on the look of the world and its characters, plus I’m still quite slow at gestural drawing, but I want to give myself an incentive to work at them, so hopefully there will be more soon.

Anyway that’s all for this week, Till next week

Marc Out~~

December 4th Update

Last set of Otherkin templates, next update will be on regular humans:

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This Template was a reference to the Anime Air gear which is another big influence on the show’s overall aesthetic so I’ll be mentioning it again in the future, the over all character design is based around Kazuma Mikura, who’s design I always liked, he feels like he could switch form background character to main character in a split second, which was actually part of his character in the show

The other colour schemes are based off of the Main character Ikki and Simca I think the fem fatal (her role is strange in the show) But if you want an idea for how future environments in the city should hopefully look, check out the show, because the city in Air gear is nearly a character itself (which is appropriate for a freestyle roller blade anime)

In Other news I’ve given Damson a redesign, simplifying his tattoos, adding a ponytail to give him a better silhouette and rearranged the colours in his outfit to balance him a bit better, and I’m much happier with him:

I’ve left the old version of his design up for comparison, I also tweaked his head shape, its still out of proportion with his ears, but I’m glad that I can actually identify what the problem was before, when I first sketched him out I was largely guessing, It let’s me know I am actually improving.

Finally I wanted to clear up something that was pointed out to me earlier in the week by my reader Cillian Flood (Who you should check out because he has a very uniqe view on everyday life) that it was too early to be working on the show’s official opening, which I totally agree with, but that’s sort of not what I’ve been story boarding, the “intro” I’ve been planning is more of a “Pilot”, Teaser or a preview, but I’ve been calling it an Intro all this time because that’s what I was using as a starting point for this Preview, so From here on I’ll be referring to the clip I’m making as the Preview for the foreseeable future. Hopefully that will prevent any confusion in the future.

Until Next Time

Marc Out~~