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 ~~

June 11th update and 3rd year Anniversary recap

Another Landmark concept this week, this week for the entertainment District:

TheBigWheel

I really liked the idea of a Ferris wheel against the city’s skyline, but I wanted to make it a bit more interesting, its faint but inside there are orbs, I vision these as chambers that contain a floor that stays level no matter what way the wheel turns, so people can stand and look onto n the city.

 

In other news the 3rd anniversary of this Blog was on the 6th of June, I ended up missing it, which disappointing me greatly. I feel those kinda of dates are important. But none the less it doesn’t take away from what I’ve accomplished this year.

The biggest thing was completing the base building concepts which was frankly something I had been dreading, and I can honestly say it really did try my patience but thankfully that has lifted somewhat with the landmarks as I’ve been making them.

Overall I have two years to reach my milestone of the first episode, but unlike last year I’m not so confident I’ll reach that deadline in the time I have with the workflow I currently am using, but my schedule with college and other responsibilities prevent me from working faster.  Its something I’m very frustrated by, I’ve been wondering how I should go about making things easier for myself, I have a few options:

  • Firstly I could do the storyboards before concepting the interior sets, so I can plan them out more efficiently but this could delay my completion of the interior concepts and prevent me giving proper care.
  • Secondly I can start story-boarding the first episode while I’m working on the Interiors but this will tighten my already tight schedule.
  • Third only concept the interior scenes for the first episode before moving onto the storyboards, this would speed up the development of the first episode and reduce my initial workload, but drags out the development of later episodes significantly since those concepts will have to be drawn and built at some point.

I still haven’t decided which of these approaches I’ll take, I have seven landmarks to complete, so I have seven weeks to decide, but I’m leaning toward the third option, since it will help me keep to my original deadline better and break up the work into something that feels more achievable.

I’m still working to follow my initial plan:

FadePlan1

But I think in the next year I’ll be tweaking it, moving Marketing to a later in the chain, but I’m still not sure as to where, its a big part of the process and something I’ll probably spend money on, but my initial attempts to gauge my audience from animatics hasn’t gone well with some of my personal animatics. Where I’m going to market it will take some thought too, I don’t want ride on Rwby’s coattails and frankly I think the story can stand up on its own, so I want to find alternative avenues to find the audience.

I still maintain that once I’m done with the concepts I’ll be able to progress very rapidly, I’m faster at 3d modeling and rigging than producing well rendered art, so I don’t thing those parts of the plan will change much.

Overall I feel I’m going into next year with a more realistic outlook in the project, recently the show took some bumps, but I felt I learned from that, and I’m still optimistic for the future.

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:8/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

Thank you all for continuing to follow the show’s development, until Next time,

Marc Out ~~

June 3rd Update

Welcome back, its been a very long time since the last update, apologies for that, I needed to get college work out of the way and I lost track of the updates. But now I’m back now, and this week we have the landmark of the Focus Training Dojos area, the Temple:

TheTemple

The Main influence for this was the Wat Rong Khun or the white Temple in Thailand:

93838844-rong-khun-temple-wat-rong-khun-white-temple-chiangrai-thailand

I would have loved to have added something as striking as that mass of stone hands, but there were a few factors that stopped me, the first was time, I was behind on updates and swamped with college work, the second was style, I want this place to stand out, but I don’t want it to look jarring with the high amount of detail.

So with the final design I desided to simplify it down, round it to make it fit the Alterkin architecture and replaced the lake of Hands with water, but I still quite like this concept in spite of all I removed.

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:7/15
    • Exteriors:39/39

 

January 8th Update

Last Dojo for this set, I’m actually sad I’m done with these, I think with this design I finally have the idea of what I wanted these building to look like:

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The addition of the curved walls will actually take a little explanation, so originally I wanted to do a larger building, based on the dorm (or Temple) of main characters of Houseki No Kuni (Or land of the lustrous):

land-of-the-lustrous-01

I really liked the idea of a slice cut building, and wanted to apply it to my previous designs, but it was a bit of a drastic change from the previous two designs, but I looked at a few different designs of Asian buildings, and caught the ideas of the corridors usually extending from main entrances:

kh2-land-of-dragons

So I came up with the idea of a Dojo with walls built onto the main building, Sliced at an angle, I’m hopefully going to add in something like a sparring ring, which should give the district a really unique look.

Anyway that’s it for the analysis, here is this week’s Update list:

  • 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:33/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

December 24th Update

Merry Christmas everyone! We have a second set of Dojo’s these week:

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I tried to adapt last week’s design into a more detailed building, but I feel its missing something the last one had, I suspect I should have given the Roof a second layer, like in the Ikenobo Dojo I referenced last week

Rokkaku-dou_Ikenobou_doujou

Other than the roof situation I’m actually pretty happy with this one, I think it’ll fit well when I’m constructing the city proper

Other than that, I’ll be taking a much needed break over the Christmas, but I will do another “Year in review” posts on new years day, I find looking back on what I’ve done and reminding myself how much I’ve actually produced to be very motivating, it can get demoralising when I still see how much I have to do, but I’m over half way with all this concept art and I’m proud that I’ve been able to keep going through out the year.

Anyway, here is this week’s Update list:

  • 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:32/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

December 18th Update

New building concepts this week, Training dojos:

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These are some of the smaller buildings for this area, but these are going to be some of the more complicated buildings hence why I’ve left them for my winter break.

The main inspiration for this week’s concepts that the Ikenobo Dojo in Kyoto:

Rokkaku-dou_Ikenobou_doujou

As for the colours I took some inspiration from Warframe again (I really love the design of that game)

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8SQ0vZI

My concept is a lot simpler than this but unfortunately this is due to my limited free time right now, I have a number of projects which is affecting how long I can spend on the show, which is frustrating to say the least, but hopefully in the next week or so I should be able to get back on track.

 

Anyway, here is this week’s Update list:

  • 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:31/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

September 18th Update

The Final Factory this week, took a little bit of a different approach this week:

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the Storage Tanks were something I think the district really needed, both from a world-building perspective and a way of adding variety to the scenes, I’m quite happy with them.
I think I’ve finally perfected drawing cylinders enough to move onto some of the more advanced Alther kin buildings, which I’m really looking forward to working on now

In other news, I have to apologise for the lateness of this update, I’m back to college this week and things are unfortunately up in the air with my scheduled, there may be another delay next week as well, but after that things should start getting back to normal with the updates.

Anyway, here is this week’s list:

  • 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:21/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

September 3rd Update

Slowly getting through these piece by piece, This week I started working on the factories of the city:

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These were important buildings to draw because of the smoke stacks, I actually have trouble drawing cylinders, especially uniform ones like this, but with a combination of the previous drawing techniques I’d been using combined with some photoshop tweaking I think I have a fast way of drawing them.

I also based the colour schemes off of the Warehouses I’d done previously I liked the grey washed out colours that I feel look oppressive and cold, contrasting with the other warmer areas.

That’s it for this week, thanks for bearing with the progress of these buildings, they aren’t the most interesting to discuss and I hope I have more to say once I’m past them

Anyway, here is this week’s list:

  • 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:19/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

August 27th Update

Apologies for the lack of updates last week, Convention season got in the way and I had to skip the update, but my work still progressed, so this week is a double feature of designs:

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Like before I focused on the same colour scheme, and if the feature image on the top of the blog is anything to go by they look pretty good huddled together, I learned a lot about making curved buildings, and I’m looking forward to getting deeper into Alterkin architecture.

But that finishes off the Upper district for now, getting us close to the halfway point for buildings, it was a little tougher to find inspiration for this set but I think it fits pretty well into my vision for the area.

Anyway, here is this week’s list:

  • 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:18/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

August 14th Update

A little late with this update, I was at Comic con in Dublin, so I could only post the concept today, but this week we have the first of the Upper district buildings:

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The upper district is Made up of Otherkin that have accepted human Rule and are rewarded for it, so while the buildings are rounder, they mimic different human buildings, these ones take inspiration from the Human Villas I made before

On a slight side note, I’ve decided to change the Name of the Otherkin to Alterkin, I’ve had to many people express worry that the name has negative associations with it, honestly I’ve only really been using it as a placeholder name as I come up with a better one, and I think I have, Alterkin seems like a more accurate name in the grander scheme of the plot as well. However this presents a few problems with the script that I’m going to have to look over, for example, the organisation the main characters work for is called The human Otherkin joint operation, but now that doesn’t fit the acronym HOJO, which was a nice nod to final fantasy, but now requires rethinking. But its a problem I’m happy to think on for a little bit.

Anyway, here is this week’s list:

  • 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:0/15
    • Exteriors:16/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~