April 24th Update

Last redesign this week, Ash’s weapon:

There wasn’t a lot to really change with this design, the handle placement was a bit awkward, I also wanted to change the handle colour,

I’m still not sure if I should give it a grip texture, but I’ll have to wait and see when I model it.

And that’s it for character concepts, I’m officially past the halfway point of the concept process, next up is the environment concepts, I’m a little apprehensive to start these, since I’ve so little experience drawing places, but if this project has taught me anything, its that the best way to learn is to jump in headfirst!

So starting next week, we’ll be starting the different sections of the city, I’ve broken it down into four building per section, one landmark building and three generic buildings to break up the background. for sections of the city that won’t be central to the story I’ll still have to provide a landmark to identify the section when wide shots of the full city are shown, but I’m going to place hold them with buildings I’ve already made.
For the progress list I’m going to I’m going to add a separate section for the landmarks, since they’ll require more detail and approach the generic buildings in sets of three, similar to what I did for the background characters.

So, for this week the 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:0/15
  • Exteriors: 0/39

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

 

April 16th Update

Second last weapon update, a small redesign of Haru’s weapon:

Its mostly small tweaks to this one the middle spike is a little bit longer and I made it extend longer than the previous designs:

All in all I don’t have much else to add to this one, it didn’t need a huge amount changed, that being said this weapon is finally looking like the design I have in my head.

Anyway, I’ll keep it short,  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: 3/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~

April 9th Update

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

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

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:

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

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:

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”

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

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:

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:

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~~

March 5th Update

Over half way through the secondary characters now, this week its Sakata’s weapon:

Since Sakata was based on the myth of Kintarō I knew I wanted axes to be his weapons, plus I wanted to mix them with rifles to pay tribute to Rwby’s weapons, I was actually expecting this weapon to be difficult to design, but it turns out there are a whole host of axe-gun hybrids:

I’m honestly surprised that its such a rare weapon in popular media, but it made it very fun to design, and found a few really gorgeous designs.

Anyway I’ll keep it short this week, 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: 4/7
  • 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:

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:

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

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~~

February 19th Update

The Next weapon concept, Sho’s Weapon:

I’ll be honest, I rushed this one a bit, I was very limited on time this week, so I largely took the idea of the chakram from Xena warrior Princess, recoloured it and made them split apart into two dagger like blades.

I’m not overly concerned about it not being very original, since Sho doesn’t have many fights in the script, but I wanted to include it for completeness sake.

In other news I’m thinking of doing a few redesigns with the weapons like with the actual Character designs, I’m going to finish the current weapons on my list though first, I really don’t want to be that kind of creator that keeps going back a tweaking things and never finishing the project, but going back and revising designs is an important part of my plan:

At each stage I have to be willing to go back and make sure everything works before moving forward. That being said, this is the most time consuming part next to the actual storyboards and animating, it’s essentially the foundation for everything, so its important to get it right early on.

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: 2/7
  • Weapon Redesigns: 0/4
• Scene Concepts
  • Interiors: 0/24
  • Exteriors: 0/20

That’s all for this week,
Until next time

Marc Out~~