Chapter 1 is Done! & New Stellapen Patch
Added 2022-10-30 20:33:33 +0000 UTCProgress Update - Speedy!
The first "chapter" of the Dragon of Mar is complete, all the way from sketches to compositing. Since the animation as a whole is going to be lengthy, I'm splitting the major scenes into seven chapters, each lasting 2-5 minutes long. So we have about 2.5 minutes of animation complete in our first month of production!
Chapters 1-3 alone comprise of 10,000 frames!
I'm very pleased with this pace, and I hope to maintain this rate throughout November and December (though, the holidays do slow things down). A major factor contributing to this speed up is the selective use of budget and "batching" creative decisions together.
This is most notable in our new color concept & palette process.
A lot of Concept Art (new Palette Process)
Previous Gildedguy stories featured concept art that helped us define broad moods and set-pieces early in the project. I would keep these concepts in mind when doing layout and other planning tasks.
Very broad, vague colors/ideas for Story 5
Something new that I've employed is allowing others to do specific color palettes and inking for concept art, while I quickly sketch out the outlines. It's a subtle change, but I really makes my job easier as I can focus on rendering raw shapes, and not worry about mood/feel and ambience at the same time.
Don't delay - get all the color decisions done at the same time!
This division & bundling of creative decisions makes it MUCH faster (and consistent) than making it up on the fly!
For example, Scene #39. Division of work:
- Layouts by Gildedguy
- Color Palettes by Bokskat
- Background Render by Rebonkulous
- Character Animation by KAP
- Character Inking by Voroxzii
New Stellapen Patch
A side project I've been developing is a new merch product - Embroidered patches!
Our first design is of Gildedguy's Green Pen, the Stellapen. I commissioned PandoPOP to craft dozens of these guys for my Etsy shop, which you can now purchase.
These patches are like super-stickers that have a soft, shiny threaded texture, which make them ideal for apparel and bags. This is a limited run, but if they prove popular, I'll see what we can do to provide more designs. Let me know!
That's all for now! For a more frequent look at the project, you can find me streaming on Twitch. The 3D overlay is getting more of my dev attention, so stick around if you want to give me feedback on new features.
Thank you!
