September Update: A whole new character! And lots more

Dear Patrons,

Another month has passed! It's been some bust days at the office, and it seems to only be getting busier here in September. Somehow that's always how September ends up, it seems. But at least I'm not moving on top of it all this year, eh?

So this time around, the poll was also tied. Then I wrote on our discord. Then it skewered towards "new character". Then a little later, it was again tied, with more votes having come in. But too late, at this point I was already almost done writing this update. So without further pause, let's jump into the updates, and then I'll present you with the new character!

TV-SERIES:

The animatic development is progressing smoothly so far! Still not allowed to show anything, but I can say that we've finished the outline and moved into script. And we found the perfect storyboard artist for the job, who'll be starting at the end of the month, so I'm super excited for that! We've also started talking with a voice caster I know, who's super good at directing kids. Now, no castings will be final for this animatic, just representative. But I do know that I want Zale, Elva, Sesam etc. to be voiced by actual children - as you may have noticed we also had for that little teaser shot you saw. I love the voices in the web-series too, but for this iteration I just think it adds a nice authenticity and charm to the characters.

So far things are on track!

ANIMATION SUPERVISION CONTINUES:

On Monday I start my new job as animation supervisor on a brand new TV-series production (still at the same studio). Eh, um, but my animation supervisor job for the short film project technically also continues for the rest of the month, since the abroad clean-up team was delayed. And that's while I'm directing the Tales of Zale animatic. So that's one of the reasons why this month will be super busy. Some other stuff is happening too, though:

ARTIST TALK:

This was arranged far in advance, so I've mentioned it before, but I'll be doing another Artist Talk at Farum Kulturhus. It's basically going to be the same as my previous talk in Copenhagen last year, so if you already went to that you won't be finding anything new. But feel free to stop by or tell a friend if you feel so inclined!

Did I arrange to hold an artist talk in the Copenhagen area specifically on my birthday so I'd have an excuse to go home and celebrate with my mom? Yes. Yes I did.

VIBORG ANIMATION FESTIVAL:

In the other end of Denmark we're having the (probably) last screening of 'Tales of Zale - Flickering Lights' on the big screen. It's going to be part of the Viborg Animation Festival, and is going to be shown twice, as part for the Animok and Danish Talent programs:

And if you so happen to stop by for the Danish Talent screening, you'll also be able to watch 'Dream', which is another short I animated on earlier this year.

ARTIST ALLEY:

As part of Viborg Animation Festival I'll also be attending the Artist Alley again this year. Couldn't be more convenient, taking place in the same city where I live! 

I've mentioned that I've been working on some more merchandising for this event previously. And I want to make a proper dedicated post where I also show some progress work once the online store is back up. Buuut I just have to show a little sneak peak of something Josh and I have been working on:

So exciting!!

ALRIGHTY, NOW SAY 'HI' TO A BRAND NEW CHARACTER: EVELYN!

And let me start off by confessing that I lied. She's not in fact a brand new character - she's been here all along:

As some of you may already have guessed, Evelyn is also the culprit behind Elva's name change to Alba. Needless to say, she's always been set for a pretty big role, but we've never gotten to her in the web-series. She's an episode 2-4 type of character.

I never really got to nail down Evelyn's design on my own, but I did have to draw her a couple of times for the pitching forums, and this is the closest I got with her look:

Again, this is also a character that was addressed during the 2020 transitional stage. Back then, this is the reference I set up:

I knew her role at the time, but I was still figuring out her actual personality. In these stages, I think the 'proud' and 'defiant' traits came through, but she was still missing some dimension.

Just like with Zale and Elva, Megan Babchuck did these exploratory sketches.

And then I went over them in the end to tighten the design itself a bit more:

Now fast-forward to 2022 when we do the character design round with Sammy Torres. At this point I've learned a bit more about Evelyn. For one, she's a bit younger (in human equivalent) than I'd first thought - about 13. So just a tad older than Elva. Secondly, yes, she's proud and defiant - but she's also a bit of a goofball. The sort of girl who snorts whenever she laughs, and doesn't feel one bit self-conscious about it. She comes from a very suppressive family environment, and having run away from home, she's just over the moon about being able to be herself again.

I also say "she" and "girl" for now, but to be entirely transparent, I've wanted to make Evelyn non-binary for the longest time. I just want to make sure I can do it right before I commit. The last thing you want is a character who reads as non-binary because they are a rebellious teenager. But they can read as a rebellious teenager because they don't feel seen, heard, or understood at home - for a multitude of reasons. I just want to make doubly sure that we don't fall into any bad stereo types when we get into the writing stage.

Anywho, that's to give you a bit of an idea of who this character is. Here are some of the first explorations:

Now at this point, we were already more or less done with Zale's design, but finding a nice spot for Evelyn in that same stylized quadruped realm, but still making her distinct, proved a bit difficult.

She's a wolf cub, and one with a decently heavy build, but we still wanted it to look natural when she sat next to Zale.

At the same time, we were looking for a shape motif for Evelyn. Zale has his "strit strit" (two lines going opposing directions multiple places in his design) and Elva has a heart theme. For Evelyn, we ended up going for the half-moon motif. Finding a motif like this helps every design feel distinct and recognizable. And in this case it fits both wolves' association with the moon, and with the fanny-pack we'd always intended for Evelyn to have.

As you can see we made many little itterations on Evelyn. And also explored some venues that we ended up not going further down.

We only had about a month to go through 5 characters, Zale and Elva were of course given the most time. There are still things I'd like to flesh out and adjust about Evelyn's design, but I think we got pretty far, all things considered.

Colors were also a challenge. Mostly, because we had a big choice to make with the fanny-pack. We realized that we were given the opportunity to really make something retro that pops against the forest back-drop - in a similar, yet distinct way from how Zale's orange coat pops against the green. But how much could we get away with? And should we in turn turn down the saturation on Evelyn's fur?

In the end, we did go with some pretty de-saturated fur. If Evelyn ever loses her fanny-pack she'll probably look a bit plain. The fanny-pack got to really shine, but still within the red-purplish color spectrum which in contrasts against the rim and her eyes.

I quite like these colors! Though I'm pretty sure we'll have to make some adjustments when we test her more on different backgrounds.

ROUND-UP:

So this is your first meeting with Evelyn, curious to hear what you think! One thing is seeing a design and reading about a character, another is to see them animated. Hopefully that day will come sooner or later.

Thank you for voting again this month! Next month I'm going to have a bunch of new merchandise behind the scenes to share. And because of that, I'll be picking out some of the voting points that I'll have to reveal because of that anyhow. That's all to say that there'll be no poll for next month, but I think you'll like the update anyhow!

Oh, and Patreon has just introduced something new called "collections". Which is basically another way to sort posts, just like with tags (but a bit more visual). I've already set up some, and may be doing some stealth-posts here and there to make some more concentrated content for these collections specifically. Since some stuff can otherwise get lost in the blog update. Anyhow, hopefully this will make it easier to browse past content.

I am probably going to go bury myself under work for now - but I'll see you all again soon enough. In the meantime, all the best!

- Sif