May Update: New Artwork, New Tier, Festivals & Conventions

Dear Patrons,

It's that time again! Ready for another update?

CHANGES TO THE PATREON PAGE:

So I finally took some time to sit down and have a look at the Patreon page. It was about time, since one of the tier rewards still listed "name in Flickering Lights credits" as one of the rewards... which would, needlessly to say, be difficult to fulfil at this point. I've edited and updated some stuff, and will continue to do so as I find time, but all you need to know right now is that there are now two tiers to choose between: "Cautious Owl" at $2, and "Curious Fox" at $10. 

Cautious Owl (the Elva tier) is the same standard tier that you're familiar with: Discord role, monthly updates, and behind-the-scenes sketches and artwork. 

Curious Fox (Zale tier) on the other hand, has all of that, but also gives access to the PDF file for 'The Making of Tales of Zale Flickering Lights'. Since the art books sold out and I won't have the chance to print more in the foreseeable future, I thought it was about time that I made it available digitally! I also plan on going back to releasing more "art book PDFs", like I did back in the development period of Flickering Lights. I'll still be sharing art work in the Cautious Owl tier as usual, but the PDF format, which will be exclusive to the Curious Fox tier will sometimes allow me to get a few more sketches and behind the scenes material in.

Now this is important if you've already pledged $10 or more a month: Patreon isn't likely to have changed your tier automatically, so in order to get access to the Curious Fox content, you may have to switch manually.

I hope you'll enjoy these new changes, and if you have any questions or concerns, or other tier name suggestions, fell free to let me know!

TV-SERIES:

I've got some good news for you this month. For you, specifically. Since the development funding we've received so far has been from the Vest-Danish Film Fund, who don't keep any rights to the properties they support, and since Tales of Zale is already an established concept that exists out there for all to see, my Producers have permitted me to share the development material online! That means I can share much more of the journey towards TV-series than I had initially anticipated!

Now, I'm still going to be a bit careful, and take it at a steady pace. And I probably won't ALWAYS be able to share everything. For example, the next development round, which involves broadcaster support is a lot less likely to be so lenient. But basically, I'll start sharing artwork that we've been developing over the past two years here on Patreon - and probably bits and pieces on other SoMe as well. That'll definitely help a lot in not going entirely radio silent on my end.

Now, I do have one concern, and that is that this artwork hasn't been drawn by me, unlike most of the other stuff I've posted in the past. It's going to be a bit of a communicative transition, since I don't want to have people think that I'm taking credit for others' work. But at the same time, as my work transitions more into Directing and Supervising, if I don't allow this transition I'll likely barely ever be able to promote my own project, and that would be a real shame. I've been conflicted on how to approach this, and for now the conclusion that I've arrived at is just to credit and disclose the original artists as much as possible (the work has sometimes been passed over by multiple artists, so sometimes the credits may be a bit jumbled up, but I'll do my best!). But I am still willing to learn and adjust as I go.

With that said, let's jump into what I've picked as this month's cover artwork!

Now, this piece has a lot of history. It's a motif I've wanted to use as an introduction picture for Tales of Zale for a looong time. A variation even turned up in Flickering Lights:

While production on the film was going on at Open Workshop, I commissioned Anne Flarup Thomsen, a friend of mine, to do a rendition of this motif, which I used as the cover image for a lot of my pitching rounds in 2019:

Then, a year-or-so later, Danfango had his go at the motif:

We started some initial visual development with a team of Sheridan interns during the summer of 2020. Here, we started exploring the image again:

You can start to see how one thing built on the other at this point. Phoebe Mao was the one to come up the final layout and color scheme here, and ended up finalizing the picture: 

It's a very nicely rendered picture, and works well as a stand-alone image. But as we began our visual development round of 2022, we started to establish a style more in line with what we would be able to produce with a TV-series budget. And I really wanted us to make an updated version of the motif so that we could still use it while keeping consistent with the stylistic advances. This task fell on Adriana Blanco:

And so we arrive in present time, with our current "looking to the ruins" picture. Well, apart from some color thumbnails on the last picture, which have been locked behind a Slack paywall at this point. Did you all like this type of breakdown? Would you like to see more of it, or do you prefer a different format? Let me know!

WORK:

The fun of Tales of Zale development aside, there isn't much new to report on the current work front, other than that it has been a bit tough. Gotta make sure to rest here in the weekends, or things can quickly get out of balance. Animation supervision has been fun, but sometimes discrepancies appear in production between what the people at the top want, and what is possible in the given time frame. I personally like the project and want to see it be the best it can be, but it eats up a lot of time and attention because of that, even outside of normal work hours. The deadline is for the most part set for mid-July, so things might get even more hectic before they get better.

FMX:

It's not entirely due to a hectic schedule that this past week was a little extra hectic though. It's also because prior to that, I took some time off to go to FMX, and that meant that there was a good deal to catch up on. 

I had the opportunity to go to FMX because I was invited in as a guest speaker through Animation Sans Frontière, and there's no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to experience the event now that I had such a good excuse. FMX if more VFX and CG-oriented, and because of that, 2D animators tend to go to Annecy instead. But it is a super big and well-regarded European event, and I'm very happy to have had the chance to experience it. Even though I wish I'd had a time turner so I could've been in more places at once. It went by very fast!

TAW SCREENING & TALK:

I got to re-use a lot of parts from this FMX presentation, just this past Thursday when I did a TAW-TALK in more familiar surroundings in Viborg. We also had a small cinema screening, so I once more had the opportunity to watch Flickering Lights on the big screen... A lot of Nick's awesome sound mixing really comes to it's full rights when played on such a surround sound setup, so it was really nice to get to experience again.

FESTIVALS:

Flickering Lights was also shown during the ITFS film festival in Stuttgart while I was there, though I wasn't able to make it to the screening. It's also being shown at Trollywood Animation Festival right now as part of Fredrikstad Animation Festival's winner screening tour. But it terms of new official selections, the only news is Animayo in Spain:

And yeah, no worries, we're not going to the Oscars anytime soon. But it sure does make the laurel look all the more fancy!

ROUND-UP:

This month was busy as usual. But I'm very happy to be able to share some of the work we've done on the Tales of Zale TV-series now! It's nice, because I felt like the distance between what I'm currently working on, and what I get to post on social media had been growing more vast. Oh, and speaking of which, look who's almost ready to be posted at long last:

I'll leave you with this month's bird pic. This is from a couple of weeks back. By now, the chick has already left the nest and more eggs are now being incubated. 

All the best till next time!

- Sif