Introducing the MoTR Production Blog!
- 1rregularcharlie
- Mar 19
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 1
Howdy sailors!
Look at this! A production blog to keep everyone up to date on our progress. We finally figured how to do it! We'll hopefully be keeping this up to date with new posts every Wednesday (or there abouts). We have been making frequent posts about the production on 1rregularCharlie's youtube channel community tab (found here) however our intention is to post more detailed weekly updates on this blog.
Current status
General
The current production is chugging along nicely though animation is never a short process. We have all the storyboards and working animatics for all 3 of the animated shorts and the entire 1st Episode completed.
We've also managed to cast every character and get all the voicelines and the first pass of the vocal efforts completed. Thus we have a solid foundation to work from and begin the process of rough animation. Exciting stuff. :D
Animation Tests
To help us iron out the design details of the characters and to establish a visual animation style we've been creating some animated loops of the characters. Our hope is too eventually use these dancing loops to create some simple Electro-Swing mix videos for the youtube channel featuring our characters (not unlike the ones The Lackadaisy Team created for their series).
Our current completed loops feature Captain Reveller and Lamenter slow dancing. Thus birthing the ship the team has dubbed Reventer. Since day 1 the term "Toxic Yuri" has been thrown around about these two so I guess we're just leaning into it now. :P
The orginal designs we had seem to hold up pretty well though these two have been noted as the most detail focused of the characters currently. We have now finally settled on Lamenter's bottom half being a trail of smokey darkness that should allow us to have a lot of fun with her moment. Like the dark spirit she's always meant to be. ;D
Our next test focused on Eliot and Cassettel Fish, which presented it's own problems due to a lack of limbs or some very short ones. The solution was instead of having the pair dance as intimately as Reveller and Lamenter, we opted to have Eliot showing Cassettel how to tap dance using her telekenetic powers.
We actually learnt a lot from this test. We finally settled on how we would be displaying Cassettel's powers. A simple glow effect alternating between baby blue and neon pink every 4 or so frames gave us a simple and pretty solution that isn't too labour intensive... and isn't a strain on the eyes (also because it's the trans flag colours).
Model Sheets updates
Another result of our animation tests so far has led to some changes to our orginal model sheets. It's natural that as you draw a character more and more their designs shift and settle into something comfortable. In this case with regards to Eliot and Cassettel we found that their designs had shifted significantly enough to require some alterations to their orginal modelsheets. Take a gander (the orginal is on the left, the updated version on the right):
In Eliot's case we realised the more squat design suited him better. His eyes were made bigger, the central line along the sword head was removed, the gold trim along the bottom of his jacket was removed and generally he's been made cuter and rounder. We love our aquatic squat gentleman marine. <3
In Cassettel's case we made her eyes bigger, shrunk her facial tentacles and removed the strips along her underbelly for ease of animating. Somehow... she's become cuter.
3D Modelling
Katerine V. continues to model the entirity of The Grand Vagabond in 3D. She's moved recently so procress is chugging along slow but surely.
As you can see there's lots of small details with this design. It's a lot of hardwork but it should pay off in dividence once completed. We're planning to reuse this asset over and over, probably all the way through the first season, thus we're letting her take her time and get it right.
Plus she's a student and life happens. :P
The coming week
1rregularCharlie
As the creator of this series a considerable ammount of my freetime is dedicated to this production. It's only fair the lead should shoulder the burden and keep up the energy needed for a small scale indie production like this. Particually because the budget cannot yet cover the others fulltime. :P
For the coming week I will be focusing my efforts on developing a conhesive animation guide as we're realising the many nuances to my art and animation style that really need to be elaborated on for production ease. Plus my own style has shifted through my weekly Sunday comics which has fed into the animation and designs in MoTR. By creating the animation guide we'll settle all the elements and hopefully ease the onboarding peroid for other animators.
After that I'll be moving my focus onto begining the rough animation on the 2nd Short which heavily features J. Hawkins (played by Kraken) and Carbo (played by Shannon). The reason the focus is on the 2nd Short and not the 1st is that as Katherine works on the 3D model of the ship some aspects will be changing heights. Thus we'll need to reassess and reallign the characters and cameras within the new dimensions. However the 2nd short primarily takes place on a portion of the ship that isn't changing too much from the intial rough 3D ship model we used for the storyboarding. Thus it should require much in the way of realligning.
Natka
Natka is working full time at FUMI so she's generiously donating her freetime to aid in this production and we love her for it. <3 Natka's focus will be on attemping to do the roughs for the animation tests she wanted to cover. One should feature J.Hawkins and Carbo dancing, the other Sulfu and Potas also dancing. We've already found some references for the dances and we're just ironing out the finer details on the movements.
It was her progress on this that made it very apparent the need for a cohesive animation guide.
Katherine V.
Katherine has just moved as is still tackling university so she makes progress on the 3D model of The Grand Vagabond when she can.
After the ship model is completed she'll be moving onto a model of Eliot's bedroom that is the primarily location in the 3rd Short and then the Storage Deck of the Grand Vagabond which features in Episode 1.
Shannon H.
Shannon continues to be an excellent Sound Designer.
She's powered through the cleaning up of the voicelines for all the shorts and episode 1 and is now begining the process of essembling a sound effect library for both this project and her future ones.
She's drawn up a list of the sounds she's looking for for every short and epsiode 1 itself. I've asked her to focus on the shorts for now as we're hoping to get those finished before moving onto Episode 1.
She's a trooper. Always brings the energy. We love having her. :D
Comments