Eorzea Academy Anime Opening

IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's Eorzea Academy opening...as my WoL's romantic comedy shoujo anime~

This was so much more work than I thought it would be!! My first WIP video from it is dated to October 7th...so it was a little longer than that. I had to rig a looot of new characters, learn how to customize their outfits to try and match how they're portrayed in the manga, render almost 40 separated Blender scenes...I can safely say this was my hardest to make video to date. 1 minute and 30 seconds is A VERY LONG VIDEO

The original idea came for me rewatching my favorite shoujo anime openings and wanting to make something similar. At first I actually intended to make one for Shadowbringers with a more magical girl vibe, but I struggled to find the right song for it. Then, I heard this one, "Eternal Place", which seems to be the theme for this year's China Fanfest, and for me it sounds like a very nice fit for an Eorzea Academy themed video! It ended up not as inspired in magical girl anime as the first idea would be, but still there's a lot of slice of life school romance I love that I took inspiration from. There's some very direct references if you can spot them! I wonder if anyone could identify all of them?

Oh and, in case you don't know it, Eorzea Academy is a real, officially released slice of life high school AU manga. I highly recommend reading it, it's really cute! There is no WoL in it though, so I took some liberties to insert Lizard! I tried including a few references to what actually happens in the manga, like the card game, the nutkin getting away from Thancred, and the school festival, but I also tried to add some of what would be present if I were making it about my WoL, and the obligatory Valentine's Day episode!

I had a lot of fun with all of it, despite me complaining about how much work it was. It ended up not exactly as I first planned it, and I'm still at the stage right when just finishing a project that I watch and can only notice the mistakes, but I hope you all like it!

And also, it actually made me want to animate actual scenes from it, not only short clips for an opening. I have that full card scene in my head already on how it would play out with Lizard...maybe I might actually animate it in the future!

For my patreons, I'm probably also posting here soon a Behind the Scenes video about it, showing all of the files and references used. So if there's anything you'd like to know about how it was done, let me know and I will make sure to include in it!

I also will need a few days break now before starting on a new project, so in the meantime, I will post a poll over here in the next few days to decide which video idea to work on next! It was really fun making that poll last time, so please vote this time too! I have a few I'd love to make, and I'd love if you could help me decide which one you'd like to see sooner <3

Thank you for watching it and for your support!