February Update: Animation! Concept Art! And New Merch on the way!

Dear Patrons,

This month has been very fulfilling in terms of progress on Tales of Zale. While I was mostly buried in writing work last month, which was hard to show progress on, this time around I've had the opportunity to explore visually as well. Plus, there are some cool merchandise news to share as well a little further down, so let's jump into it!

THIS MONTH'S PREVIEW:

This month, I'm showing off another small shot from the pilot! I've showed the rough animation of this one before, but this time around I can show the stage before and after, too. In terms of backgrounds, unfortunately we can only get as far as layout for now. Really, this isn't in production at the moment, but I'm using these small shots as bases to do clean-up tests from, which in turn can add to the model reference sheet. It's nice to have as much of this material ahead of time as possible!

TV-SERIES PROGRESS:

TV-series progress is looking pretty promising as well at the moment. As I might have mentioned earlier, there's a slight change in the starting premise - but it's for the sake of being able to keep a higher quality than most other stuff you see on TV financed in Denmark, so I'm pretty happy with it. I'll wait with elaborating too much until things are more settled though. What I can say, is that I'm finished writing an outline/treatment that I'm quite happy with. It's a hefty piece of text though, so right now I'm working on a small "audiobook" to be able to send out together with the text when gathering feedback from all over. My poor voice hasn't been able to keep up well though. I've had to wait with recording till each evening when the birds have gone to sleep, but by then, I can only record little chunks before having to rest it again. Probably doesn't help that there's a slight cold going around!

Since I finished writing, I've been wanting to expand some of the character explorations. Like, for example, what does Zale's fur look like when it's wet? Like, in a way that's still animation friendly. Here's a coupel of those explorations:

I've also been wanting to expand the characters' expression range more. I figured, it'd be best to get that down into the character sheet, rather than hoping that it gets into the storyboards without any starting reference. This is a cozy little thing that I'll be falling back on whenever I need a rest:

CONCEPT ART:

I've realized that I've fallen a bit behind with sharing concept art as of late - there has just been so much other stuff to share, and I'd fooled myself into thinking that there wasn't much new concept art left. But that's just not the case!

I think I might have shared an old version of this one way back, but I'd quite like to be able to share the new one. Initially, this was part of our very early exploration round from... I can't recall, maybe 2020 or 2021? These explorations were made by Phoebe Mao. In the case of this motif, we were looking for something slightly more ominous within the city ruins:

I quite liked these two other thumbnails, but I felt that we needed something specifically with Morpheus, since he wasn't represented in any other concept art:

We used this last thumbnails as a base to explore colors from:

Then, came the layouting phase, where Phoebe started putting in all the details:

And then, finally, came the rendering. This took a very long time to render, so it became clear that this approach wouldn't be sustainable on a TV-production. That's a lesson I took with me for later on. Still, I quite liked it as a concept piece:

Then, when time came for our new development round, we ended up having a bit of time to update this piece with the new characters and style that we'd been working on. I recall that it was Adriana Bica that took care of this one, with a final assist by Nicole Di Fresco.

It's still a very detail-heavy location, but the brushes themselves help make it a little less heavy on the rendering, because their textures natually blend the colors.

NEW MERCH:

Ok, so this past month has raised some opportunities on the merch-front that I didn't think would come around to someone with my size of audience. Apparently, Instagram's algorythm suddenly started pushing some of my videos months after release, letting them be discovered by new folks... so, thanks, algorythm...?

One of those merch things is... pins! Which, as you recall from earlier posts, was just what I was working on anyhow. A certain company which I was planning to use anyhow reached out and offered to collaborate in exchange for a short unboxing video of the pins which I was also planning to make anyhow. Since I got to set my own terms, it was hard to say no to such an offer.

So, that means that Zale pins are on their way and I'll be able to add them to the new store as I get it up and running! As you can see, I made some tweaks to the initial sketch design - I felt he'd match better with the other pins I was hoping to make if he was seen from a quarter view:

Speaking of other pins, I do really hope that I can get to make more with the other characters. But Zale will be the starting test run, to see how much appetite there currently is for pins. I've already got Alba more or less ready to go, although I need to go over the flowers an extra time. She was actually the first one I started working on, but I decided to move on to Zale since the thistles were giving me trouble. I figured out how to better approach the flowers with Zale's pin, by starting with the back silhouette of the flowers and then moving further up. That's something I'll need to apply to Alba as well, because otherwise the silhouette is going to get too messy for metal cutting:

Ok, and speaking of appetite as well, I have a very important question now...

WOULD ANYONE LIKE SOME ZALE PLUSHES???

Like, really. If the answer is yes, please stay tuned. I'm collaborating with another company to put together a plush campaign. But designing and manifacturing is way more expensive than something like pins, so it's only going to come to fruition if we get at least 100 pledges/pre-orders. I'm always a bit nervous about this type of thing, because it is so difficult to predict interest. Especially since I can't exactly tie it together with a "hey, the newest episode just came out" or something like that to create a buzz.

But I for one, would really love to see and have some Zale plushes, and I'm just gonna cross my fingers that I am not alone in that!

More news will be coming out here on Patreon, Discord, and all the other social media when the time comes.

Oh, and speaking of Discord - a few new emojis have come up!

APPLICATIONS:

 I've also been chipping away at another funding application, trying to finalize it this weekend. This one is a bit of a wild card, that I am not putting too much stock in, so I'm not gonna stress too much over it. But hey, first appliaction of the year! Pretty sure this is only the beginning.

ROUND-UP:

I love months like these! I feel like I've gotten to do lots of fun stuff on a project that I really enjoy working on. It was also quite a relief to get the broadcaster meeting over with, and finish the writing portion of the work (for now). Because I find that when I'm deep in writing, it's really difficult to think about anything else. On the other hand, once that's done, all of a sudden I get a big boost of energy because my thoughts are free to go wherever they want again. The way that ToZ is shaping up now, I also know that I am going to be able to be very hands-on in all aspects, which sort of breaks down that barrier I had of not wanting to get too far ahead in case we'd have to change something due to production circumstances. Now, I'm not afraid of doing some preliminary clean-up, because I know it won't hurt.

Of course, this month has also been a bit special because the other project I'm hired on is only slowly starting up. I've mainly been working part time, leaving a good deal of extra energy for Tales of Zale. Still, even if this won't be the constallation throughout the whole year, it feels like a nice way to start things out.

Hopefully I'll have more fun stuff to share next month! All the best,

-Sif

PS:

Ok, and this month's bird news:

 We've got eggs, folks! Four, actually (Pepper laid another after the picture was taken). Not sure if they are fertile, because she has laid them so high up that I can't safely check. But it'll certainly be interesting to see if there are any baby chicks in this coming month!