GAS! GAS! GAS!

"Do you like my car?"

This week I really hit the gas in terms of progress. I completed the rest of EP3, and started checking EP4. Most of the week was taken up by art direction with my artists, and myself doing up the backgrounds on the side. Overall progress was made, we are GMI!

Piece By Piece

Once again, it's a really good feeling to see /Conspiracy/ Girls come alive piece by piece; this week the placeholders for Conditorri Cafe and Hauntsgirl came off, and I replaced them with my filtered photos. It looks pretty good now, if I say so myself.

I pretty much have the process of doing up backgrounds down; It starts firstly with the concept. For example, I knew that Hauntsgirl was going to be an antique shop. It sells Old World memorabilia. HOWEVER! There is a small problem in that most photographers do not take a lot of photos of interiors; at least, not from multiple angles which I needed. Much less of specifically antique shops.

What then? I had to pivot abit: alright, what if it doesn't HAVE to be an antique shop, but something that has old timey stuff? That works too. Thing is, not many places show off old-timey stuff either. (laugh) So I had to pivot again: I asked ymself: what is the defining feature of Hauntsgirl? Aside from the antiques, wooden floorboards and decor is important to the atmosphere. et. Compared to the more metallic and modern [GLOYW] headquarters.

So I kept at it. And I came across the idea of a library. Lots of libraries have an old-school feel, and have what I am looking for, but Avalon isn't specifically a book person, he's an antique person. So while I discovered a treasure trove of great-looking libraries, I was still on the hunt for something that is old-timey.

Then a single picture hit me; it was that of a small Turkish cafe, bathed in orange light. On the walls were old typewriters, dialup phones (you know, the ones with lines), and I thought to myself: this is it! This is what I am looking for! Thankfully the photographer also had a lot of different angles of the shot, so I could make multiple backgrounds out of the single place. Big props to Ocal for the photos, it really is pretty!

For Hauntsgirl, I wanted to standardize the orange glow too. Some of the photos had the orange filter run through them, so I quickly picked up how to change hues in photoshop, I hope that the final product is satisfactory to the readers. Some liberty had to be taken for the angle of the shop however (to match the height of the other characters), so while the characters are in the foreground, some furniture seem really out of place (laugh).

Art Direction

A great deal of this week was spent on art direction; I was getting the art for /Conspiracy/ Girls up to par. In particular, the work on Avalon has been coming along, there's a lot of discussion back and forth about it.

I knew that Avalon was the hardest one to do, since he had no true model to work with, but after talking it through with my artist, she came up with the bright idea to base his cartoon-birdness on Pokemon/Digimon designs, which I heartily approved, since when Avalon was still a concept, I was thinking of Ho-Hoh a little! Avalon's final design is really cool, I'll be glad when the little pervert is in the book and doing his crazy shennanigans as well. (laugh) So look forward to it!

I think that a great part of why the art has gone so smoothly is that the artist and the author are working in tandem. I think it helps to be understanding of artists, their work and their limitations. It's always best to select the right artist for the right job, you wouldn't ask a great painter of cunny to paint hags and vice versa. As much as I would like to standardize the art, there are limitations to the skill of an artist, and it's best to let them do what they are best at drawing.

Good art doesn't just pop outta nowhere, it takes time to produce, and is the result of corrections and repeat. Kind of like how /Conspiracy/ Girls is like, the scenes in "Madness" today would be quite unrecognizable compared to the draft scenes!

I think good art direction can be an entire piece on its own, so I'll leave it at here.

Last Word

“It’s gonna get hot and sweaty in here.”

Things are looking good. Art and book are racing neck to neck in competition to reach Gaben's desktop, so I have a good feeling about the deadline. Proper planning and getting my own part of the deal done is important. I've never felt so busy before, but the knob on the small bombs is turned to the right now, I'm going to have to make it or the entire island gets eaten by goats!

Next week: Design the concepts for Goats, Sachiko, Morganna, Lord Protector, Chisame. Discuss backgrounds with my background artist, and a schedule with the mainline artists. Finish the check for EP4, go on to EP5. Gas, gas, gas, put the gas on it!

Duelist Cup is coming soon, I would like to participate on the 22th, so I'll have to get the work done before then...! I might have cut down on playing, but I don’t want to give up on either side, so…! GAS GAS GAS!

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