This week it’s a Dragon Star update. On the SH front nothing’s really changed. Minisode 4 goes into clean up this week.
But the main focus of last week was Dragon Star.
For those who don’t know what Dragon Star is, here’s a quick update to get you caught up.
https://www.facebook.com/dragonstarseries/
High school student Kazumi Imuro is a casual fighting gamer who works part-time at the arcade her brother manages. However, her interest in fellow student and pro gamer Hiroshi Tanaka leads her to join the after-school Competitive Gaming Club, where she trains to become a better player and navigates the complexity of social and romantic relationships within a tight-knit fighting game community.
Created, written and directed by Kira Buckland
Animated by Adam Tilford (creator of Shattered Heaven)
Character designs & script assistance by Chris Niosi (creator of TOME)
Kira, who plays Amy Caecus in Shattered Heaven is a really good friend of mine. Years ago she had a radioplay of the same name and recently was thinking about revisiting it. I knew I was going to need a break from Shattered Heaven after I finished the first season (seriously, animating mecha is hard and it just becomes far more influential in season 2), so I offered to help out. So with Chris doing the character designs, I became the animator for it.
When Episode 6 “Broken Promises” and Minisode 4 “Declaration of War” are released, the official break from Shattered Heaven begins and the focus on Dragon Star begins.
Dragon Star is set to only be 3 episodes long. But right now since Episode 6 is in the hands of my sound designer, I’m starting production on the episode so there’s an overlap of work.
The first scene of the episode has been animated roughly. So it’s in the first stage of animation. But getting the scene’s animatic done is a great first step. It’s a very different sort of project and I’m not a gamer in the fighting community so it involves a lot of studying reference videos for fight sticks and analyzing a lot of fighting games to see how the characters move, etc.
It’s weird, but at the same time it’s kind of fun to mess around with. I also have a lot of friends that actively play fighting games with fight sticks so I’ll be able to force them to help me out haha.
I’m still roughing out the fight sequences, but I’m starting to get a little more comfortable with them. I haven’t officially designed an interface yet, so what I have now is nothing more than a place holder. The reason for the blinking on Ryoku is because I was starting to work on the frames for a move and I just haven’t finished it yet haha. Same thing about backgrounds, I haven’t begun to design the stages yet, so any used are simply just place holders for the time being.
There is a trailer out from April of last year. It’s basic, but it should give an idea of what’s up.
So that’s the current state of Dragon Star. The first episode is half way animated (rough) right now, clean up on scene 1 starts this week as well. I may have a preview of the episode out around the week of Shattered Heaven’s finale. But that’s something to discuss with Kira and Chris first.
I’ll have more information on the series as more progress is made.