Back from the dead with another blogpost, this time with some actual behind the scenes stuff to share- But before I get into that, have you checked out the rest of the site yet? It may not look like it at first but I spent a collective 4 months on this update, making things a bit cleaner and more functional (if you disregard the mobile support gutting.) It's still not yet where I want it to be, but I think for now it's pretty alright. If you haven't already, go check out the rest of the site when you're done reading!

OK!!

First and foremost, Thank You to all the artists that allowed me to feature your ocs! If it weren't for you guys, this short wouldn't have been possible, so thank you! For any readers that missed the video description, you can find all the artists featured in the short here:

• SeamusGold
• mochabaebae
• Pillowsaint
• Sspookwavee
• Robo


• HeyDDDerek
• Ennuikal
• Josh_S2604
• brawler
• Jian
• VILLAIN
• Senranx

Also let me quickly get this out the way- The storyboards are available to view in the gallery, so if you're into that sort-of-thing, head over here. Actually regarding the storyboards, what you see on the site is the second revision, the first draft of these boards were horrendous dude, jesus, I mean you could make the same argument with these current ones, but those old ones... man, I almost never have it right the first time.

Kero Kero Groove - Fighting Snipers (Storyboards)

With pre-production stuff out of the way, man where do I start- OK so my firstplan of action was to get the sets ready, since that lays the foundation pretty much, I mean you cant just animate on top of a gray void ,':| To be frank I didn't really have a setting in mind when drawing the boards, I just knew I wanted Chain and Ace perched up outside somewhere , so I dove HEAD FIRST into modeling a park enviornment as you can see here

NEXT, I had the idea to put them outside a small convienence store, something like a 7/11- This one, again, I didn't have any specific reasoning for, I just thought it would look cool. To be completely honest, as soon as I fnished the store, I knew this wouldn't work as the main setting either. I don't know what it is about it, but it just felt wrong. SO, what was I to do?!

I felt kinda stumped, so I dropped the project for a few days and went work on other stuff (will get into later.) Once I was ready to give it another attempt, this time I had a plan. I had spoke with my friend Sen about what he would do a few days prior, and he suggested the idea of "Why don't you make the location based on their personality?"" Which sounds obvious now, but I was getting super tunnel vision so I had never thought to do that- but wouldn't you know it, once I had a direction to go towards, I actually managed to get a set piece I liked...

A skatepark! Again, it seems obvious in hindsight, but I wasn't thinking straight orz As for the city square I had made (you can see this a bit in the 7/11 screenshot,) I decided to cut back on that because well for one I don't live in a city, and two I'd rather make the surrounding area a lot closer to where I actually live- it's a place that I've lived my entire life so I know it a lot more, which not only will make it feel more real, but more importantly it's a place I could believe my characters living in, and that's what I feel is the better reason for changing plans. As for what that new location will look like, well, unfortunately you'll just have to wait ._.

OK now that I got the boring stuff out of the way, let's get into the collaboration aspect of this- firstly I'm sure all of you guys were wondering about the cool new credits theme, some of you may have even heard it already when it was initially posted- but yeah that song was made by dazegxd! Funny thing is that originally this track would've been used in the demo disc DVD I wanted to make (if you guys saw the last version of the site then you might know what I'm referring to,) but that kinda fell through orz But hey! If it wasn't for that we wouldn't have this amazing song, so I say it was worth it. I couldn't thank daze enough for this wonderful track, I feel like it was a perfect match for the animation!

Next I'd like to talk about the background characters that appear in the video, as it's kind of what sparked the initial idea. Once again, thanks to everyone who lent me your ocs and reference material, I wasn't joking earlier when I said this wouldn't be possible without them- I am not solely capable of coming up with 12 entirely unique designs in such a small timespan! If it weren't for these guys allowing me to use their characters, I simply would have dropped this idea entirely and moved on, so again this LITERALLY would not be possible without their help!

I'm not sure if I'll use people's characters like this again, I'll probably just stick it to small cameos and the like from now on, but I gotta say it was a lot of fun animating all the wildly different designs cheer on the main fighters and seeing them all together on the character select screen, even if it was brief.

My original plan was to just have the two main fighters duke it out with NO spectators in the background, but Seamus came to me with the anecdote that King of Fighters would have the other playable characters cheer on the main fighters in the background, and after finding out about that I KNEW I wanted to do the same, because not only would it be a waste of an opportunity NOT to, but it also made the fighting game aspect feel waaay more real, I say that's a win win if you ask me


In these last two pics you can see the color alts I had Moco and Seamus come up with, exception for the second Vio alt because I wanted some way to let the viewer immediately know who's playing who, I think that in combination with the fake HUD does that job well. Anyway, thanks to Moco and Seamus for pulling in some extra work, it may seem small but it really does save me a lot of time!

Overall I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to work with all these characters, and I can only hope I've done them all justice!

Last thing I wanna touch on is the compositor, as it actually does a lot of the heavy lifting for the visuals- but as you can see on the right the costs it took were quite the demand to say the least. Everytime I learn something new about Blender I am yet again humbled by my progress as an artist. This is an open reccomendation to check out Blender if you've been interested in 2D or 3D animation, it's completely free and a great piece of software for anyone who wants do do mixed-media animation!

And with that, wraps up the bheind the scenes for that short. Thanks for getting this far, I really appreciate that! To be completely honest with you, I'm getting kind of tired of making animations like this that have such a frivolous feel to it, i'm not sure if that's the apt word I should be using but it's the closest I can think of right now. ┐(‘～` )┌ I feel like I'm only focusing on the art aspect and because of that my work feels like its all meaningless, I haven't put any actual thought into the writing or the stories or anything, I've just been focused on what the LOOK of it all is. Maybe I'm upset because I saw other films that did what I really wanted to do, and i'm just too scared to tell what's actually in my mind, I'm not entirely sure, but either way I want to pivot a little bit and make animations that feel like they have purpose, that are more than just looks, if that makes sense. Iunno, we'll see in due time.

Either way though, overall I'm glad to have finally finished another project, each one feels like a new milestone and that's the feeling I chase! Once again thanks to all the artists that lent your ocs, thanks to daze for the credits track, and thanks to Sen and Seamus for their helpful suggestions, you're all wonderful!

Ok now for everything you're about to see, I need you to stay quiet alright, don't go fuckin' snitching- This is some TOP-SECRET info i'm about to share with you guys from the NGDC HQ.

Now, the photos I managed to get aren't the best of quality, but hey! When you're leaking classified documents, you take what you can get ┐(‘～` )┌

It seems like they might be planning to make some sort of Jet Set Radio cartoon? Don't they know that game is ASS OLD and NOBODY would want to play it, let alone watch a cartoon about it? I mean come ON, why would anyone rather play old ass Sega games over whats been coming out on the PS5?.. Ok sarcasm aside, from what I've heard inside HQ there really seems to be a Jet Set Radio cartoon in production, the pictures you see on the left are from the script I managed to get my hands on and a conference I was invited to to discuss pre-production with the other collaborators.

The pic is kinda hard to make out but what the guy in front of the screen is showing off is some sort of pitch bible or outline or what-have-you, you know what I mean. I wanna say that they seem like they know what they're doing, but to be honest the guy presenting was fumbling over his words like he's never even SEEN another human being before, I almost feel bad for him! Let's hope he's just an intern or something, for his own sake. As for what was discussed, I can't get into specifics (I'm already breaking several NDA's by showing you guys this so again, 🤐)

But that's not all, I did some extra digging and found some artwork too! No idea if it actually goes with anything in the script, since again I was in a hurry, but at the very least you can see Mew and Yoyo, and who I assume is Onishima- so hey if you wanna take that as confirmation they'll be appearing, fuck it! Go wild! We're young after all!

I'd show more if I could, believe me, but I'm already getting my balls busted over here just getting this info out, so no promises but I'll try to keep you guys updated...

Studio GAINAX - Kare Kano

OK, that's all from me for now, I'm gonna go back
to drawing and animating and all that other crap!
Here's hoping I don't hear a knock at the door from some well dressed men in suits...

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