Roboculture

Despite the tremendous failure of the release of my fanfilm due to it bombing in terms of viewcount the previous day (a measly 187 views), I decided to push on with the announcement of my other pet project - The Robotech Art Book. I realized that is is impossible to make Harmony Gold-dependant fans care about fan projects unless I get an endorsement from HG's Creative Director or Web Guy or Marketing Guru (I'll still bitch about that, don't worry) but I will press on! If this won't interest the fandom, I don't know what would.

This art book will feature all new, never before seen art by Studio MMG and its sole talentle... I mean adequate artist, namely, me, MedMapGuy. The focus on this fantastic collection of art will be all generation of Robotech (Note that fantastic is used, I like to think I am Harmony Gold's Marketing Guy once in a while) with the possible exception of that Shadow Chronicles thing. I am hoping to release this completely-free PDF-file sometime on June, if time permits. I currently have a few pages available for your perusal.

I was inspired by digital art books such as "Expose" and some of these amazing Korean digital painting books. I was also inspired by several amazing artists I encountered on DeviantArt. Their work has inspired me to create art for my favorite generation, Southern Cross, a property only one person in Harmony Gold actually appreciates. Everyone else grew up lusting for Macross or New Generation.

Since the release would probably be sometime during June 2007, I have been toying around with the idea of folks handing me some of their own art to go with this art book - sort of like the grand collaboration that was done for Robotech Art 2. I'd really like that and perhaps when I get back, folks around the community would produce art that I could add in this "book". Remember, it'll be in PDF format so it could be printable, if you've got a printer that could print like the professionals!

I am aware that the new Harmony Gold run by "The Creative Director" are incredibly jealous and protective of their property and despise fan projects, but I will ignore these folks who couldn't care less about the fandom. Conventions are only there to pimp the company, not the fandom and to get their hard earned dollars (I will never forget the 20 dollar mediocre poster, a grave and unforgivable sin).

REBIRTH OF AN INTRO

The preview film that nobody wanted is finally here, in all its brevity. Behold, the revised intro to my future fanfilms!

What was my inspiration for the intro? Quite a number of things actually. The number one reason being that I wanted an intro that would be more faithful to the original 80's show than anything else available so far on the net.

Watch and tell me what you think.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/52296267/

I took the basic idea I had with the intro from the Robotech: Sentinels Part II fanfilm, because I saw its potential. I refined this intro by increasing the dimensions of the film to almost twice its original, which led to an increase in the quality of the images. I also took the new "techniques" I learned in the past months (drawing all those naked women helped after all! -ed) and drew myself a few fairly impressive city backgrounds and simple lineart to test out the animation.

I have to admit, when I saw the moving VF-4 Lightning in the first few seconds of the intro, it sort of scared me into realizing how daunting this project actually is. Until that point I was just blabbering in this blog about how I dreamed of making great fanfilms and stuff, and there I was making actually animating - and boy was it frightening (the same feeling Med felt when he first started Macross -ed). I know I have three other films in my belt, but sometimes when you're back to square one with these projects, you feel this... hopelessness, like it will never be finished.

Things proceeded more or less on schedule after that, and if you've already seen my intro film, you'd notice the little changes I made such as removing certain stiff aspects of the original Sentinels intro and replacing them with more 'anime magic' action segments. I just wish I had a better background in animation, but perhaps... watching a lot of anime would be enough..?

In the end, I'm pretty happy with the results and I'm excited on the possibilities for the film... Now if only I could get a decent script to work on and fulfill this insane vision of mine.

To relive the awkwardness of my original animation:
Check out Robotech: Sentinels Part II yet again at http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/347613

ANIME SOUND PACK
I've heard some clamor from fans of an anime sound pack. Fear not for I have made one, gathered from various sources I actually forgot. As far as I remember, the Gundam sounds were taken from a website, whose link I found in a person named CavScout and his forum.

The rest of the sounds were taken from Macross: Do You Remember Love, and the Playstation game of the same name. These sounds were mostly used for my Super Dimension Fortress: Macross fanfilm and they sound pretty neat. I have to say a special thank you to Digital Cole, the man who provided me with some Robotech Battlecry sounds, which helped a lot with my work.

I don't know what you, my dear readers, would use these sound effects for, but maybe, one you would be inspired to create your own fanfilm. That would be a great day indeed and you'll do me proud.

NEW BLOG HEADER

It's harder to edit this blog than I previously though... I keep getting these error messages when I try to modify some aspect of the blog. Oh well, such is life and all that. At least I have a new banner up!