THE WILL OF MONSTERS

85) The Moon / Khamuel of the Lilin

We've got a rough sketch render of how the moon will look in one of our scenes and Im EXTREMELY pleased with how it came out! You lovelies can thank the wonderful Justinas Vitkus for this wonderful work-in-progress.

"Long before recorded history, the Moon became the resting place of Khamuel, an ancient being revered to have birthed a race of Lorefolk known as the Lilin. Entombed with the Sword of Desolation, this is the price of insatiable desire, love unrestrained and without tether. ...

84) JARRAD'S TIME TO SHINE!

Nearly every character has an action-scene just for them and Jarrad is no exception! Jarrad is throwing a bomb to begin his counterattack against the crows!

This shot is coming along nicely and all Ill need to do is install inbetweens towards the end and also animate the bomb flying out of his hand! Hope yall like the first video I've been able to upload here since the big Patreon update.

Dialogue:
JARRAD: Cover your eyes, Cham! *throws bomb* GGRRAHH!!

83) Rough Animation of Pai & Cham

Cham and Pai get to know each other a little better in this scene! Can't post audio here just yet since I want to keep some things a surprise! But we're moving pretty well thanks to Rosa Cerda now being a part of our crew!

Its been a rough month on my end so my apologies on this coming out late. Had a death in the family early in the month and got some scary health news with another family member we are stil...

82) Razzberry Reference Sheet

LadyGValentine returns for another reference sheet! This time its of Razzberry, our beloved enchanted silkwyrm! Razz took some time getting right for awhile and while he is THE MOST DIFFICULT character to animate, he is also the most fun to problem-solve and figure out.

Razz's design was inspired by old Rareware characters from the Nintendo-64 era of games. Im a big Banjo-Kazooie fan so his connection w/ Pai felt pretty natural to mess around with. I didnt want to copy, (I never do) s...

81) Time to F**K UP the Moon

Ive been pretty off and on about messing with the Moon in TWOM. Ive been dancing w/ the idea in my head for awhile and when the meme "Fuck up the moon in your fantasy world" started getting traction, I actually decided to keep the moon in TWOM normal, like our moon. 

BUT after watching Escaflowne and seeing how much texture the background designers and series creator Shōji Kawamori gave to that world, I decided to give my own spin, focusing primarily on TWOM's ancient gods.

...

80) Jarrad The Scarecrow

A (near-finished) animatic of the very first action-scene of TWOM. We've hit the big EIGHT-OH so I figured Id celebrate and give yall a nice, hearty THANKS for sticking with me! There's some finished animation in there as well. Try and guess which ones need updates!

Lots of storyboard revisions by the impeccable LadyGValentine on this one. She was instrumental to adding depth, impact and personality to these boards and as always, Im thankful to have her aboard this project!

Lets k...

79) Storyboard Revisions

Cham's trying to win a quick argument with Jarrad and misses a key detail that mucks everything up. These adorable board revisions come from Sara Oliveria as she nears the finish line on her run. We still have a bit more to complete but we are getting to close to having a brand new animatic!

78) Pai's Reference Sheet

Pai's ref sheet has arrived! LadyGValentine has dropped a really extensive reference for our main gal! Since Pai is our only human-looking character, I wanted be sure we were making her look appealing while also fitting her with this world. This also meant making sure we avoided some common stereotypes we found in animation. Sure, we wanted Pai to have feminine traits but we thought it important that she could appear masculine or even tom-boyish to when we animated her!

Updates have be...

77) He's Just a Little Guy

I love Cham. He's my good Scarecrow son and a mouthy little smartass and he must be protected at all costs.

LadyGValentine knocked this newest HOW TO DRAW out the park!

Pai's up next!

76) Razzberry Special!

Whats up gang! We've got a special delivery from Jeremy Nixon, roughing out a special attack by Pai and her enchanted silkwyrm, Razzberry! Excellent motion here though I'll probably end up doing soemthing with that dive-bomb before the wind-up to the final punch. Its a very complicated shot and it will need to be revisited but its a great start and something I can build towards the trailer's release.

If you havent seen it, please check out the 2023-01-16 21:13:32 +0000 UTC View Post

75) Patreon Changes

Hey gang. For the foreseeable future, I have decided to make our Patreon accessible at $1 for all tiers, effectively making the Patreon all or nothing at $1. The reason being is those subbing at the $10 tier require software that is too expensive to view the workfiles I share at that tier. Id rather folks save up for those programs instead of shooting me $10 every month. Art is hard, it costs money and its also a hassle for me to make different files for supporters who pay more. I think this ...

74) Happy 2023!!

New year, new animations! The astonishing Jeremy Nixon has joined the team to help with some VERY complicated shots. Some real high-octane energy here and I couldnt be more pleased with where he's taking Cham here. 

Jeremy is applying a 3D plane to this shot in order to add dimension. The real challenge is timing Cham appropriately. This one's expensive so where Jeremy anima...

73) How to Draw JARRAD

I wanted to wait a little longer til this was more complete but this a good time to post since LadyGValentine and I are easing up on our work together. She's done such a fabulous job on storyboard revisions that I simply HAD to ask her if she could do more before her work ended.

LadyG is one of the three artists who illustrates the film's characters closest to my own style and I'...

72) Cham Test Animation

A special test animation by David Mesina-Magallona! Cham's getting ready to test everything he's learned against an unsuspecting crow! This particular shot I've used to test animators from time to time and you'd be surprised how complicated the poses can be. David was able to break down Cham's shifting stances and alternating limbs pretty convincingly and beautifully. This will work as a useable shot I'd say! 

David was paid for this shot too! I don't have a ton of money to throw a...

71) The Boundless Expanded

Christina Gardner continues her exquisite character explorations by revisiting the Boundless. Tino created base designs for this race of people awhile back and while those were good, I felt they needed more extensive, more mysterious designs to help bridge the gap between regular characters and the supernatural of this world.

Even when I thought Christina nailed it in the third image, she tugged me aside and said "No, Im not done. This was to show you where Im at currently". She really...

70) Storyboard Revisions

Happy Halloween everyone! Nearly finished with the storyboard revisions as newcomer NIX joins our squad!

The final sequence of the film had some technical hiccups to iron out but we are nearly there! Theres a few more sequences that require revisions but this was among the most important to figure out since there we broke the 180 rule a couple times.

I wouldve loved to keep the older boards that Jess Sims did for us. I always liked how she drew the main trio but I wasnt able t...

69) Nice...

I had to do it and Im not sorry! At the time of this post, I have finished installing all of Pai's new dialogue into the updated animatic. This was a MAJOR box that needed to be checked because of course, animation cannot continue without recorded dialogue. 

Luckily before we moved from our old place, I made careful notes and selected Michelle's very best takes before uploading them onto the cloud and external hard-drives. Its a good thing I did too since one of my other hard-drive...

68) New Incoming Merch!

Happy October everyone. September obviously had places to be and Im glad its gone cuz settling in a new area can be VERY annoying. Yknow, DMV, getting used to the neighborhood and other neighbors, it can be hard in a new place! But in terms of the film itself? Hey, not bad progress actually!

I've been working with a vendor and print shop for some upcoming merchandise to sell once the team and I are set to do so! Shirts, posters, physical media, that whole thing. This piece of Pai and Ra...

67) Extremely Tough August

August was one of the toughest months Ive had in a long time. I somehow caught COVID right before the week we managed to close on a house. It was very annoying and debilitating not being able to move things with my wife right away but we managed to get all if not most of our items into a new place. Im feeling much like this new character Christina Gardner drummed up for us, a Phoenicera lad named Hazel who is VERY tired all the time despite being "destined for greatness"! He's the son of a pr...

66) The Phoenicera

Christina Gardner returns with what might be one of my favorite races in the world of TWOM, the Phoenicera (pronounced fin-NEE-sarah). These Phoenix/Moth hybrids have the uncanny ability to be reborn so long as specific conditions are met! They can exude high-temperatures of heat, glow in the dark and can also glide short distances! I can't go into too much detail about their abilities quit...

65) BIG UPDATES

I typically dont like waiting until 1/4 of the first month is gone BUT I needed to solidify some important things on my end first before I revealed them!

First up, as of today, my wife and I have FINALLY been approved for a house! We are so relieved and so tired of searching in this unfair and Godforsaken housing market. We will be moving sometime in August/September if the paperwork goes through okay! Very exciting stuff cuz that means I wont lose 2 hours of my day to traffic anymore ...

64b) Lots goin on!

Okay! I cant talk because I'm juggling a bunch of production work but I will have something new to share in the next day or so since I need to get to sleep and prep for work.

Just know ALOT happened in June and much of it is VERY exciting for me and my wife as well as TWOM. Keep your eyes peeled either tomorrow or Thursday for an update exclusive to Patreon!

64) New Twitter Banner

Small update but I figured it's about time I update the Twitter banner! Your generous Patreon contributions helped fund this one over the course of a few months so I wanted to thank you all for the help! @DrawingLizzie made a drawing of the Calamity Girls from Amphibia (GREAT SHOW) so seeing as though I had a little extra cash to spend, I figured an update was overdue!

The new Twi...

63) Summer Time Lovin (Lovin In The Summer... Time?)

Its nearly June and we have another shot in the can! This one was fairly tricky to pin down because of Pai's twitchy, painful mannerisms. How did she get hurt? Pai tried to protect her friends naturally! But it seems like its not so easy, is it? 

Pai's always a joy to animate. Like every character, she is her own puzzle to figure out because she's a lot more complex than most of the other cast. Her eyes have different colors, her hair has a precise number of bangs and she needs to...

62) Miasma Hex-Haggle Concepts

I tapped illustration powerhouse Christina Gardener for some designs of Pai's mother recently and to put it lightly, my mind has been blown at her renditions of The Queen of Skies!

Id really like this character to make a short appearance somehow in the film but at the moment, I think Im satisfied just seeing her explored through concepts. I asked Christina to use Lulu from FF...

61) Ooooof, Hard Week

Been feelin pretty down this week but Pai seems to be fairly depressed too! You're in a movie, girl! What you got to be sad about??

Wife and I lost another bid on a house. Taxes were kind of rough this year since our previous accountant really goofed up last year's returns. Right now we are living w/ family and have been the past few years. Thankfully we can save easily and that makes film production go alot smoother.
Honestly, thats a good thing! For now, itll have to do! Another s...

60) Pai's Mother

So the film revolves around Pai's need to learn Magic and alot of that comes from the often bigoted lessons she picked up from none other than her own Mother.

I was really happy with how this came out so I thought Id share with you lovelies! Who is the artist? Cant say yet! Is this the final design? Still cant say!

Will Pai's incredibly seductive Mother make an appearance in the film? HOPEFULLY, YES. That will depend how successful the crowdgunding campaign is! 😉

UPDAT...

59) Jarrad Aint Buyin It

Another Extreme Close-Up of Jarrad looking rather intense about something in particular. Who keeps getting under his skin like this?? Who dares to make him THIS suspicious??! You'll find out in the incoming trailer! Maybe Ill have a date for you when you can expect it in the next few months :D

This little shot took me a week and a half to complete. It looks easy enough but little details like the placement of Jarrad's eyebrows needed to be staged properly so liens wouldn't create a tang...

58) Craven-King vs Jarrad

LadyGValentine returns with some solid revisions for when Jarrad goes up against the Craven-King! As the months go by, Ill be inserting these revisions into the film's final aniamtic. We really dont have a lot of time for Layout Design unfortunately. Layout would've made going from Storyboard to Animation alot easier since it helps artists communicate to animators and compositors how c...

57) Brand New Backgrounds

Happy April, gang! Dont be a fool out there on the interwebs!

We have some new moody backgrounds courtesy of Sarah Gavagan's talents that will be on full display in the upcoming trailer. What yall are seeing here are a combination of finished pieces and some sketches before she really got cookin!

It's times like these where I wish we had a centralized working environment t...