Counting Down to Kickstarter

Our incentive list is shaping up. Our quirky introduction video has been filmed. Our studio space has been set up and - I've found some time to toss some colors and lighting onto some previous flats for Kongou the Mountain's head shots!

I'll be posting our Kickstarter status very soon but right now our timeline should be within the next week and a half, baring anything interfering between then and now.

Also for the first time I am posting a closer look at the colored versions of Caen and Colette in their versions that exist in the Pitch Bible.

Thank you and please stay tuned!

Post Motor City Con Report

Motor City 2012 was easily the biggest I've ever seen it and each day brought wonderful new surprises and great fun.

On the grand scheme of things, so far as pop culture cons go, Motor City Con is probably more towards the middle of the totem poll with Comic Con (San Diego and Co) and the Wizardworld conventions being #1 and #2 respectively but Motor City was 'just the right size' as far as I am concerned and was a great opportunity for us to meet local and big name talent as well.

The Alpha Omega crew did an amazing job in not only promoting ARMSmasters but also getting tons of fan attention and encouragement on their own personal projects and art styles. Sketches were done, books sold, prints sold and many questions answered and interest garnered in our film property. One thing I'm especially happy with is how well the Pitch Bible was received and how much people enjoyed the story premise and the characters of ARMSmasters. It is Characters First - and that is a goal we seem to have met with the general public.  I'm very pleased and we also learned a lot about what to be ready for - for the next go round.

At this moment in time we are planning on Youmacon and Detroit Fanfare, both back to back this coming fall. 

Our next big endeavor is Kickstarter which will be happening the first part of June. Once some things catch up we'll also be revisiting the animatic, script and pilot effort so stay tuned for that as well.

Thank you to everyone who took any of our cards, checked our work out and indicated a desire to stay in touch and reach out for future work and business dealings. We're looking forward to the future.

For now enjoy just a small sampling of our picture and sketch barrage!

 

By far my favorite acquisition at Motor City Con. A custom drawing of Kongou the Mountain by one of my favorite artists and personal influences Jason Pearson 

Head shot of Juggernaut by Oliver Nome, another fantastic artist and a favorite of mine. This was just way to much fun.

 

A great and hilarious Batman Sketch by AO/ARMSmasters Artist 'Niles Bontrager"

 

 

Black Cat by our infamous 'Mel Miller'!

An Aeslyn Con Sketch by yours truly. What was especially wonderful were the number of people who requested sketches of ARMSmasters characters.

Motor City Con Days 1 and 2

This post should have been made this past Thursday. :)

But there's still one more day to enjoy Motor City Con 2012. Motor City Con is bigger this year then I've recalled seeing it and I've been a frequent attendee. The line was wrapped around the building and there are some great things going on. No it's not the biggest con in the country (..I want to say at least the eighth largest in the country but I may be wrong. Can't remember where I heard that from or if it's accurate today.)

Regardless - it's big and the largest in Michigan and in the immediate area next to Chicago-Con and wow is it fun. 

The Alpha Omega Crew really showed out, especially considering it was the first con, period, for several of them. Books were sold, sketches done, prints sold, and alot of great interest generated in ARMSmasters. Thank you!

There is one more day to go and then we will do our full post-con report along with images and a preview of where we go from here. Thank you, everyone, for a fantastic weekend.

Mike

Necessity + Invention = Get It Done

Or something like that! We were going to post something to the tune of 'Necessity is the Mother of Invention - or in our case Necessity is the Mother of 'Getting It Done'!

With several opportunities around the corner the need to just finish a Pitch Bible that can be passed around and garner interest became paramount and that is exactly what I did. As part of doing that we needed to get finished colors on Caen. This doesn't mean the bully won't get another pass or a color adjustment but this is where he stands for the Pitch Bible. 

We're counting down to our time at Motor City Con and Artist Alley. We hope to see some of you Michiganders pass through and have a chat! 

More work on that Kongou pose as well. I can't say we're going to go superbly further with this but it has been a fun exercise and diversion. Now back to other more pressing matters.

Motor City Comic Con

As mentioned in a previous post, several artists and animators associated with ARMSmasters and Alpha Omega Animation Design will be appearing at Motor City Comic Con 2012 via an Artist Alley Table so stop by and join us! We don't know where the placement will be just yet but as soon as we know we will post our location. Motor City Con is always alot of fun and back in 2010 the initial founding 'fathers' of Alpha Omega Animation Design grabbed a joint table there and had a blast. Now we've grown, ARMSmasters has grown and our membership has a lot to showcase and put before you so please drop in.

Motor City Con is especially fun due to the plethora of fellow CCSers (College for Creative Studies) that tend to drop by. Not only will we be there but Chris Houghton, fellow graduate and alumni and successful comic book artist and industry artist, will be there. Can't say enough good things about him or fellow artist and animator Mel Mcann - and others!

Related to ARMSmasters, I will be doing some campaigning for it and spreading the word via a limited available selection of prints and a limited selection of a Sketchbook by yours truly, featuring not only ARMSmasters but additional doodles and musings. This is a preview for a much larger book under way which showcases all AO artists who have contributed to this project, also for fund raising and Kickstarter as an incentive. Look for that post Motor City Con but feel free to pick up this meager offering as well to help us out. Both the print and the mini con Sketchbook may be available soon on Indy Planet in time for Motor City so stay tuned.

And of course our Kickstarter video plans are under way along with continued production efforts and we'll have more on that soon.

Time Is Flying By

 

It doesn't seem like that long ago that I did an update on this blog and yet suddenly we're in the month of May! A whirlwind of events has happened during the first half of this year - events that need no recap  as many of them have been well documented by this point - but it's still amazing to see where we are and how we've adapted.

May is going to be a fairly busy month for us. Some of us will be appearing at Motor City Comic Con , May 18th through 20th, in Artist Alley where a limited number of prints and other ARMSmasters related material will be on sale and where our member-artists will also be doing sketches and selling their own wares and promoting additional I.P.s as well. It promises to be great fun and the next two weeks will be a madhouse getting some things together.

This month is also the month we aim to be on Kickstarter so that the summer months can be a dedicated campaign for fund raising for ARMSmasters. A successful Kickstarter Campaign will allow us to do so much and we have high hopes for it working out.

Development on the actual short as it currently stands has slowed down due to the circumstances covered in other posts but we will be picking that back up in the upcoming weeks and as part of our Motor City presentation so look for more information on that and possibly a teaser as well. Can't show everything though.

In the meantime, artwork continues to be a part of the development process. 

This work in progress is part of a series of images that will ultimately end up being the characters 3/4 'action' poses to accompany their model sheet drawings. Several characters have a straight on shot or are posed in a way that isn't especially dynamic in order to show their overall designs and proportions and so they are overdue having a visual treatment for the purposes of website creation, the pitch bible and other promo efforts. 

Recently we began knocking out the next major draft of the full ARMSmasters story and new characters are in the works - especially on the villain side. Here we have Gaius - a master earth elementalist meant as a counter power to Kongou. Think of the Hulk and Thing rivalry in Marvel and you'll get some of the  vibe their confrontations will have. Gaius is one of four characters known as The Four Heavenly Kings, who serve under Caen as his chief soldiers and most powerful opponents to Riot and his friends. Who the other three are, former members and how they fit into the overall story will be discussed over time but we have a growing cast and world. The above drawings were ideations by Patrick Stannard for Gaius.  The bottom two are closest to the direction we'll be moving in.

Van Andy and I have recently begun discussing and working on other character elements and more detailed efforts on the designs of our more established crowd. For Tyr's mechanical arm - a device in the setting known as an Augment - I was inspired by Iron Man as well as John Silver from Disney's Treasure Planet and a little Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist. The idea is that Tyr's mechanical arm's outer shell can open and expand, revealing inner workings with tool kits and shapes that can swap in and out of action and configure his arm into different forms to aid in his tinkering and artifice (the skill in the ARMSmasters world that relates to creating magitech.) The arm can also generate fields of magic energy for a variety of effects making Tyr a sort of Jack of All Trades character. 

More images exist and we'll be updating soon with information about Motor City Con. Stay tuned!

April Foolin

Tomfoolery! I promise more posts from us in April and we go two weeks in and we have had not had a chance to update this thing.

Well for certain it has not been for lack of activity! Our crew remains busy with hectic productions and work weeks and I'm proud to say we're pretty much all making a living doing what we love and working on ARMSmasters at night. Our main progress has actually been making the work space a good place to go and dedicate time to working on this project and it has, indeed, come alive.

With that, I've been able to comfortably turn back to the art assets I'd like in place for finishing the Pitch Bible - mainly finished poses for our main characters and the very, very important task of writing and having that edited, spruced up and made more interesting. Part of that process is inclusive of developing the actual full ARMSmasters story and script which itself is an ongoing work in progress and in late May we plan to have some great things to show at Motor City Comic Con so -whew- alot going on.

Setting up the office space has allowed me to come across quite abit of artwork that has not been shown online or properly categorized so look for additional production work and sketches to show up here soon in addition to the below warm up sketches and works in progress. Thanks for your patience and continued support.