M3.1 – FMP

Entry 1: Production and Intent

What is Crownless?

In the development of Crownless, it went by two previous names. The Crown and The Bronze Crown, both of which would always be temporary names, didn’t like either too much but I could figure that out later on after more development. Crownless was originally part of the previous term’s project. We had to create three storyboards and turn one of them into a pre-vis project. The Bronze Crown was my project. I had initially enjoyed the humour of the storyboard, silly shots where the male and female main characters would interact and then a rough and tumble cat fight between the princess and the female protagonist was hilarious. The chemistry between these three characters really made me consider using this story for my FMP, and as the FMP grew, my friends Caleb and I saw potential for it to be something bigger. Becoming what Crownless is today.

Genre / Themes / Tone

I always wanted the genre to be fantasy, inspired by things like classic Dungeons and Dragons but not with the magical part. Other themes would be an action-adventure as to follow the drama and action to follow. The themes would be self identity, trust and notion of change. These themes are important to me as they are issues that plague society today, just as much as they would have in the times the show is inspired by.

Target Audience

My Audience target would be older teens and young-mid adults. The characters are about that age and therefore I feel they would relate to these characters the most. In addition, the language and humour will be more tailored to an audience of this age demographic and so the show would benefit more from a younger audience. As well as this, as the show will be on the internet, they way the show would be spread around would be word of mouth, using the internet as its on advertising unless the show was to get picked up by a network, but as there are themes that are quite mature in areas, they may be hesitant to take on the show or make major changes.

What the final outcome will be

The final outcomes o this project will be to create the main characters, create the environments, have the story and most of the storyboards for the pilot done, and in the end – create a teaser trailer. Initially the plan was to create a long animated trailer for the project, however, in the long term of the project, I decided against this as it would add a lot of stress and could create unnecessary additions to the development of the show.

Entry 2 – Research and World Development

One of the biggest narrative inspirations for me was She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. The story start off ver small, with the villains seeming evil but the ‘big bad’ keeps getting larger and more threatening. This is how I wanted the narrative in Crownless to feel. Having deep and meaningful topics discussed whilst having an actually interesting villain and character dynamic.

I love watching animated shows, especially 3D animated shows. Most of the shows I watch currently are all indie animated, such as The Amazing Digital Circus, Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss and other shows that are in the works such as other pilots for The Gaslight District, Knights of Guinevere and Musical Pipers. All of these shows are amazing, and I have discussed more of them within the topic of my thesis regarding indie animation and network studio animation (corporate animation).

Moodboard:

Entry 3 – World Building

In the original storyboard, I didn’t give any thought into names of the characters or the world around them. It was just a kingdom with a princess, guards and a prisoner trying to steal a crown. During development, we increased the amount of detail all the characters had. The princess became, Princess Ranatta, Our two main protagonists became Jessica and Eric, and the kingdom became Bridoria. For the start of the show, we wanted to keep the world small, to make the audience feel like the only world was the kingdom. However, we began thinking post S1 and into the future, making the world larger, increasing different conflicts and making bigger threats to come.

Rules for the world were mostly to do with hierarchy and class systems. In Bridoria, princesses and princes can be rulers without becoming Kings and Queens, however, royals had to be married before age 25. They cannot marry anyone, they must marry a knight or royal.

In the pilot and season 1 is between our main characters and the Princess Ranatta. The pilots conflict has many different avenues as our two protagonists meet for the first time. We begin to understand their differences whilst understanding that not everything is black and white, eventually join together to make change that they couldn’t do alone.

The reason for making a teaser trailer over a full pilot or even a trailer episode is because due to the continued development, I feel i would have done a disservice to the story if I had created something I wasn’t proud of, even if it was missing character animation. I did take this decision to heart but felt it was in the best interest of the project just to do something small that introduced the world and atmosphere whilst making characters and assets ready to begin full production with the growing team.

Entry 4 – Character Design and Creation

Main character overview

Our main characters are Jessica, Eric and Princess Ranatta. Each character was one of the three from the main original storyboard, just each with slightly different personalities compared to the final version. Initially I wanted Jessica to look like Ranatta however although she does slightly look like the Princess now (intentional) she has been given more uniqueness about her.

Visual Design choices

The main character costumes for the pilot are the guards uniform. I was inspired by films like Frozen where the guards of Arendale wear simplistic, green uniforms and the uniform is dependent of the rank. The higher the ranks, the better the armour.

Personality traits and narrative role

Initially Eric was intended to be this cocky sidekick and Jessica (known as just Lady for the longest time) was the singular main protagonist, but i eventually felt that the dynamic between the two characters, brought up differently and would butt heads from time to time would be interesting for the story over its duration.

All the characters fit the theme as they grow to find their identity, deal with difficult, traumatic backgrounds in different ways which allows them to grow and understand how their weaknesses can be their strengths.

Entry 5 – Visual Style and Art Direction

Chosen art style

The chosen art style is inspired by Arcane, it was one of my favourite shows of last year and the art style is so unique, gives off a painterly feel and that is something that would work for our project. Obviously I am not a full studio of artists and so the style will differ slightly but will keep through same painterly feel.

colour palette and lighting choices

The colour palette changes for each different environment for different scenarios. For example, I wanted the princess’ colour sceme to be green, as she is cynical, is very materialistic and is always wanting power, to be on top. Whilst Eric and Jessica would both be orange, grey and blacks which represent friendliness, power and stability but also danger, hopelessness and abandonment. These are important because the characters backgrounds would be developed and changed as their opinions and experiences change them.

As for lighting, when with the characters being optimistic, the lighting will be bright, warm and calm. Whist characters are in a tough spot, the lighting would reflect the mood, allowing the effect of each scene to emphasise the emotion for the audience.

For creating all the concept art for the environments, I use two different video games instead of using AI. I used The Sims 4 for all the interiors and Tidy Glade for the exterior. The reason for this was I would have a lot more control over the placement of each asset within the world, adding little details and seeing if there were assets I didn’t think of before but make sense within the context of the world. For example, within the bar, I wanted to have a bulletin board so people can put jobs or wanted posters there, but didn’t know where to put it. Because I used the Sims, I was able to play about with it and find out exactly where I wanted the board to be placed. Having this control was vital in being able to visualise what I was seeing, even if some parts would change down the line.

Entry 6 – Story & Storyboarding

We decided to use the original storyboard as a starting point and go back, writing the lead up to Jessica being in the jail and their relationship, as well as give context to the surrounding kingdom. The image above show all the key story beats for each of the different scenes within the pilot. We felt like this was the best pace for Crownless as each point was carefully planned out with different locations in mind for each.

One thing I will give myself credit on is making a clear storyboard. Telling a story through image sequences is something I’ve done since very little, making comics and such. This helped with making the story boards easy to follow and at understanding the story beats/pacing. The storyboards above are of the first half of the pilot. When planning the length, we aimed to have about 25-30 minutes of runtime, which for all the pilots aired on YouTube is about average.

Since the storyboard’s creation, not much has been changed. We have brought on more people to help with the world development and creating more characters to fill out each season but the pilot was set in stone. We used this pilot to set the scene, which is what a good pilot should do – introduce the characters, the world and the story.

Entry 7 – Trailer and Character Creation

Using the concept art, I created assets and purchased some that I felt fit the aesthetic of Crownless. I knew where my weaknesses were when it came to modelling different assets, specifically nature and landscaping tools so I outsourced them. However, they did not place all the trees, terrained the ground or created the fields of lavender of wheat. I spent almost two months creating all the different environments, inside and out.

There were four different levels that were created within unreal engine. One for the castle’s inside, one of the tavern inside, another of Mrs Hammonds house and street, and the landscape around the valley. Creating the environments on different levels allows the engine to run more smoothly in rendering, allowing there to be less unused assets on screen than necessary.

If I had to pick one environment I am most proud of, I would say the landscape of the village. I had to learn how to use things like virtual texturing, the landscape and terrain tools within unreal engine and how to add moving textures for the water in the rivers and waterfalls. They all came out amazing but this was my favourite part by far.

The characters were also all made from scratch. Using the visuals from the storyboards, I sculpted all the main characters and one of Jessica’s alternate clothing in ZBrush, Textured in Substance Painter and Rigged in Maya as that will be the preferred animating software of choice. I recently bought a copy of Animbot and am not letting that go to waste.

The uniforms were my favourite part. Creating the costumes to be similar for both male and female uniforms was a challenge but I am really happy with how they turned out. In addition, I had never gotten a fully functioning facial rig to work and I DID! FOUR TIMES! It took lots of trial and error, new things going wrong at each phase, however all the rigs came out amazing, I did have to go in and manually weight paint different joints so the bend more realistically but other than that they came out wonderful.

Below are the rendered turn arounds of all the rigs I made for each character. They came out amazing and I’m looking forward to animating with them. I have tested Jessica’s rig with a running cycle and am quite happy with it.

Entry 8 – Thesis and Post FMP development

My thesis played a large part in this production. My topic was on the differences between Indie Animation and Corporate animation. As this project is still in early stages, I wanted to learn about the process of being able to use this knowledge to better influence my judgement if and when pitch the idea to different studios.

Different animated show creators have shown the gratitude but also displeasure when working with different studios and companies, especially large ones like Disney. As these large companies tend to want to stick to safer story options and marketing the shows as merchandises, it can be tough to get the creative freedom one needs to tell their compelling stories. This is why I am currently leading towards trying to do Crownless as an internet series like the shows I mentioned at the start of this blog.

However, these shows still require money to function, and that is why in the new year, the we are planning to begin a kickstarter and Patreon to help gather funds for our project. Obviously there will be no solid start and will be doing off our own backs, however, once the pilot is ready, we will be able to see if people are interested in our story and gage audience feedback better.

Using what I’d learned from my thesis helped with the production plan of what for the future and making it into a viable show.

We are currently set to try and release the pilot in the month of May 2026. This may seem early but with the group becoming larger with each week, with people passionate to join our little team, myself and the other animators on the team will be able to focus on our job of animating. If we have to delay, its not a problem as the project is very small, but having a goal gives us a deadline and a target to work towards.

Entry 9 – Editing, Sound, Trailer Construction

Music for a trailer is very important. It helps set the mood and can be a good way of helping convey through the lyrics what is happening. That was what I wanted for my trailer. Epic music to help display this new story soon to be told. I started at looking for songs that would help for inspiration, creating a music playlist of songs that gave off the same vibe as Crownless’ epicness. I also knew I would need the rights to be able to use the music on YouTube, therefore I chose a song from a website called LICKD, which allows you to purchase the licences to have music in videos.

I chose a song called ‘Out Of Time’ by Hidden Citizen. I wanted parts of the song to have epic drops, an upbeat and powerful motif but with slow and simple parts. I also enjoyed the lyrics and knew I could use this song to make an amazing trailer. This song had it all. But it is quite long, and therefore would need to be edited to be allows to be cut down slightly to allow it to fit into about a two minute trailer.

The structure of the trailer would be based on the lyrics. I knew that I wanted to start the trailer with shots from within the castle as they are the most interesting and fitting for the more calm parts of the song.

Cover your eyes
Keep it inside

These two lines will be for the cast.

Lay in your grave
The bed that you’ve made

These lines will follow the dungeon and the gallows.

Follow the blood
Down down down

This part will follow the town and the insides of Mrs Hammond’s home.

Do you think you can hide?
Do you believe the lies?
Twist it up in your mind
You’ll run out of time, time, time

The remainder of the song will show all of the environment outside, the bar, more of the village and castle. This way it will wrap up the trailer nicely.

The rendering process took a while. As I was rendering on my home computer, I had to be careful the make sure unreal didn’t crash (which it did several times) but thankfully after changing some settings within the render queue, the rendering went relatively smoothly.

Editing took a bit of time also. As I had to cut down the song to fit better, I used different fading techniques to mash up the music to fit the visuals just how I liked. In total there was about 17 renders of different environments. They all came out really well and I am very pleased with the final trailer. This has given me inspiration to continue developing the pilot, allowing it to grow with the amazing group of people around me.

Entry 10 – Artwork, Posters, Promotional work

These posters above were used for the main trailer poster on the right and the poster of the characters was used on my business card for showcase and other things. I love both of them. They differently convey the vibes of Crownless but in very different ways.

I also created a Discord server for all the people working on the Crownless. Having all the work in one place and where people can communicate, share work and create bonds together. This was where I realised I wanted to create a name for this little group, a studio name. I ended up calling it Second Wind Studios, as to all the second winds I get late at night at 2am wanting to do artwork.

Entry 11 – Final Outcome and Reflection

Final trailer

This project for the FMP in my opinion was a success, I am proud of the trailer I was able to create to give people a glimpse of the world my team and I are creating.

I would have loved to have released something with character animation in it, however, with the time constraints and other related delays with my job, things just happen. However, with this in mind, I made a lot more progress for post FMP. Having everything ready to begin animation of the pilot in the new year

Over the many weeks I’ve spent making this project, I am looking forward to developing it further. The skills of being a team leader and in the developmental stages has been invaluable. They have helped me with expressing ideas and formulating opinions that have helped with the creation of Crownless. Although I have also been very open minded about the power of animation and what responsibility I have with making sure issues around the world are addressed and that is something I have taken into consideration when writing season 1 and beyond.

My personal growth as a creative was the fact that I have fallen in love with animation again. When I completed my last FMP, I hated the work I produced and it left me feeling blocked as a creative. I struggled to get back into doing anything 3D. This course and Crownless have given me something to work towards, something that couldn’t have been done without the support of my peers, tutors and friends pushing me to keep going and having my back throughout this whole year. I am glad to have done this FMP and for what the future holds. It has truely been a pleasure being here and being able to learn a whole bunch of new skill sets that I didn’t have before.

I look forward to showing off Crownless in the near future and beyond.