Recruitment ideas

Attack of reality! If this does turn the attention from their pokemon anime to ours, we'll be shut down quicker then a rapidash.

Nintendo will not be so kind. Unless we make it ABSOLUTELY amazing and blow them away, and even then, that will still be a low percentage of nintendo's support.

And it is a low possibility of them making a new pokemon anime. Kids like it the way it is now, and they'll stick to that.

We've gotta keep this REALLY low key. At least finish an arc before nintendo tries to shut us down. That way we might reach some closure for the fans. Then perhaps fan support will bring us back from the darkness.

That's why the trailer is similar to a double bladed sword. It may help, but may also destroy us. This kinda discussion is for managers to decide though.

End of reality attack. This is not to shoot down the Articuno in the sky, but to not let it fly to high.

I know Nintendo, if fans enjoy them, they'll let us be.

I dont know about their American counterparts though.

though, lk continued with ygoas even though 4kids tried to shut it down? I'm not really sure what happened then tho.

I understand Nintendo is great and kind to us fans, but if there was to be a threat, they would end us. Quickly. But that's only if this expands way too much. Such as when we have 9000+ fans (XD love that) or start selling t-shirts, that's where they'll draw the line. They do not look kindly to threats to their franchises. (but heck, I love nintendo all the same ^^)

ygotas' problems weren't really about 4kids, heck, they're at pretty great terms now. It's a long story, but it can be "abridged" (XD) into two words. Jealousy and flaggers, which will be another problem in the future, but not one now.

But let's not get off target. That's a different discussion for a different thread.

The problem lies with how dedicated a small team can be. The sheer amount of work will make most people gave up half way, or make people feel uninterested in the project because of the lack of work to done.

A project can be sustained only if the team is able to showcase the progression of their work.

Sure, there is a possibility that Nintendo will shut down the team, but if there is a lack of awareness, I am willingly to bet that the team may end up being unable to produce a single episode.

The work does not have to be extremely well-published to the extend that every forum is talking about it. It just have to be well-published to draw in talent and people who are willingly to animate the anime for instance. If the team is unable to sustain new members that can actively contribute to the project by doing all the boring and tedious work for instance, then the lost of a single animator can cripple the entire project.

If there is an active influx of new animators, the project can still continue even if one animator has left the team.

I understand what you're getting at john. Maybe we should at least get something done (maybe parts of the animation?) before advertising anything, I still hold my ground for no empty words tho. If there's no worthy animation done, the only animators we get probably won't be much good. Only if there is some work done will the good animators think that this project is something worth their time to do, so I think its only till then that we should start advertising.

Yes, but the very fact that work is being done is an improvement. Regardless of the final quality of the project, it is better to create something better than nothing.

Take a look at the Pokemon anime for instance, where cheap techniques were used to create the anime in the first season. Sure, the budget may not be enough for them to create animation on par with other project, but the existence of the anime itself ensure that the possibility of improvement will be there in the future.

I have been part of a few computer game modification projects, where I understand why did some teams succeed while others failed to get anything done. Teams that tried to aim for a very good quality work usually does not get anything done at all, because there is so much talk about getting things done, no one attempted to actually get it done.

While teams that are willingly to get work done, regardless of quality managed to attract more people to help them and new talent to improve on the quality of the modification.

To summarise what I have said earlier, it does not matter if the work is very consistence or not, because a fan animation team should not aim to match the level of quality a professional animation studio. They have huge number of animators working full time to ensure such a project will succeed. Aim to get some work done, push for new talent to join the team.

Improvement can still be made as the experience of the team grew. The quality of animation in episode one for instance might not be up to expectation, but the lessons learned can allow the team to do a better quality work for episode 2, and onwards.

Who knows, by episode 5, the team might be able to create a quality of work more or less on par with the professionals. However, even if the team failed to be on par, at the least the team can take pride that they at the least managed to animate a fair number of episodes.

There should be less focus on discussing what the team should do, and more focus on presenting the work that you have done. If there is more discussion than work done, this forum will just turn into another pokespe fan forum.

Is this what the team wants?

There are parts where I completely agree john. To the extend of I seriously couldn't agree more. Because it's exactly what I want to say. Many people her focus too much on the talk, but no one really gets anything done. And that's really something we have to change. There's all this talk about being serious about this project, but many are always not focused enough and or talk, but there's no real work done. Sorry if I offended anyone, but I thought that this is kinda like a bad habit that definitely has to be changed, if the anime wants to have any progression at all.

Actually, it feels like there's never any real work done before I came (sorry if I sound like I'm boasting...), all I see is discussions and discussions about plans and everything, but concrete work? I think not. This could be because of the forum being just established recently at that point in time, but it could also be otherwise. Although, I would say that our music team is one of the most responsible amongst all teams, the animation team (with the little people we have now), should definitely buck up and learn from themXD

Sorry, I keep doing things that seems like self promotion, but I did make a storyboard over at here based on rainbowmunchie's script. I was thinking of animating that part first, before proceeding with advertising in terms of recruitment? show the people that we can do it, so they won't think its a goner from the start, and the potential peeps will probably come in if we could do it well. Also this isn't a whole episode, maybe around 1 minute or so. We'll probably be able to complete this part at least with the manpower we have now.

I like that idea, aki. by getting the first scene done we should be able to have more bearings on how we should make the system of work have the best output. I am actually really anxious to get to work, but I'm also frustrated over my lack of skill. DX Frankly, I suck as a sketch artist. Aki, I tried, I really tried to sketch out that animation of the boy throwing the pokeball, but it just became a huge disaster. I just want to get this up in the air, that I'd hope the animations you send to us are not TOO rough. Because we need to put small details in, it actually makes it harder. I don't have any idea how the hat should look or be positions throughout the movement, I have no idea, how the net would move, and even if I did I can't draw it! DX

So aki, if I can ask that you make sure that the rough animations sent to us are rough to the extent that non-animators can sufficiently edit and improve on? I'm really hating myself for asking this, it makes me feel like I'm making you do EVERYTHING and you have so much other stuff in your life to do...

Also, probably wrong place to put this, but I'd like to use what you drew for the storyboard as the animatic pages for the first scene. We need the voice actors decided ASAP and to have them record and send in the lines we ask them.

so the storyboards are like the keyframes we're using, correct? (as in when we redraw them). Yea to be honest the keyframes I'll be sending you will not be as rough as the ones i sent u that time, cos u requested it the day before the meeting and I just whipped that up in 10 minutes>A>

Also, this is also why i need to emphasize on reference videos. And it got ignored, or forgotten, kinda. Things like secondary actions and everything are harder to animate as compared to humans, and things like the hat, as well as net, are parts of the secondary action. Maybe we could create a reference team, a team dedicated to make and or collect reference videos for the animators to reference from. This surely will beat imagining, because imagination sometimes just lead u haywire. We don't necessarily need straw hats, any similar hats, like sun hats, could do. And it'll be good to have a net, but it doesn't have to be one, it could be a stick so we at least know how the hands and stick move in that motion.

we'll decide the finalists this week, then vote. Meanwhile we'll redraw the storyboard frames without adding any in, once the voting is done and we have the voices, we'll do the animatics with added frames and start the animation as long as it works.

conclusion, references are darn important!>8D

(yeaaa im going way off topic sorry><)

I don't think there a need for a new team. I will just make things more complicated without really getting any work done.

What the team needs to do is to start doing as much work as they can, and be daring to criticise each other, and help everyone master the art of animation.

A lot of game modification ( including pokemon game hacks) managed to succeed because there is an entire community of people who can modify the files constantly giving advice to each other and pushing each other to excel.

The new comers to game hacks and game modification will have the advice of the veterans, and that makes the job of the new comers much easier.

There is no fan animation community in existence, so the team is going to need lots of practice if this project is to succeed.

Nevermind if the animation is only 5 seconds long, just keep posting it onto some file-hosting server, and share your experience with others.

People spend years learning how to animate professional, and that requires tons of constant practice.

There no point in spending all the time in the world referring to guides if no one is constantly practising their animation skill.

The team needs to build up an entire community of animators from scratch. And perhaps the best place to start is to create an environment where the team welcome people to try and learn this skill, and at the same time, try their best to get those people who has animated before.

So aki, if I can ask that you make sure that the rough animations sent to us are rough to the extent that non-animators can sufficiently edit and improve on? I'm really hating myself for asking this, it makes me feel like I'm making you do EVERYTHING and you have so much other stuff in your life to do...

Also, probably wrong place to put this, but I'd like to use what you drew for the storyboard as the animatic pages for the first scene. We need the voice actors decided ASAP and to have them record and send in the lines we ask them.

It's too early to care about voice actors at this stage in my opinion. There is no real need to rush this project, as there is no real deadline.

One of the fan project I am on is taking a much longer time than expected to be completed, but the constant amount of team progress ( regardless of the speed of progress ) basically ensured that the project is close to completion.

This is an animation project first and foremost, so it is important that the team keep on trying to animate clips after clips.

Regards,
John

Yeah, but there's no harm in getting organised.I mean, what if one of us walks under a truck and dies.
The quicker we get this done, the better,
especially if nintendo finds out!!!

Calm down Razor-Leaf. Even if Nintendo finds out, I'm sure we can reach a beneficial agreement.

For the rest of you; the reason we're hesitant about recruitment videos are that we could be shut down. Theoretically, the chances of that happening, rise with our exposure.
Because of this, we do not want anything over the top, but I've personally calmed down a bit about it, and I don't see much issue in you guys making low-key recruitment video. I do, however, expect it to not demand noteworthy amounts of extra work from our animators or illustrators.

I will discuss this with Shen at some point (I swear I have a list of topics somewhere), so if you want to add something, tell me soon.

Mylodon wrote:Calm down Razor-Leaf. Even if Nintendo finds out, I'm sure we can reach a beneficial agreement.

For the rest of you; the reason we're hesitant about recruitment videos are that we could be shut down. Theoretically, the chances of that happening, rise with our exposure.
Because of this, we do not want anything over the top, but I've personally calmed down a bit about it, and I don't see much issue in you guys making low-key recruitment video. I do, however, expect it to not demand noteworthy amounts of extra work from our animators or illustrators.

I will discuss this with Shen at some point (I swear I have a list of topics somewhere), so if you want to add something, tell me soon.

Yes, but recruitment does not require recruitment videos to work. The team can recruit by creating some sort of advertising on deviantart, asking all pokespe artist to come down here and help out.

Yeah, but there's no harm in getting organised.I mean, what if one of us walks under a truck and dies.

But the lack of proper organisation will not stop the project from moving forward. Hell, most of the team members in the project I am helping out on don't even know who is the real team leader! And just to let you know, a member of that project had died, but that did not stop the team from trying to pick up what he has left us.

Ah, about recruitment, I've actually just send a note to the largest Pokemon Special fanclub on DeviantART about us, asking if they could help advertise for us, as there is such a huge amount of artists who would be willing to help that belong to it, if they actually did advertise for us, a huge amount of help and members would come to help really make this a reality. Really, I can hardly imagine the amount of people that would want to help. XD (Though I can't help but get this nagging feeling in the back of my head that it will be less than we expect...all right)

we don't need to worry about this getting the attention of any kind of media or anything, as it's just on a DeviantART club, right? XD

Joyfulldreams wrote:Ah, about recruitment, I've actually just send a note to the largest Pokemon Special fanclub on DeviantART about us, asking if they could help advertise for us, as there is such a huge amount of artists who would be willing to help that belong to it, if they actually did advertise for us, a huge amount of help and members would come to help really make this a reality. Really, I can hardly imagine the amount of people that would want to help. XD (Though I can't help but get this nagging feeling in the back of my head that it will be less than we expect...all right)

we don't need to worry about this getting the attention of any kind of media or anything, as it's just on a DeviantART club, right? XD

I don't Nintendo will care about the project at this stage yet. Hell, given the nature of most Japanese companies, where they are willingly to turn a blind eye towards fans selling fan-managa for profit, it is unlikely that such a project will be shut down.

I think there's no point worrying about how popular the project is going to be. If Nintendo thinks that such a project should be shut down, they will shut it down regardless of the attention it gets.

You talk as though you know animation, john. But in fact, you don't. Games animation is different from real animation, there are lots of things to consider when it comes to animating movements, angles and all, because it's hard to visualize everything yourself.

Although we can do with or without a team. still, references is a must. Richard williams, an animator who wrote one of the best animation books said that everyone even the disney, pixar people have tons of references. If even the pros need references, won't amateurs like us need them as well? We'll still start with the production, based on using ourselves as references and what not, but i really do hope as this project progresses we could have references of the movement of scenes in the manga/storyboard and or things that could potentially happen in the anime.

And if you're worried if we are practicing; well in my case, I'm currently working on my studio project and there's plenty to do when it comes to animation, so i doubt I'll be out of practice. Reference is for people who hope to help us but had neither the skill nor voice etc to assist us. Well, seeing that you do suggest a lot, but didn't really do much in terms of real contribution, maybe you could set an example by making some reference videos? If not won't you be contradicting yourselves in terms of all the all talk, no action?

And the rush for voice actors is a must. As you may not know, animation nowadays are drawn according based on the voices, for timing and consistency. Unless you're still living in the days of popeye the sailor man, where the voice is only recorded only after the animation is done. which will result in mumbling or dragging of words if the estimated time for dialogue is either too short or too long. Well, although japanese anime tend to do animation, then the voices, but still, they are professionals and they probably could do better estimations timing wise. Tho I'm also pretty sure that they prerecord some rough voices and animate base on it. So this pretty much concludes the urgent need of voices yes? Before animation, there is also animatics, which are basically still pictures to check the timing and the voices. so it is a must to rush this.

And Like joy said, Ive already suggested to her to contact the club to recruit artists, since where else to find good artists than deviantart?

No proper organisation will definitely affect the team in some way, your fan project moving very slowly is the best evidence. We don't have a real overall leader in our group either, but that's fine. Because this way none of us will be abuse our authority and we can better ensure that everyone's more or less happy with the direction the project is going due to the decisions being made by a group rather than a one man show. And whether anyone of us died makes a difference depending on the usefulness of the person in the project, not that I want anyone in this project to die anyway of courseD:

Thank you Aki. I wanted to say all that stuff, but couldn't figure out how.

So yea... I agree with Aki. I think it's a horrid notion that we don't need organization. I mean... how else would anything get done at a decent pace? You'd have people doing storyboards without scripts, and animations not syncing with speech and even sad things like animators not working together to make the animation run smoothly. TTnTT

It'd be a clusterf-... well, it wouldn't be good.

John wrote:One of the fan project I am on is taking a much longer time than expected to be completed, but the constant amount of team progress ( regardless of the speed of progress ) basically ensured that the project is close to completion.

One, this only barely makes sense. Two, I don't see how that differs from what's happening here. I mean, we have a part of the script done, the storyboards are underway, we have a recruitment note sent out, and VAs are being decided later today (tomorrow for some of you, but cha know), and we have some good music being worked on, the name has been decided... we are getting this done, albeit (much like your project) slowly.

IDK... on one hand, I agree with Aki. There hasn't been a lot done yet that we have to show for ourselves... but on the other hand, we are finally going places. I don't want people to get too confident, but I don't want people to get discouraged either, because I can definitely see things happening here. :/

Oh, and I think sending the note to the DA club was a great idea! I mean, the whole way I found out about this place was through DA-- I'm sure we'll get tons of people who can draw (unlike me, lulz).

I don't think it would be a bad idea to perhaps make a club as well... I mean, has anyone noticed how popular the "Battle Frontier" club entries have become lately? Yeesh, they're like... every other submission XD My point is, clubs are hidden enough that they wouldn't get too much outside attention, yet we could have people give us examples of their work and work together and recruit people. Only real pokemon special fans would most likely even become aware of the club (i.e. No Nintendo to bother us, though i feel everyone is freaking about the copyright thing a bit too much at this point, it's really going to be like a bunch of fanart put together up until a certain point in the process, and even then it won't matter if we don't make a profit and give credit where due, but I digress-- that's for another place/time).

Of course, that's just all IMO, and has probably been said a hundred ways a hundred times at this point. :/

>w> i didnt know everyone is so good at speeches *shot*

well, i think we are progressing.. (slowly, yeah) it may seems like we are not working on this, because we have no decent animation to show, etc. but we all have lives. >.> you cant expect, when someone said, "i'll work on it", poof, an hour later it's done. most of us here have school, work, college.. we have progress, but not decent enough to show to the world for recruitment purpose.

and i agree with aki. you dont need to worry about us getting out of practice. most artists who work for this are not only practising for the anime, but they also want to improve because, well, they like drawing.

and we do need to rush things, but not too rushed. >.> if we are rushing too much, everything will be out of hand and can cause lack of motivation too.

i dont think we should make a reference team though. everyone should do it, (like advertising, when we are ready for it) so there's no need for a team. and yeah, john, why dont you help with the reference videos?

...i said too much >.> i dont even know what's my point.

Aki11 wrote:You talk as though you know animation, john. But in fact, you don't. Games animation is different from real animation, there are lots of things to consider when it comes to animating movements, angles and all, because it's hard to visualize everything yourself.

I never stated that 3d animation and real animation is the same thing. I'm bringing up the project I am helping out in because of the level of difficulty involved in creating all sorts of fan projects.

Although we can do with or without a team. still, references is a must. Richard williams, an animator who wrote one of the best animation books said that everyone even the disney, pixar people have tons of references. If even the pros need references, won't amateurs like us need them as well? We'll still start with the production, based on using ourselves as references and what not, but i really do hope as this project progresses we could have references of the movement of scenes in the manga/storyboard and or things that could potentially happen in the anime.

I'm not saying that the need should not refer. My point was that there is no need to create a reference team, and all a whole new level of bureaucracy.

And if you're worried if we are practicing; well in my case, I'm currently working on my studio project and there's plenty to do when it comes to animation, so i doubt I'll be out of practice. Reference is for people who hope to help us but had neither the skill nor voice etc to assist us. Well, seeing that you do suggest a lot, but didn't really do much in terms of real contribution, maybe you could set an example by making some reference videos? If not won't you be contradicting yourselves in terms of all the all talk, no action?

I'm not here as a team member. I'm here as a concerned fan of this project, and simply stating what I feel about the overall progress. I'm aware that such a project will not be completed in a short amount of time, but I am concern about how many people realise this fact?

And the rush for voice actors is a must. As you may not know, animation nowadays are drawn according based on the voices, for timing and consistency. Unless you're still living in the days of popeye the sailor man, where the voice is only recorded only after the animation is done. which will result in mumbling or dragging of words if the estimated time for dialogue is either too short or too long. Well, although japanese anime tend to do animation, then the voices, but still, they are professionals and they probably could do better estimations timing wise. Tho I'm also pretty sure that they prerecord some rough voices and animate base on it. So this pretty much concludes the urgent need of voices yes? Before animation, there is also animatics, which are basically still pictures to check the timing and the voices. so it is a must to rush this.

Conceded.

And Like joy said, Ive already suggested to her to contact the club to recruit artists, since where else to find good artists than deviantart?

Very glad to hear about this.

No proper organisation will definitely affect the team in some way, your fan project moving very slowly is the best evidence. We don't have a real overall leader in our group either, but that's fine. Because this way none of us will be abuse our authority and we can better ensure that everyone's more or less happy with the direction the project is going due to the decisions being made by a group rather than a one man show. And whether anyone of us died makes a difference depending on the usefulness of the person in the project, not that I want anyone in this project to die anyway of courseD:

But you are not addressing my point. My point wasn't about the fact that there is no need for any proper organisation, my point was that there was too much focus on organising the team, and too little focus on discussing how to improve the animation quality and etc.

Take a look that the other thread that is active down here, where people are focused on discussing the renaming of this project, and even started to talk about episode arc and etc. The same goes to the level of dicussion everyone is having about the episode format.

While such discussion are fine, there is too much focus on discussing an issue that is not even relevant at this stage.

So yea... I agree with Aki. I think it's a horrid notion that we don't need organization. I mean... how else would anything get done at a decent pace? You'd have people doing storyboards without scripts, and animations not syncing with speech and even sad things like animators not working together to make the animation run smoothly. TTnTT

See above.

One, this only barely makes sense. Two, I don't see how that differs from what's happening here. I mean, we have a part of the script done, the storyboards are underway, we have a recruitment note sent out, and VAs are being decided later today (tomorrow for some of you, but cha know), and we have some good music being worked on, the name has been decided... we are getting this done, albeit (much like your project) slowly.

The problem is while those things are undoubtedly important for the project, it is not as important the animation itself. If there is a lack of animation being done, I fear that there is a very real possibility that more and more people will drop the idea of animating the entire project, and starts to say that creating a bunch of audio-episode is good enough.

The previous pokespe-anime project failed because everyone is talking about what they want to be done, and no one wants to animate it. I have no desire to see something like this from happening again, which is why I feel that I need to voice out my concern.

i dont think we should make a reference team though. everyone should do it, (like advertising, when we are ready for it) so there's no need for a team. and yeah, john, why dont you help with the reference videos?

I will love to help out, but I'm afraid that I should not commit myself to yet another fan project. Perhaps when the project I am working on is done, I will find enough free time to help out.

I do wish the team all the best in making this project come true, and make all the naysayers eat their words.

.............so back on topic?

for the naming of the project, to be honest I'm only half hearted about that. The same things goes for credits and all the things that could be decided later on. My primary focus is on the voices, animation, music and scripts. Other than that I hardly payed attention to anything else.

But then again, this is a group project. I could only hope for the morale of the team to rise higher by being enthusiastic myself. I want to get productions started asap so that we could retain members and everything. I'm not sure but i think one of our animators has left us, because i havent heard from him in a while... If you ask how many people realized, I would say, not many. But I have no right to speak if I'm not a role model myself. And even if I have, we currently are short on animators too, with only 2 animators for now... but we could do the intro first, and use that as a recruitment video, i dunno=w=

oh, and you do 3D? (sorry if im not replying in sequence, its 4am and im not systematic to begin with in terms of speech=w=;; ) wow, if you were in this project and knew modeling i probably will ask you to do some models hahaXD I'm still not good enough with 3D, so that we can reference angles and such. If its not to much, would you be willing to do at least some simple buildings and such for the cities? it would solve lots of perspective issues and problems with consistency will be solved too. I was thinking of doing 3D when it comes to cityscape, but im not sure if that's redundant or not.

There is a previous pokespe project?OwO

in any case, if you can, at least help a little. I do 3D and I'm pretty sure modelling a few building blocks using extrusion and everything won't take too long. (using maya btw, not sure what the terms are if ure using 3D max or anything)

One of the old pokemon special animation projects was started by someone called paperfairy iirc, so maybe we should look them up to help out? iirc, they were pretty good at drawing, so maybe they could help on the animation aspect if they're still interested in the project.

Anyways, about the recruitment on DA, Ju-Fate (head of pokespe fanclub) agreed to advertise us, but only on their next journal. So the next journal the pokespe fanclub posts should include our information, and if not I'll ask for clarification on way and/or remind them about us. =3

@nol: well, i don't see the harm in asking, tho I've never heard of him/her so i don't think i know where to find him/her^^;

Great to hear about this joyC: should we also ask them to include some of our works so that they know we are serious about this?