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Rock Steady Episode 1

A campaign by wesley

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Successfully funded on December 19, 2015
A campaign by wesley
1 campaigns, 0 contributions
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    Limited to 10000 Contributors
    Anime forum + Ebook + name in credits Get access to our exclusive backer forum where we will answer your questions about the Anime and seek your advice. Membership access to our Anime website where you can watch anime & read manga. A complimentary manga ebook. You also get your name in the credits!
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  • Contribute $10 or more

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    Paperback Manga (early bird tier) + Anime forum Ebook+ name in credits Get a copy of the paperback manga You will get the $3 reward tier.
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    Paperback Manga + Anime forum +Color ebook+ name in credits Get a copy of the paperback manga You will get the $3 reward #2 tier.
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    Color paperback Manga (early bird tier) + Anime forum +Ebook+ name in credits Get a copy of the paperback manga with color interior You will get the $3 reward tier.
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    DVD + $15 Tier Get a DVD copy of the Anime, plus the $15 tier including the Color paperback Manga.
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    Blu-Ray+ $25 tier Get a Blu-Ray copy of the Anime. Includes everything in the $25 tier
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    Canon+$25 tier You can appear in episode 1 of the Anime. Includes everything in the $25 tier
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    Limited to 50 Contributors
    Script+ $50 tier Get a copy of the script used to make the Anime. Includes everything in the $50 tier
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    Autograph+Poster+T-shirt+$50 tier Get a signed copy of the printed paperback manga and DVD. In addition, you'll get a t-shirt and poster. Includes everything in the $50 tier
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    Signed poster + $100 tier Get a copy of the poster signed by author with a personalized message! Includes everything in the $100 tier
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    Limited to 20 Contributors
    character identity+$150 tier The author will ask you questions pertaining to your personality and the artist will draw your very own character of yourself into the manga. Includes everything in the $150 tier
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    Limited to 10 Contributors
    Background Music+Postcard+Stickers+$150 tier Your choice of what Rock song plays in the background of the Anime during scenes. Postcard and stickers. Includes everything in the $150 tier
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    Limited to 50 Contributors
    Launch event+ Beta Access+$150 tier Get clockwork updates on the production and get a chance to weigh in on the logo and cover art. Exclusive access to the launch of the Anime. Beta Access to the app. Includes everything in the $150 tier
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    Virtual assistant+Plushie+$450 tier virtual assistant which gives you exclusive privileges of being a team member. A plushie of the main character in the Anime! Includes everything in the $450 tier
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    Limited to 20 Contributors
    Box Set+DVD Box Set+$450 tier You will receive All of the new volumes in future production. You will receive DVD’s of all of the new episodes of the anime. Includes everything in the $450 tier
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    Voice actor+$1000 tier You get to become a voice actor for a character in the Anime. Includes everything in the $1000 tier
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    FanFiction+ $1500 Tier Write your own episode with the help of the author who holds creative veto rights to ensure it fits in the world. Includes everything in the $1500 tier
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    Limited to 1 Contributors
    Protagonist+$1000 tier Create your own protagonist and add it into the Anime, with help from the author who holds creative veto rights to ensure it fits in the world. Includes everything in the $1000 tier
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    Limited to 1 Contributors
    Antagonist+ $1000 tier Create your own Antagonist and add it into the Anime, with help from the author who holds creative veto rights to ensure it fits in the world. Includes everything in the $1000 tier
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    Limited to 1 Contributors
    Spend a day with the author + $2,500 tier The author will fly to wherever your at and hang out with you for a day.
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Introduction

Animation Studio

The company im cooperating with is a company that has connections with the anime industry necessary to make projects of any scale happen. They can introduce us to Japan's top tier talent for film work projects. They have native English speakers on staff who work alongside a Japanese team to eliminate communication barriers and ensure that their team works to realize our vision. They have an extensive background in Japanese animation (anime) and offer a full range of production services to companies around the world who want to develop movies, and television programs, in authentic anime style. Anime is popular with a wide range of demographics, from children and teens into adults in their 20s and 30s. They have connections across Japan's entire media landscape anime, manga, television, movies, video games, music, comedy, cosplay-- you name it, they can arrange an introduction and provide comprehensive support all the way through the production process.With you as a partner, you can focus on what you do best and we will manage all the small details with a sense of hospitality that will impress and delight you. With our anime we can give our audience something cool, fresh, and memorable.

Expenditure

-5% of the earnings will go to website fees

-95% of the earnings will go to production of the Anime

Genre

Action , Adventure , Comedy , Fantasy , Horror , Kids , Martial Arts , Mature , Monster , Mystery , Romance , Supernatural, Thriller, Superpower, religious, folklore, legend, greek & latin

Plot

Since pre creation the Soul king, has regulated the passage of souls allocating them to life, death,heaven, hell, existence or non existence and has governed the universe. The story begins to unravel with a musician who conquers until he establishes his own empire of Greeks known as the Mycenae. On the year 1265 BC a war breaks out between the seven deadly sins and the Mycenaean.The musicians weaponize sound and fight with instrumental scabbards, changing them into weapons. "God" appears after his sins lose and fights the soul king. The soul king sacrifices his life to seal half of "God" in a nearby guitar. 3266 years later the guitar is discovered by Hiewa Maverick.

Heiwa Maverick thought he was a normal yellow haired sophomore student in LA until he learned his guitar contained two different powerful souls. But he soon learns that there are other teens like him with strange instrumental powers, all fighting to be Soul king- The sole controller of the universe, with the power to reshape the world in any way they see fit . A fateful encounter with a “Musicians” awakens Heiwa’s true powers . Now a secret organization “The vice” plan to destroy all beings, and create a utopia for those deemed worthy.

Manga
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I find it to be both important and fascinating to learn about the basics of the medium we all have grown to love, and one of the most fabled questions is: how is anime made? That’s been a question ive been yearning to find out, so I ended up researching it in great detail. Over the last year or so, my interest in this side of the spectrum had grown and has really opened my eyes to the talent, artistry, passion and beauty that can be found in Japanese animation. I will discuss TV-anime production, but the same general process applies to movies and OVAs as well. That said, there can be a lot of variation between studios and individual productions. Which is why I have contacted and acquired a studio that can turn my manga into an anime.

The process of making an anime is a complex one, with many steps and stages. This chart is a good visual overview of the process
Process of making anime

Pre-production

This process is dependant on who’s pushing for an idea and who is supporting said idea, it can be animation studios themselves along with sponsors, but many anime are adaptations of manga or light novels, in which case, publishers front costs (including the costs of having it shown on TV stations). The production company (e.g Aniplex) gathers staff, sponsors, and looks at advertisement and merchandise. While many people describe studios as being cheap, only around half the budget is often given to the anime studio, with the rest going to broadcasters and other contributing companies. The broadcast costs are surprisingly high at about 50 million yen for a late-night timeslot across 5-7 stations for a 52 episode series. You can see why anime can be an expensive business. For example, Full Metal Alchemist, which had a 6pm Saturday slot had a total budget of 500 million yen (before additional costs). When the core staff is assembled, they meet and plan out the anime, work on series composition (how the anime will play out across each episode/over the course of the series), and select further staff such as character designers. One of the most crucial core staff is the director. To understand the role of directors, you could think of them like directors of a movie, but instead of dealing with actors, they deal with the animators who make the characters movie. Their involvement is generally to attend meetings and make decisions in order to manage the schedule, budget and quality of an anime. Following the early panning sessions, designs (character, costume, etc) are then created. Designs are obviously an important factor in creating a good anime. Character designers either have the task of simplifying manga/illustration designs so that they are suitable for animation, or, in the case of an original anime, coming up with a new set of characters based on descriptions from the director/producers. Character designers often continue to advise animation directors on corrections to animation that should be made to stay close to their character models.

Production

The first step is to write the episode scripts. Following the episodes synopsis/plans, the full scripts are written, by either one person for the whole series or by several different writers based on the outlines from the overall script supervisor (staff credit: series composition). With this anime we are funding I have already prepared a script. The scripts are reviewed by the director, producers, and potentially the author of the original work before being finalized (after 3 or 4 drafts, often). The episode director, supervised by the overall director then takes this backbone of the episode and must plan out how it will actually look on screen. While the director has the final say and is involved at production meetings, the episode director has the most hands-on involvement in developing the episode. This stage is expressed as a storyboard (a visual script), and the storyboard marks the beginning of actual animation production.

Storyboarding

Often the storyboard is created by the director, this means an episode is truly the vision of that director. But usually, mainly in TV-anime, separate storyboarders are used to actually draw them. This is because storyboards usually take around 3 weeks to do for a normal length TV-anime episode. Art meetings and production meetings are held with the episode director, series director and other staff about the episode should look. Storyboards are drawn on A-4 paper (occasionally) and contain most of the vital building blocks of an anime – the cut numbers, actor movements, camera movements such as zooming or panning, the dialogue (taken from the screenplay) and the length of each shot (or cut) in terms of seconds and frames (which ill explain later). Because the number of drawings available for an episode is often fixed for the sake of budget management, the number of frames is also carefully considered in the storyboards. The storyboards are roughly-drawn and are really the core stage of deciding how an anime will play out. Cuts refer to a single shot of the camera and an average TV-anime episode will usually contain around 300 cuts. More cuts don’t necessarily imply a better quality episode, but it will generally mean more work for the director/storyboarder.

Layouts

The layout process, which marks the beginning of art production. In simple terms, developing a layout is about positioning the cels that will be used in the cut and the background art that will be needed, giving the definitive blueprint for how the final shot will look. The cuts are drawn up to the same size as the animation paper and the details of cel placement, precise descriptions of camera movement, and other decisions are included. In collaboration with the director, and possibly producers, the senior animators draw the layouts (or sometimes staff are specifically credited with layout drawings) and the shots are called about where the cels/characters are going to be situated and the way a cut is going to be framed. The basic structure of the background art is drawn in (ie. a tree here, a mountain there), and elements of the storyboard are expressed on the layout to help describe the cut. Sometimes multiple stages of the storyboard can be expressed on a single layout drawing as long as it isn’t too confusing. Cels are shaded in warm colours, backgrounds are shaded in cool colours.

After being approved by the director, these layouts are then duplicated and given to the background department (who get the originals), and the key animators. The art director and assistants work on painting the background artwork based on the rough drawings of the layouts while the rest of the production process continues concurrently.

Now the form of each cut has been decided – the positions of characters, the setting, what they’re going to do, and how the shot is going to be captured (camera angle, zooming and panning). But one of the most expressive and vital parts of production remains: the animation!

Animation

To its credit, anime is one of the few places left that you can still find ‘traditional animation’. I think there has been some confusion among many anime fans about just how digital anime production is, allow me to clarify: commercial, mainstream anime is still fundamentally hand-drawn, and that’s why it remains such a great artistic medium! Traditional animation allows for more individuality to be expressed. Sure, computers do come into it in a large way (and I’ll explain that a bit later), but the crucial thing is that the frames are still initially drawn by hand, and no in-between animation is simulated by a computer. There are some animators who draw 2D animation directly onto computer, but in anime this is largely restricted to in solo animation productions rather than commercial anime. The industry prefers this because the animators are generally more comfortable and able with this method, and it allows easier checking and correction of frames under sometimes tight schedules. Here’s how the animation is done:

Key Animation

Based on the storyboard, the key animators start work, creating the animation drawings. They are assigned a certain number of different cuts by the person in charge of key animation. Key animators draw the essential frames that mark a distinct position or expression of a cel/character. For example, a character starting to kick someone as one key frame, and then the kick landing as the second key frame (if it’s a fast kick!). In other words, they draw the structure of the animation. The number of frames that a key animator draws for a movement will depend upon the intentions of the key animator and the nature of the cut, with time, and budget constraints considered. These drawings also include lines which direct where shading will occur. Around 20 key animators can be working on a single episode of anime, each in charge of a separate part (sometimes several cuts). Although it’s already decided what a movement will be, it is up to the key animator to express that as animation. That is why a talented and hard-working key animator can really steal the show, going well beyond the requirements of the storyboard and imbuing a scene with their own style. Some animators get the opportunity to deviate from storyboards as well.

Animation Director

This is one staff role that I suspect many anime fans haven’t learned about, because it’s not very self-explanatory. The animation director’s key role isn’t to ‘direct the animation’ per se (although they have varying levels of input depending on the person, studio and schedule). Their position is basically about consistency. They check all the key frames being created for an episode and make corrections where necessary so that the drawings are as close to the models for the series as possible. In some cases, they may have to redraw entire frames, or make adjustments to timing and movement (mostly, this happens for OVAs and movies). They are one of the four core staff positions for an episode (screenplay, episode director, storyboard, animation director). Key frames may also be checked by the episode director.

Animation directors tend to be more experienced animators and are paid more for the role. However, it is their responsibility if things go wrong with the animation, making it a potentially very stressful job, especially under time pressure. Often, an episode of anime will have more the one animation director, and this can be a sign of scheduling problems, with more people needed to complete the episode satisfactorily and on time, or even a sign of many poor drawings needing correction. It can also be because animation directors are being used to their specialties (ie. an animation director brought on to handle a mecha sequence, or to handle drawings of animals), or an indication that it was a difficult and demanding episode with a lot of drawings.

Other than the episode animation director, anime nowadays have an overall animation director (generally also the character designer), who often works alongside episode animation directors to keep the character models consistent throughout the entire show. They generally focus on the faces of characters. Some series place less importance on this, or, as was the case with Noein, didn’t use a series animation director at all!

In-Between Animation

We have our approved key-frames for a piece of animation, but now to complete the animation, so that it moves fluidly, more drawings have to be completed to go between the key frames. This is called in-between animation. In-between animation is handled by less experienced animators, and is very often outsourced (largely to Korea). In-between animation is paid more poorly than key animation, and is usually only a temporary position in an animator’s career. You could describe this as grunt work, because in-between animators don’t have a chance to imbue their work with individuality. They receive (particularly when it’s oursourced), clear instructions from the key animator about what the in-between animation should do, and simply fill in the gaps with drawings. They also have the task of neatly tracing the key frames. The in-between frames are also checked/corrected if need be. With the drawings from the key animators and in-betweeners combined, you have the ‘animation’ that goes into an anime!

Generally, anime on TV will be animated at 2:s, which means 1 drawing lasts for two frames (equating to 12 drawings per second), but sometimes animation is done at 1:s (24 frames every second) or 3:s. If every second of an anime was animated at even 2:s that would involve using around 15000 drawings for an episode! In reality, because many shots have cels as static, or because many scenes don’t necessarily require fluid movement, the average anime will have around 3000 frames/drawings. That’s still a lot of drawings! Often (especially lately), directors or producers will boast that their anime has “10,000 drawings for an episode!” or something to that effect, which is fairly impressive but doesn’t necessarily mean the episode is better. For example, apparently the first episode of Evangelion used only 700 animation frames, while Angel Beats used around 11,000 in episode one! A good director can work wonders with fewer frames using interesting scene compositions and shortcuts. Often, directors or studios will manage their budget by putting a limit on the number of drawings that can go into a single episode.

Another core factor is the trade-off between detailed, consistent designs and more fluid animation. You can see how faster animation drastically increases the number of drawings required, and sticking to detailed character models can be expensive and time-consuming. Fluid animation is easier to do with simpler designs OR if the requirements for consistency are less strict. With fairly tight budgets, the anime medium has long been a struggle to balance these issues with shortcuts and compromises. This truth is the basis for a lot of attack on anime from Western animation fans, but the fact is, with skilled enough animators and the right project you can have your cake and eat it too. Anime has certainly produced some of the most detailed AND fluid animation sequences you’ll be able to find.

Compositing/Filming

It is commonplace for the frames to be completed on a computer. After they are drawn and checked, they are digitized. Once they are on the computer, they are painted with a specified color palette by painting staff (generally a low paid job). They use the shading lines drawn by the key animators to do the shading colours. This digital equivalent of the ‘ink & paint’ stage of production, which used to be done by hand, has allowed some more interesting visual styles to come through in the colouring, such as the use of gradient shading or even textures. These would have been too difficult to do back in the day. It has also saved considerable time and money in the process. These become the final “cels” that go into the animation.

Once all the frames are coloured and finished, they can be processed as animation using a specialized software package. “RETAS! PRO” is used for approximately 90% of anime currently aired in Japan (for drawing sometimes too)! Before the use of digital ‘cels’ (digicels), drawings (printed onto cels) were actually filmed over backgrounds. Now, cuts are completed digitally, and the background art can be added on the computer. Initially, when digicel was first being picked up by studios (around about 2000), it had real problems matching the fineness of detail in hand-drawn and painted cels. But nowadays, anime studios have really perfected the digital cel, giving us anime with just as much detail and more vibrant coloring. The digicel age has now streamlined the production process such that repeated cels and clip/recap episodes are basically a thing of the past. Some still prefer the rougher look of pre-2000, but I’ve certainly moved on. While it doesn’t use actual film, the compositing process of adding background art and capturing the animation digitally is still referred to as “filming”. The CG characters and machines are also generally added to the composition during the filming stage. The use of 3DCG is also now common-place in anime now for mechanical things, like mecha, cars, or even background characters. Its role is expanding and becoming less and less intrusive. During compositing, the effects are also applied to the cuts. Effects! This might sound like a trivial thing when you’re talking about anime, but it can be a vital component of the visual style of a series because it incorporates basic things like ambient lighting, flare, backlight, the glint on a sword, blur, and many other things integral to giving depth and atmosphere to 2D drawings. Then there’s all the flashy things you’d usually think of when someone mentions special FX – magical attacks, explosions and the like. These are typically hand-drawn but then rendered with effect CG for their glow/shine. These effects can be simply added to the compositions using digital masking. The ease of this step now has resulted in one of the biggest distinctions between anime a decade ago and the anime of today.

In short, the digital age of anime (in most cases) has meant several things: physically filming cels is replaced by computer-based composition of the hand-drawn frames/art, painting no longer has to be done by hand, and the more effective integration of CG and digital effects. All of these things have saved time and money, so that TV-anime now use many more drawings and don’t need to recycle cels or have clip/flashback episodes. Below they are turning a manga into an anime.

After compositing is completed for all the cuts, they have to be to the timing required for broadcast, so that the episode doesn’t lag overtime. With the completion of the editing step, the episode moves out of production and into post-production. I won’t go into much detail on this, but it essentially encompasses adding sound (dubbing), both the music and the voice recordings, and final editing (cutting the episode with space for advertisements). Visual effects may also be added at this late stage too.

The Website

I have enlisted the service of expert web developers to create the best website for our customers .The website (RockSteady.TV) we are making will have a homepage that shows 20 pages of the book Rock Steady each week and a comment section below it. The book that inspired the Website is displayed below. There will be a forum. Users can create accounts, sign in and have their own profile page . There will be an ecommerce shop where users can purchase books or other merchandise. There will also be a bulletin board where our staff can tell our users about new features. There will be an admin page where the admin can control the comments section, forum posts, upload new pages of the manga, and add new merchandise. We will build a fully automated manga reader/viewer/anime/video/professional anime / video /streaming / movies / dramas website, that will allow you to upload anime/videos/Manga or we can do it for you so you don’t have to add anime/video/manga and contents manually. With our membership system we offer free accounts and premium accounts. I want to make it clear that your spending a onetime fee of $2.99 to exclusively read the Rock Steady books on the website the other manga and anime shown on the website is free to view.

Rewards

The Application -The type of App we are building is for Android and Apple IOS devices. Im making an app for the release of the anime "Rock Steady" which is due to debut in March. What we're building is an app known as a “basic” app. The app we are building is based off of our website RockSteady.TV. Once we integrate the website into an app users will be able to read and watch anime in the click of an app. The RockSteady book will be sold on the website which is linked to the app. So if people were to go onto the app they would be able to check out all of the things they can buy and if they want they can be redirected from a location within the app to another location to read or watch anime.

Rewards

Free Ebooks

Free ebook download

Thank you for reading!