Fate Saga

Merry Christmas from Fate Saga!

2016-12-25T01:45:00.000-05:00

A very Merry Christmas from Fate Saga! Cain, Larkspur, Guile, Rori and Seiron dressed for the cold weather and going on a (rather low) flight. Seiron wouldn't be able to carry their combined weight for too long, so he's not staying too high above the tree tops. I couldn't fit everyone on his back and so I figured Rori or Guile would be most likely to be hanging off in a different way (neither Cain nor Larkspur would be crazy enough to volunteer for it).

I hope you like it! Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas, from Fate Saga!

2015-12-25T00:42:00.002-05:00

Cyrus wishes you a very fiery Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

2014-12-25T00:58:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas, from Fate Saga!

Fate Saga in Watercolors

2014-09-28T21:55:00.002-04:00

Hi everyone! In this post I'm going to be talking about a new skill I've been developing - watercolors. I've always been more of a digital artist rather than a traditional one (though, of course, the principles of design are the same in both areas and all media is just that - tools for the artist to wield. But I must admit that digital is a much more forgiving media, thanks to that delightful Command+Z...or Alt+Z I believe for you Windows user) but I've always wanted to get more involved with painting and watercolors, especially. I've always been too busy to really try and pick it up, but necessity is the mother of invention and I recently received a freelance project that the client wanted done in watercolors. The style could be digitally-created faux watercolors, but I figured now was the time to try the real thing.

Of course, any time I'm trying something new or demonstrating something for class and need something to test on, I always bring in Fate Saga. It's my baby, after all, and it allows me to create new work for my story while fulfilling my need to practice. So above I have a watercolor painting of Cain Strata, and below are a sweet image of Seiron and Rori. These were drawn on 12x6in watercolor paper, and resized to 11x6in as a printed large postcard size for conventions.

What I really like about watercolors is how vibrant they are. One thing I've been wanting to try with Fate Saga is try making the characters and overall color scheme more bright and saturated. The story is meant for 6-12 year olds - probably leaning more towards the higher age of the spectrum, but I've been wanting to adjust my style towards making them just a little more cartoony (just to give them more expression and dynamism!) and bright (I think my older work tends to get a little muddy). I really like how the watercolors bring out more, well, color to the pieces and will continue to practice with it.

I hope you like them!

By the way - if any of you watercolor savvy people have any advice on what I can do to improve my painting, please let me know! I'm still very new to the medium!

Upcoming 2014 Conventions and Updates

2014-07-22T12:23:00.000-04:00

Hey guys! During the summer, Fate Saga will be attending three more conventions (as of right now) during Summer 2014:

Anime Festival Orlando
This weekend, July 25-27, 2014
Orlando, FL

Tampa Comic Con
August 1-3, 2014
Tampa, FL

Fanboy Expo
September 12-14, 2014
Tampa, FL

I'm thinking of changing Guile's eyes to brown. It's a minor adjustment, but having two blonde, blue eyed characters might mistakenly make them appear related. I'm sure you can tell who the two Extroverts are.

I will also be going to DragonCon 2014, but I won't have a table there. This will be my first time attending such a huge convention - my understanding is that it spans over 4 hotels! - and it's during the school year. In order to have an art table at a large convention like that, you have to be able to be there from the morning of its first day, and break down at the end of the last day. DragonCon is too far away and during school, but nonetheless I look forward to checking it out!

Fate Saga will also attending MegaCon 2015! That's a convention whose art tables get filled up quickly, so I reserved one as soon as they were open. When the event comes closer, I'll put up a seating chart to point out where I'll be.

Other than the conventions, updates for Fate Saga have been slow. Work has to be my main priority, while Fate Saga is my prized pet project that I work on whenever I have free time. I've been mostly working on tightening the plot for future seasons and, consequently, coming back to the first season to update the episodes. There's not much updates that I can post here on the blog for the sake of spoilers, but rest assured that the story is still alive and continuing to develop.

Fate Saga will be at Omni Expo 2014 This Weekend!

2014-05-21T11:19:00.001-04:00

Hello everyone! I hope any students and teachers are starting (or getting ready to start) a productive and relaxing summer. I've taken this short time to preparing for this summer's conventions, and now my first con of the summer is approaching - Omni Expo at Orlando, FL.

I will have an art table there located at table 17. And amongst my usual wares I will be selling Fate Saga merchandise and commissions. I hope to see you there!

Above are some Fate Saga warm up sketches.

Happy Mother's Day!

2014-05-12T23:42:00.001-04:00

Happy (belated) Mother's Day! I know I'm a day late but late is better than never, right? I like to try and get in a holiday Fate Saga drawing when I can, and who else would be a better candidate for a Mother's Day image than the only major character who is a mother? Rori may not be Guile's mum by blood, but she's the closest to one that he's got.

It was an interesting challenge to draw Rori looking genuinely happy/laughing while still keeping her on model/in character. The woman hardly ever smiles, and when she does it's usually cynical. Guile's supposed to be about 3 or so in this picture. I'm not sure if he's too small since Rori's a small lady (about 5'1-ish) to begin with.

I hope you like it!

Fate Saga Updates and Tofugu Animated Short Film

2014-05-07T09:47:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone! As readers of this blog may know this past year has been pretty heavy work-wise. On a good note, I've had several major animated freelance projects, and I'm finishing up my first year at the University of South Florida and third year at the University of Tampa. While it hasn't given me much time to work on my own projects, it has really helped give me more experience and networking contacts both of which will only be a help to Fate Saga in the future. As my pet project, Fate Saga is always on my mind, and with the summer should open up time for more frequent updates.

With summer comes convention season, and I will be attending some new local cons. The ones currently on the list are:
Omni Expo
Fanboy Expo
Tampa Bay Comic Con

I will add any additional conventions to the list as I sign up for them. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend Florida Supercon this year, but I am excited to see what these new conventions will be like. I hope to see you there!

Finally, I wanted to take the opportunity to promote a fun and sassy short film, Tofugu, created by a brilliant young lady, Rina Walker, for my Beginning Animation class. She made every part of this project, from concepts to voice overs and animation, in the span of about 6 weeks (which, for those who may be familiar with the animation production process, is an insane amount of work in such a short amount of time). As a teacher, it's a joy to see the creativity and work that comes from my students. Please feel free to check it out!

Happy Easter!

2014-04-20T14:59:00.001-04:00

Happy Easter from the Villains of Fate Saga! With finals coming up (and just this whole semester in general) I haven't had much time but I wanted to do something cute, simple, cartoony and fun for Easter! Credit to my pal Tara Olding for the bunny ears idea, and credit to the amazing Jess and Tracy (co-creators of Taffetas) because it was their adorably awesome Laryngitis comic that inspired me to try simplifying the cast into basic shapes and see how much fun they can be to work with. I'm nowhere as good at it as they are, but on occasions like this it's fun to give it a try!

Vektor can bring feng shui to any room.

Cyrus Plushie Illustration Birthday Gift by Jay Miller!

2014-03-19T17:08:00.001-04:00

March 6th was my 30th birthday, and this adorable little Cyrus plushie drawing was an unexpected and wonderful gift from the awesomely talented Jay Miller! Check out this image and his other fantastic words on his DeviantART account!

Thanks so much, Jay!!

Lukas Simple Puppet Walk

2014-03-13T00:42:00.000-04:00

Last semester, for my Animation class I had put together a Lukas puppet as a demonstration on how a 2D puppet is constructed, and how to draw one out from a base sketch. This semester, I'm going to provide the Lukas puppet along with other puppets I've made for the students to experiment with. However, before I handed it over, I wanted to do a short test on my own to ensure the puppet's functionality. Especially since Lukas is one of the more complicated characters (having a flexible neck, tail, lab coat, frills, etc. It's more complex than some of the more base rigs they'll have a chance to experiment with).

His neck is done with frame-by-frame animation, but everything else is puppeted. He has an alternate frill (where it's spread out in his 'fear' or 'aggressive' state) and alternate eyes (wide eyes, shut, narrow). Coming up, I may do a dialogue test which will stretch the bounds of the puppet and use alternate parts, but for now I wanted to test its base functionality.

And, of course, since there was a need to create and animate a puppet, I just had to do one for Fate Saga. It's great to see Lukas move for the first time!

Fate Saga Updates and Lukas Puppet Design

2014-01-25T15:14:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone!

I wanted to give a brief update to Fate Saga, as well as upload images from a puppet I worked on last semester for the University of South Florida.

Seiron and Rori

What's Been Happening?
First off, though the updates here have been slow, Fate Saga is still active. Like last semester, I am teaching two classes at the University of Tampa, and one class for the University of South Florida. They're both great universities and I am excited to continue working with them. After this semester, I will have been teaching at the University of Tampa for three years, and the University of South Florida for one year. Between classes and some major freelance projects I've been on (including a motion comic for Desura.com's ModDB, IndieDB and SlideDB awards!), I haven't had time to put together updates for Fate Saga.

Unfortunately, with the amount of Freelance and school work I still have on my plate, I can't commit to regular updates for Fate Saga at this time. That being said, please be assured that the project is very much alive and continues to move along. I will continue to update the blog as often as I can, so please continue to check back!

Lukas Puppet Design
Last semester, at USF I taught Computer Animation (which is what I am also teaching this semester). Their final is to create, rig and animate a 2D puppet. For my class demonstration, I used Fate Saga's creepy little lizard, Lukas. Fate Saga ultimately would be more likely to use general frame-by-frame animation rather than puppets, but since I had to create a puppet for the class I figure why not use a FS character? It wouldn't hurt to see if perhaps puppets could be used to simplify some of the smaller scenes, should it come up?

Above is a breakdown of what I go through when designing a puppet.

First, I start off with a base sketch of the character, then break it down into segments. The third image (on the bottom left) is the same as the second, except that Lukas' frills are open. If the character has wings, frills, or anything that would require a separate part for a separate pose, the third image is where I'd add the design of those pieces (since I'll need the rest of the puppet sketched and segmented out both for a sense of scale, but also for a sense of design. I have to make sure that the pieces intersect properly.

Coming up some time in the future, I'm going to do a puppet animation test with him to one of the fantastic Scott Lambright Smith's auditions. I'm leaning towards referencing an old animation rough test I did last year, of Lukas interacting with an injured (and irritated) Bianca.

Happy Holidays from Fate Saga!

2013-12-25T15:37:00.002-05:00

Drax isn't hanging out here because he's not about to sit around a campfire singing Christmas Carols in freezing weather!

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all! For this year's Fate Saga art, I decided to go back to traditional mediums because I had been wanting to play around more with it. Both drawings were sketched out with non photo blue pencil (which really isn't all that non-photo...), inked with Micron pens and colored with Prismacolor Colored Pencils.

I almost always go with Digital Mediums because it's so much more forgiving, but despite the many mistakes prevalent it was still a lot of fun to do. I hope you like them!!

With college ending for Winter Break and the immense Freelance Project reaching the end, I can finally resume Fate Saga on a semi-regular basis. More on Fate Saga's post schedule and new updates coming soon!

It's slightly obvious here that Bianca's the only one who sees the outside world on a regular basis. Not that Vektor, Armand and Lukas have never seen snow before, but they're usually holed up in the labs. Armand is also 5'10 tall which is a testament to how insanely tall Bianca and Vektor are. Bianca is taller than Cain when she wears heels.

Sleep is for the Weak

2013-10-20T21:06:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone!

This semester has been pretty crazy, with the new classes I've been teaching along with a large freelance gig I'm working on concurrently. It's been a blast so far, and the new classes are great! Unfortunately, I haven't had as much consecutive time to dedicate to Fate Saga, so for now I don't have any big updates for it.

For the duration of this semester, this blog will have to slow down to more infrequent updates. There will still be updates when I can make them, and the blog will resume regular updates around the end of the year, once classes are done for the semester.

On a good note, having new classes to teach this semester meant spending more time developing and learning in areas that I knew functionally for work, but could always use more thorough knowledge in. I also went to the Kelby "Adobe Photoshop Creativity Tour," have been studying DVD's on Blending Modes and Animation Principals, received a free, newly released textbook on Acting Performance for Animators (which I'll review some time in a future post) and have generally been absorbing so much relevant information. Once things slow down here and I get a chance to absorb everything I've been researching outside of a class environment, I know this is going to benefit Fate Saga in a tremendous way.

For now, here is a fun sketch of Malachi and Bianca. They are both professors of a School of Magic in Duero, so they (well, Malachi since he's the more studious of the two) know sleep deprivation!

Warm Up Sketches on Manga Studio

2013-10-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Warm down sketch of Cain and Larkspur about to share a kiss

Lately, in between teaching classes and my freelance work, I've been experimenting with Manga Studio and getting used to the sketching, inks and tones. It's a really nice program and I've really grown to like it! I haven't had a lot of time to do much with Manga Studio, but I wanted to share some warm-down sketches I did this past weekend. They're pretty rough, but a lot of fun to do!

This is a warm down sketch of Cain and Rori being forced to act friendly towards each other. Cain's saying something to a character off screen, and Rori is biting her tongue, to keep from making a snide remark.

Manga Studio Test: Bianca

2013-09-22T19:11:00.001-04:00

So about a two weeks ago, Tracy showed me a program that I had heard about, but never used called Manga Studio. There was a huge sale on their 4EX software and, after hearing rave reviews from her regarding how much this program speeds up the inking process, I had to give it a go. A good sale and a program that can speed production? Worth a shot!

Anyway, I do have to say I agree with her. Inking on here is a blast. I'm still getting the hang of the pen brushes, tones, pencils and the overall layout of the work space, but I can see why people like it. For Bianca, I used School Brush, and several grey and white tones. For the background, I was trying to get a fiery/magic-y pattern going. I still have a ways to go before I get used to using tones appropriately. Right now I'm not sure when's a good time to use any of the graphicy tones, like dots and lines and such. I'm sure that'll come with practice.

For now, enjoy some screen-toned comic-panel practice Bianca!

Don't Touch Him

2013-09-08T22:24:00.001-04:00

By Dana Corrigan

Seiron is a very gentle giant, but he is also very protective. If an opponent hurts anyone he cares for, that is when you will see the beastial nature inside of him. But unlike Rori, Seiron never flies into an uncontrolled rage. If he does get feral and tear up an opponent, he will never willingly turn on his allies (then again, if one grabs his shoulder while he's fighting and he doesn't know who it is, or that it's an ally, then that's a different story.)

This sketch isn't from any scene in particular, though I could see something like this happening. It helps to have a big, powerful, well-dressed Gargoyle friend.

OC Sketch X-Change: Our Hearts are Together

2013-09-03T19:23:00.001-04:00

I've mentioned before that I am part of an OC Art-Xchange group on DeviantART, and this was the gorgeous entry I was lucky enough to receive by the exceptionally talented Brianna Alexander!! Here is a link to the original post on DeviantART. As you can see here, the prompt is love between two characters (it didn't have to be romantic love, but most of us opted for it. MMmmm)

I love the posing of both characters, and especially how schmoozing Cain is, all up on Larkspur. He enjoys a little desert with his music! Another aspect I really like about it is how great Brianna is with different character bodytypes. This is prevalent not only here, with a big broad man and a thin, rail-ish girl, but also in her other work.

Thanks so much, Brianna! I love it!

My entry was with Mayocat's characters, Juno and Maurice.

Busy Times Ahead!

2013-08-26T00:00:00.000-04:00

This adorable little frolicking Lukas is courtesy of the amazing Jay Miller, from the OC Art-XChange group's June entry. The topic was "Chibi" and boy did he make Fate Saga's eccentric scientist absolutely adorable!!

Hi everyone! I wanted to give you the heads up that things have been pretty busy this past month, and are going to be even busier here for the next few weeks. School is starting, and this semester I will be teaching 3 different classes, two subjects of which I'll be teaching for the first time! Which means double the syllabi, class preparation, lectures, assignments to put together and students to grade. In preparation for these classes, I'm not going to have much time to post new content here. However, that does not mean that the once-a-week posting date will change. Instead, I will be posting guest art, from commissions and art trades that I've done throughout the summer for the OC Art-XChange group, and also with friends and colleagues from conventions. I may also post some sketches and works-in-progress for some of the art I'm working on for Fate Saga.

If you would like to have your art featured, feel free to send me an email at dana_corrigan@ymail.com or through DeviantART!

Anime Festival Orlando 2013

2013-08-19T00:34:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone and welcome any newcomers to Fate Saga! I just got back from AFO 2013. This year it was moved to a new location - the Renaissance Orlando at Sea World. Literally if you stepped outside of the hotel, you could see one of the theme park's rollercoaster.

The convention itself was a little slow, but overall was a great time! I got to see some amazing artists there including Kitsune Steele, Emily Boverie, Christa Deason and Brittany Cruz, some I know from previous conventions - when you frequent the same conventions, you tend to find some of the same people, which is great because we eventually all get to know each other. I also got to meet Jennifer Hale and Ali Hillis, the voices behind female Commander Shepard and Liara T'soni from Mass Effect, respectively (as well as the voices behind many other characters from both television and video games). They were both incredibly nice! Ali Hillis even runs a dog shelter. She and I went soccer mom mode and showed each other pictures of our dogs.

This is the last convention for Fate Saga, for the summer. I may hit more towards the end of the year. If that happens, I will let you know in a future update! For now, thank you for checking out Fate Saga, and a big welcome to anyone who may be a new visitor! If you like what you see here, please like us on Facebook, which is located along the right side column of this blog!

Fate Saga: First episode concept art: test screen shot, by Dana Corrigan

Swimsuit Bianca Art XChange, by Hookyland

2013-08-12T00:00:00.000-04:00

As some of you may know, I am part of a an art group called the OC Art-X-Change. Each month we have the option to enter a drawing and get a randomly chosen original character to draw. There are regular art exchanges, where they have to be full colored, and sketch exchanges, where they can be rougher. This was one of the sketch exchanges. Hookyland ended up getting Bianca, and I love love love what she did with the style. Her drawing style really suits Bianca, and I love how she's strong and curvy, with a more natural body type.

I in turn received FrayZhaun, who belongs to Mycury-Art. Below is my part of the art trade:

The sketch exchange's prompt was to draw them in a swimsuit for the summer, so Fray's sporting some swanky swimming trunks and chilling out by the edge of the pool. He seems like a laid back kind of guy, so I wanted to draw him doing something relaxing. He was a lot of fun to draw!

Fanboy Expo 2013

2013-08-05T12:33:00.000-04:00

Larkspur, by Shawn Harbin

I went for one day to Fanboy Expo 2013 with a close friend of mine, to check out the convention. I didn't have an art table for this convention, as I wanted to see how big the event was, and what it was like. It was pretty small, but still pretty impressive for a first year. It was fun meeting some of the celebrities, such as the wrestling announcer Jerry "The King" Lawler and the voice actor Rodger Bumpass, who brings Squidward to live in Spongebob Squarepants, not to mention Dr. Light in Teen Titans and other characters.

One of the special guests is a pal of mine and creator of the comic series, The Dungeon - Shawn Harbin. I met him at Megacon a few years ago, and he's a swell guy. The Dungeon is his pet project and beloved creation, just as Fate Saga is to me. He already have several comic issues complete. While we were at Fanboy Expo, we did an art trade. I drew The Dungeon's Lace Wings and Brahmabull, and he drew Fate Saga's Larkspur!

Just as a reminder, Fate Saga will be set up in the artist alley in Orlando, Florida for Anime Festival Orlando, on August 16-18. I look forward to seeing you there!

Metrocon 2013

2013-07-28T23:16:00.000-04:00

Guile and Rori Art Trade, by Dean Grayson.

This weekend I went to Metrocon in downtown Tampa, Florida. I didn't have an art table, this time, so I used it as an opportunity for both networking and just meet people and have fun. I had the pleasure of meeting Phil LaMarr (Jack from Samurai Jack), Dante Basco (Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender), D.C. Douglas (Legion, from Mass Effect. We've met before but he's an awesome guy to talk to), Scott McNeil (Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z, Wolverine from X-Men Evolution and many, many more. We've also met before, as he frequents anime conventions in Florida. He's one of the funniest and nicest people you could ever meet at a convention), Brittney Karbowski (Black Star, from Soul Eater) and Janet Varney (Korra, from The Legend of Korra).

They were all incredibly nice and with a great sense of humor. Their panels were a lot of fun and they were so kind in person! Janet Varney especially was very sweet, and she has a podcast I'd like to promote on her behalf. It's called the JV club, and on it she interviews women actresses and voice actresses about what their teenage years were like. You can check it out, here!

Also, at every convention I usually commission an artist and, if the option presents itself, do an art trade. I commissioned Doug Smith, the guest artist at Metrocon, for a Fate Saga character of his choice. He chose Cain, the main hero. The image is featured below. I love how knightly and manly he came out - he was a good match stylistically for Doug. The shading also came out nicely!

I also had the absolute pleasure of art trading with Dean Grayson, who had a table at the artist alley. We each got to choose a character from each other's stories - mine being Fate Saga and his being Relic Chasers, his web comic that will be starting in January 2014. His image is featured on the top. He decided on Guile and Rori, and I absolutely love how sweet they are in this image. Such a warm atmosphere!

This coming weekend I will be going to Fanboy Expo 2013, also in Tampa, Florida. I don't have an art table there, but I do have one next month at Anime Festival Orlando! If you will be there, be sure to stop by!

Noble Cain Commission, by Doug Smith

Switch Around Meme

2013-07-22T02:08:00.000-04:00

I heard about this meme from my pal, Jay Miller, and was interested in trying it out! My buddies and creators of The Taffetas, Jess and Tracy were kind enough to humor me in trying this art exercise! We all had a great deal of fun with it, and it's so interesting to see how our styles influence the image! I can see a little of each of us, in each image.

The way the meme works is that we draw each other's characters, ink our own, then color the one we haven't touched yet. Each panel is labeled with the one who worked on it!

Lukas belongs to Fate Saga, Sapphire belongs to The Taffetas and the cutest little Pancake Fox belongs to Jess!

Supercon 2013 and Blog Updates

2013-07-15T00:00:00.000-04:00

Over the July 4th weekend, I was in Miami, Florida for Supercon. First off, a big welcome to our new viewers! Feel free to stick around and check out the blog. If you like what you see, please Like us on Facebook and follow our group on DeviantART!

For those who may be new - Fate Saga is a pitch project for an original animated series. I have been developing the story and characters for a long time, and this blog was originally created when I was working on my MFA Thesis in graduate school. Thus far, we have pitched to Warner Brothers, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon and have overall had positive reactions. We have also had the honor of recruiting some fantastic voice actors for the project, including Johnny Yong Bosch, Steve Blum, Grey DeLisle, Keith David (conditionally), Kevin Schon, Scott Smith, Casey Mongillo, Celia Sullivan and Ashley Sahler,

On this production blog, you will find animated trailers, voice tests, information on our voice actors and crew, storyboards, animatics, character designs, sketches, fan art, the step-by-step process of some of Fate Saga's illustrations, general merchandise and more!

As for Supercon, the convention went very well! It was exciting to see so many new people, especially those who were from a different area and who weren't familiar with Fate Saga or me. Fate Saga received a lot of interest, which was wonderful!

There are also a few new updates to the blog. I am working to try and unite the different social media outlets, including DeviantART, Tumblr, YouTube and Facebook, to make it easier to navigate to them from this blog. Along the right side column, a link to DeviantART and YouTube have been added. Once the Tumblr page is set up, that will also be included.

Currently, the next convention Fate Saga will be set up at is Anime Festival Orlando 2013. More information about it will come as we get closer to the event. I hope to see you there!

Armand versus Cyrus commission I purchased from Nathaniel Perry, at Miami Supercon. He did an a-maze-ing job with it! I always like to grab a commission when I go to a convention, and when I saw his work I knew I had to commission him for Fate Saga. I had given him the option to draw any two characters from the story and he chose Armand and Cyrus. I love the motion, and how fitting their facial expressions are to the characters.