Dear Friend - An Arcane Story by AXL99 [Story Reel] 

stopp let me dream 😭😭

In fact there is a great chance for a "happy ending" - just not how we imagine it. The two sisters have a chance to act differently than their father figures (Vander and Silco) so yeah, I think it will be a middle point between the three!! (Caitlyn, Vi and Jinx)

Let me dream

No, cause why was I just thinking that 😂😊

I'm very happy this film made you feel this way, I'm glad you enjoyed it this much!

FR

Aggressively agree

I know its only been 7 months but this needs millions of views

It's not over yet....

Partly why I made this to begin with. I had so many questions left over after the show that I dunno if they'll ever answer. And I just know s2's gonna hurt us again. But that's what fan projects are for, so thanks for stopping by and giving this film a chance :D

Even in season one I was surprised Caitlyn was even able to keep up with Vi with a huge head start. I thought it appropriate Caitlyn would eventually learn how to move efficiently through Zaun. I liked how Fortiche made sure every character was extremely distinct in their own right so these little nuances had to be consistent in my drawings. Thank you very much for giving this film a chance~!

I didnt even notice the difference in nose shape! This animatic is really detailed

My sincerest thanks that you felt this way about that part of the film, because even if it doesn't happen in the show, the scene still resonated somewhere and that matters a lot to me. I've been thinking a lot about how Amanda Overton described the next season and it's somewhat influenced the path I took to complete this film.

Thank you very much! This was a labour of love from all parties involved!

TBSkyen!! Thank you so very much! I am both humbled and enthused a fellow animation nerd like yourself had enjoyed this film~

Thank you very much for noticing that little detail!

​@@aXL99-tvThank you and everyone involved for making this!! I love to analyse animatics and animations, as I know a lot of love and care is often put into them!

Back in animation school, our teachers were Disney and Don Bluth stans who also liked everything coming out of Gobelins so the standards for quality were super high - like everything had to have a filmic cinematic quality to it and not at all feel like it was made for tv. The cognitive load is kind of a lot so younger me focused on telling a story in the most economical way possible and layer stylization choices with framing and editing on top. Pacing was something I had to feel out more over time when I used to do live action commercials and music videos. The crazy part is the way this film is boarded is it's a very unsustainable way of doing storyboards as a whole as it's exactly what places like Disney and Pixar and Fortiche would do - they have the time and budget. TV and other streaming projects generally don't. So try to take things easy when you're doing story reels! Animatics are polished storyboards for the big wigs. Overanimating poses in storyboards is too much work and you'd generally want your animators to be able to have some wiggle room to build on top of the performance in your boards - however you choose to negotiate the division of work with them. All the best in your animatic endeavors!

@@aXL99-tv thanks so much for the reply, I really appreciate the feedback. I can definitely see how maintaining this level of quality would be draining, especially in an environment like TV where it’s all really fast paced work. Im currently looking to get a job in storyboarding so I can get some experience working in a real pipeline. So I’ll definitely keep your advice in mind when building my portfolio. Anime is what got me interested in doing this in the first place so Id love to eventually work on a tv show like Arcane or Avatar that use a more cinematic language. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be a whole lot of shows in america with that kind of focus so it might serve me to go into film, Im not really sure. But eventually I’d love to try making my own show just for RU-vid or something. There’s a story Ive been working on for years that I haven’t really known what format to tell it in. I’m only a one person team, so I don’t intend to fully animate things. And despite my love for movement, I think I’ll likely have to sacrifice a lot of it for time and effort’s sake. I feel less bad about that looking at your work tho, as well as other storyboarders I see online. By framing things well, with lighting and clear acting, it’s plenty interesting without the need for a bunch of frames. It’s all a long ways off and from what I can tell I wouldn’t even be doing lighting most of the time for professional storyboard but I’ll keep your advice in mind going forward, thanks again for the reply and insights into your process and the industry

Started the year with a bang, i see🤭

Just in that part you realized that this may be good?

I'm happy you love the artwork!! Storytelling without dialogue is one of the things I was taught to do because you can't always rely on dialogue to carry a performance. I wanted this film to reach a wide audience without need of localization. Early day Disney films in the 1920s tried this but my gold standard was Triplets of Belleville. It's a whole feature film that managed to not have any dialogue or written words that "told" the audience what the story was about - instead choosing to rely on visual storytelling clues instead.

a parade of some of my favourite nerds

I spent evenings and weekends for roughly over a year, I was finished with the storyboards/temp audio/editing around May and then I contacted a buddy in the fandom - www.youtube.com/@soothingsoundsmusic1475 - to see if they were interested in writing music and then pinged another buddy at Brass Door Audio for sound design. Several months later, here we are!

I wasn't all that familiar with League of Legends lore and needed all the help I could get, so their videos really helped me make sure my depiction of the characters worked between what was established by Riot and Fortiche - just really think about those relationships. I actually had a couple sad endings planned for this film, but one of OSP's vids convinced me otherwise. So I decided if Fortiche was going to stab us in the heart anyway, I'd rather give everyone something fluffy instead. Remembering how love and grief and forgiveness works meant however the characters chose to move forward, those feelings and memories will always remain.

@@aXL99-tv I would say what you learned from them payed off. I felt that ending really fit the characters.

You're the first person here who found a Jinx I hid in one of the shots lol, congrats!

@@aXL99-tv I feel so honored that you replied! Noticing Jinx hidden in some of the shots was the main reason I made the comment because I didn't see anyone else talking about it, and I just thought that was such a cool and intricate detail to add

Thank you kindly! I'm just happy I finished this at all, passion projects are fun but also have this funny way of hollowing you out once they're complete. But that's how you know you've put in everything.

My thanks for the compliment and my apologies for the slight scare lol~ Glad you enjoyed this!

Oh hey! Glad you enjoyed this film! Well planned storyboards are gonna help make the rest of the animation process so much easier~ Just don't polish them too hard lol