Galverse #17 - Check Zero's Power Stance!
The Galverse OVA is roaring ahead, on schedule for release later this year! This newsletter is jam packed with updates from the studio and Galverse events around the world.
Welcome to the seventeenth Shinsei Galverse monthly newsletter, shooting across time & space to make the galaxy a better place! Here’s the rundown this week:
1️⃣ Incredible anime updates from the studio in Japan!
2️⃣ Exclusive BTS interviews with key anime staff!
3️⃣ Events in Denver, Tokyo, Paris and beyond!
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Straight from the Studio!
The Galverse OVA is making huge progress this month. Director Ayaka has been working hard with Co-Director Takamura to polish the last frames of the storyboard.
Meanwhile, work on the anime layouts has begun under the keen eye of Momo Nagayama with Ayaka’s direction.
Layouts are the next step of polish before keyframing begins and provide a guide to animators on exactly how each cut will play out in the final animation.
The layout above shows the character’s design and stance, the camera panning effect, the exact time the cut will last, and also which elements are animated.
Some Layouts with really complex animation get their own rough animated versions too. Check out this action shot!
Together with the cut’s timesheet, a Layout has everything a keyframe animator needs to know! Speaking of which, it won’t be long before we’re seeing keyframes from the studio as well. 👀
Character Designs - Colored In!
A lot of character design work has also been finished up, polished, and colored! It’s amazing to see the characters come to life. Below is Ran-Ran, drawn by Nagayama-san based on Ayaka’s original designs.
Ayaka’s mob characters have also been polished up and colored. Mob characters are background characters that usually don’t appear for long or have a speaking part, so they don’t go through the full character sheet process. That said, these Amaterran citizens look amazing!
3DCG Work!
Like a classic 90s anime, we’re not leaning too heavily on 3DCG work in the Galverse OVA - but there are a few places where it makes a lot of sense!
Since there are vast armies of the Gevuran enemy drones in the storyboards, they’re a prime candidate for being turned into 3D models so they don’t have to be drawn over and over again.
Their walking animation has been finalized. It might not look so tough without its texturing and processing, but these things are gonna be scary!
There were still a lot of design considerations that Director Ayaka had to work closely with the studio on. Even though most of the drones will appear in 3D, Ring and his allies smash up quite a few during the story, and those wrecked drones will need to be hand drawn, so the design needs to be workable for the 2D animators as well as the 3D artists.
WAGMAA Interns at Work!
As you can see, it’s been a busy couple of months in the studio, so of course we had to invite our dedicated community behind the scenes to help us on a few key works!
Key Visuals - create the poster with us!
Director Ayaka has been hard at work on the anime’s Key Visual (KV). The KV is usually a layered artwork that’s used as the anime’s main poster, and can also be cut up or edited slightly to work for social banners, posts and all kinds of promotional material.
Ayaka had a rough draft of the layout in her pocket, but wanted WAGMAA Interns to help her with posing and layout ideas! Everyone came through with amazing ideas and even some of their own artworks!
Check out Soyjoy’s incredible contribution! The finished artwork should be put in a museum. Ayaka is working on the final KV as we speak, and we can’t wait to reveal it!
Nothing Without a Name!
The Gal Community has also left a permanent mark on the story of Galverse by naming a lot of the key characters and enemies you’ll meet in the OVA!
Reitrace named Shinigami / Grim Reaper Gal! She’s called “Iza”!
Moon Cath named the warrior leader Gal. Meet “Tabia”!
Finally, the diva Gal was named by Ally and Soyjoy. Say hello to “Vega Starfall”!
Director Ayaka rolled in Tanuki’s idea into her fnal decision for the ultimate weapon, now called “Doom Gazer”!
Tanuki was really on fire on this assignment - he also came up with the flying drone’s name: “Medama / 眼玉” which means eyeball.
Risacan contributed the name of the walking drone which is now known as "Mushizu / 虫酸”, which means something like Insect Acid (although generally means something disgusting!)
The young girl who Zero meets shortly after landed on the planet was named by Non Fungible Collector. This adorable character is now called “Momo”!
Wooru named the first soldier “Suzume”, which means sparrow in Japanese.
Himagine Boo came up with the name for the second soldier, “Fox”!
Exclusive Content - Director’s Commentary!
Gal Holders got the first look at the Storyboard for the OVA! Our team including Director Ayaka sat down with Nishizawa-san, Producer at SoK, and Takamura-san, co-Director in SoK who has helped Director Ayaka put the storyboard together.
We went deep into the first 30 pages or so of the storyboard. We covered heaps of interesting topics:
The structure and layout of an anime storyboard
The importance of tempo and timing in storyboarding anime
How Director Ayaka works with the studio and staff
Levels of detail and artistic touches on the storyboard
How we’re giving Galverse a 90s vibe!
The discussion went for about an hour. It’s exclusively available to Gal Holders on our Discord! If you’re verified, this link will take you to the video.
Exclusive Content - Subtitler Interview!
We’re working with veteran subtitler Ian MacDougall for the Galverse anime. Ian has an incredible CV, translating and writing subtitles for hundreds of beloved movies over his 50 years in Japan.
Some of his credits include incredible anime like:
Whisper of the Heart, Porco Rosso, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya by Studio Ghibli
Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Perfect Blue by Satoshi Kon
SPRIGGAN by Hirotsugu Kawasaki
Jin-Roh by Hiroyuki Okiura
Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro by Hayao Miyazaki
Mind Game by Masaaki Yuasa
METROPOLIS by Rintaro
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth by Hideaki Anno
Wai sat down with Ian to ask him questions from the team and community about his work - his own life, the craft of subtitling, and about the industry!
This chat is exclusively available to Gal Holders on our Discord! If you’re verified, this link will take you to the video.
The Galverse Lore Book!
We launched a brand new Galverse feature at www.galverse.art/story! The Galverse lore book is an interactive notebook in both English and Japanese language.
Each page is packed full of story notes to get you up to speed on the world of Galverse:
Factions like Gals and the UFU!
Deep dives on all the main characters in the OVA!
Lore explainers about Cosmic Energy and the Brink of the Universe!
You can also find all sorts of cosmic easter eggs hidden around the book featuring amazing art and anime production materials. Make sure to check it out and let us know what else you want to see in the book!
Join the Galverse Club on Orb!
Congratulations to our friends at Lens Protocol for opening up their social platform for everyone! Anyone can now claim a profile at www.lens.xyz before jumping into an app like Orb to post, create, share, and collect!
We’ve started a Galverse club on Orb for any Galverse holders with a Lens profile. Ayaka and the team have already started sharing exclusive content visible only to Gal holders!
The team will be sharing and reposting any creative content from our community, including VTuber videos and ママ Mama AI fanart so jump in and experiment with posts and collects!
Gals in Denver! With Mask Network!
Galverse teamed up with our friends at Mask Network to throw an amazing event at ETH Denver, one of the biggest web3 conferences in the world.
There were Gal giveways, special artworks and an anime photo booth on the ground.
Thanks to superstar community Gal Chelsea for putting it together and being our presence on the ground! And thanks to the other event partners, Firefly and Next.ID!
Gals in Tokyo! Tokyo Weekender!
Director Ayaka was featured in Tokyo Weekender last month, Japan’s #1 English language lifestyle magazine.
She was also invited to set up a Galverse art + merch booth at their Summer event at Miyashita Park, Shibuya. The Galverse music video looks great playing on all of those screens!
Zero in 3D?! HappyPaca’s Stream!
Our friend HappyPaca has been busy working on Zero’s 3D transformation! We’re hoping to get this awesome 3D model into the hands of Gals pretty soon.
Paca streams her progress on Twitch a few nights a week, so make sure to follow her account and tune in next time! She’s super talented at capturing the look of 90s anime characters in 3D, so we can’t wait to see Zero’s final form.
I like u Hits Half a Million Views!
Like it says in the headline - our amazing music video with Tove Lo has just hit over half a million views! That’s tens of thousands of hours of Galverse anime watching time!
Legacy Contest Winners!
There were so many amazing entries into the Galverse Legacy: Origin Stories contest! Community members used our custom AI tools, VTubers and anything else they wanted to throw in to tell their Gal’s story in fun and unique ways.
RIS_707 took out the top prize with her supergalactic musical odyssey and backstage interview, created using VTubers, ママ Mama AI and a whole suite of other AI tools! She even shared storyboards and her working process - very WAGMAA!
We had a lot of amazing runner ups, including Reitracer’s badass bilingual cinematic piece combining ママ Mama AI with RunwayML and an epic score!
Anime Legends! Kōji Morimoto!
Our old friend and anime legend Kōji Morimoto dropped by Ayaka’s exhibition in Sendagaya. Morimoto-san has worked on amazing anime like AKIRA and the Animatrix.
We first met Morimoto before the Galverse anime went into production, so it was great to give him an update and show him our first production!
Teaming Up with MVHQ ✌
We teamed up with our friends at MVHQ to giveaway some limited edition Gal digital collectibles! Anyone who collected one of those got entry to the Galverse discord for a month, seeing behind the scenes of the anime production!
Celebrating Gal Culture at Tokyosaï!
A bunch of badass Gals showed up in Paris for Tokyosaï last month! This celebration of Japanese art and culture drew thousands of attendees. Thank you Benoit for your help in pulling the Galverse presence together!
Gals in the Verse! Community Best!
We loved Sana’s Galverse cosplay! Welcome to the community, Sana!
Kazuki-san made this amazing artwork of many projects that took part in DIG SHIBUYA! Can you see Zero?!
Ayaka says that lore book is giving childhood vibes. That’s how we designed it!
Benny brought Galentines day to life with these awesome templates. Shinsei that you’re mine!
Ren kicked off his series “Copped in Tokyo” about all the awesome treasures he’s finding around the big city. First up was the Galverse sticker sheet from Tokyo Weekender!
Welcome to the Galverse, Mate! We’re glad to have you here.
Nilesh also jumped into Galverse with a VTuber and joined the Orb club!
RIS made her own anime for the Galverse Legacy contest, storyboards and all!
Asami has been streaming games of all kinds with her VTuber! Palworld was a big hit!
This one is from… Galverse. Well, we wanted to show off that you can see an animated preview of the Galverse anime in iMessage frames now!
Soyjoy is rightfully proud of their design ideas making it into the final anime character designs! Amazing stuff!
Asami is also demanding we make some Galverse chewing gum! Anyone know a hookup in the gum industry?
Wooru has kicked off her Galverse news series using manga panels! Cool!
That’s all for this month! Join us in the Discord, check out the video for ‘I like u’, and follow us on Twitter!
