Galverse #18 - Live from the Voice Acting booth!
We spent four intense days working with legendary and rising star voice actors from the anime industry! Tune in for some exclusive shots from the recording booth!
Welcome to the eighteenth Shinsei Galverse newsletter, shooting across time and space to make the galaxy a better place! Here’s the rundown this week:
1️⃣ Behind the scenes in the voice actors’ booth!
2️⃣ GQ Japan profiles our amazing Director Ayaka!
3️⃣ Community hits from across Tokyo and the world!
Notes from the studio! Anime updates!
The Galverse anime production is firing on all cylinders, with major progress on the art, music, and voice acting! Making anime isn’t easy, but it’s coming together!
Team Galverse spent four days in the recording studio across April and May, working with anime voice acting legends and rising stars.
Director Ayaka explained the message, story, and retro 90s style of Galverse to each of the voice actors to get them in the zone.
They’re so good that most of them were done in just a couple of takes! A climactic scene even put tears in our eyes. We can’t wait for you to hear the performances.
You can read our in-depth report on the recording in the Galverse Discord. This week, we’re filming some behind-the-scenes video with the voice actors in Tokyo ahead of our big announcements. We think you’ll be blown away by who’s jumped onboard!
The layouts and storyboards of the Galverse anime went to the editing + cutting studio just prior to voice acting. It helps Director Ayaka land on the pacing of the final anime before the key frame animators get to work, and the voice actors follow along with this rough animatic when they’re delivering their lines too. It’s amazing to see Galverse in (very rough!) motion.
On that note, the layout process of the anime is essentially finished. We’ve got folders full of amazing artwork to share with you over the coming months. We’re planning to distribute some of the best hand drawn stuff to our dedicated holders and fans too…
With layouts largely complete, work is earnestly underway on keyframes as well. The art is looking super clean and Ayaka is ensuring every cut lands the Galverse style.
All backgrounds in the Galverse anime are made by Hiromasa Ogura and his team at Ogura Koubou. We talked about it during the production of the Galverse MV, but Ogura-san is famous for his work on Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh, Spirited Away, and many more legendary anime.
He has had a huge influence on the look and feel of the cyberpunk genre globally and we’re so excited he’s working on Galverse too!
Director Ayaka is also making a lot of checks on post-processing and coloring at this point. The art above is a color check for night time scenes at Ring’s hideout - ensuring all the characters, props and backgrounds match the scene.
In addition to all the progress on art, we’ve also secured our music producer and vocal artist. The first song demo arrived this week and it sounds amazing. We’ll be filming some BTS with our music team before that announcement too.
Meet us at NAT4 and Edcon in Tokyo!
Director Ayaka will have a Galverse booth with all new exclusive Galverse merch at NFT Art Tokyo 4. You can find her at the Trunk Hotel on Cat Street on June 28th!
We’ll also have a Galverse presence at Edcon 2024 in late July. Reach out if you’ll be in Tokyo and want to meet up - the whole team will be in town! Keep an eye on our Discord and socials for event news 👀
Zero Goes 3D! Contest Winners!
We teamed up with our friends at $BONSAI token to launch a creative contest for the Galverse community to put our brand new 3D Zero model through its paces!
Everyone showed up, dived into new apps and programs, learned new skills, and made amazing stuff with 3D Zero! We were blown away by the quality of entries.
RIS-707, one of our creative community members, took out the best image prize with this y2k masterpiece! She won a nice chunk of $BONSAI and her very own custom made 3D Gal, which will be going into production shortly!
Rei Trace and Asami took out equal first prize in the 3D video category! Both of them dived into new 3D tools like Blender and VRM friendly videogame engines to create these works.
Rei Trace wasn’t done though - they also took out the top meme entry with this self-reflective expectation vs reality banger. Rei’s heart will go on… maybe?
Special thanks to our superstar contest judge and the creator of 3D Zero, the one and only Happy Paca! Eeeeh… is that the beginnings of 3D D.D.?!
You can tune in to Paca-san on Twitch to see her create 3D Gals in the coming weeks! The full list of contest winners can be found on Discord!
Use ママ Mama AI on TITLES.xyz!
Contest overload! We also worked with TITLES.xyz to launch ママ Mama AI on their platform and get Gals + everyone anywhere to start creating Galverse artwork with AI.
This was a huge success with over 13,000+ Gals generated with ママ Mama AI and 250+ published onchain.
Meemo took out the top prize of $2,000 with Ghost in the Machine!
Aoife O’Dwyer, an amazing artist, won $500 with her artwork Safaelah!
And finally, Galverse community superstar Miss Purple won third place with this nostalgic piece, Japanese Denim.
Thanks to all our entrants, and our judges Smoke, Nygilia, and big boss Ayaka! The contest is over, but the creation continues.
Anyone can try out the Mama AI model on TITLES.xyz now - just navigate to the “Galverse Anime” tab up top!
Oh, and did we mention that Dr Asuka Wagami has been back in the lab, tweaking ママ Mama AI? Expect an update on that in the next newsletter.
Ayaka featured in GQ Japan and WWD!
GQ Japan featured our amazing Director Ayaka Ohira last month with an artist profile + deep dive into her animation work! Check out the awesome GQ profile on TikTok or Instagram!
The awesome Tokyo fashion + culture magazine WWD also ran a feature on Ayaka in their May edition! You can read it by signing up for free!
Lens Legacy comes to Gal Profiles!
We dropped a new feature on the Gal Profiles! You can now link your Lens profile to your Gal’s Profile page!
Get in touch with us on DMs or Discord if you want to link your Gal page manually. Alternatively, if you mint your Gal’s Lens profile directly into their ERC-6551 wallet, it will automatically link up! Cool, huh.
Lots of Gals are already posting directly from their PFP’s 6551 wallet, sharing custom art and slice of life stories on the timeline. Maybe one day these will all be AI driven influencers posting videos with their VTubers and 3D models!
Ayaka x Miku
What do you get when you combine the world’s best animation artist and the world’s biggest VTuber IP? Magic, of course.
Director Ayaka teamed up with Hatsune Miku for an awesome Gal-ish video collab and limited merch drop. What’s up, Miku Gal?!
Unmapped Podcast
The spotlight isn’t just for Director Ayaka! Devin and Wai-chan also showed up on a super fun podcast recently! We covered the origin story of Galverse and a lot of the cool tech projects and ideas that Team Galverse is working on.
The video version is even more fun, since we both turned up as our VTubers! We love that awesome cover art by Jko art too!
This was actually recorded about a year ago, but just turned up online. It turns out we were pretty spot on with what we were thinking about back then! Give it a listen!
Galverse x RSTLSS
Zero isn’t the only 3D Gal in town! We’ve been working with the fashion + avatar superstars at RSTLSS to drop some custom traits in their soon-to-be-revealed collection, Marebears!
Galverse holders who mint a Marebear have a higher chance of rolling rare Galverse traits on their character. We’ve still got some RSTLSS collabos in the bank too!
The Lore Book has expanded!
The Galverse lore book has expanded at www.galverse.art/story! Our lore book is an English and Japanese language resource with heaps of cool art, story details, and artifacts from the anime studio.
We use this information internally all the time! The voice actors needed detailed notes on their characters and the world of Galverse, so after expanding on the information for them, we shared it to the public version of the lore book too!
Short Notes On My Journey Through Shinsei Galverse - by Benoit!
Our Gal Pal Benoit has written a story on his journey with Galverse in Tokyo. It’s a lovely retrospective and memoir written from a fan’s perspective over the last couple of years.
Benoit is really a dedicated fan - he even has his Gal PFP tattooed on his arm! Thanks for sharing it with us and being a super friend to our team, Benoit!
Gals in the Verse! Community Best!
Well, first up, it’s a team member in the ‘verse! Ayaka shared us this clip of her VJing in Tokyo. Galverse is embedded deep in the street culture!
Thanks Benny! Hard to disagree with that one!
Tokyo birthday vibes! We love to see Gals get together IRL and celebrate the important stuff! Thanks for sharing, Asami!
Meemo made this awesome playlist with Mama AI fanart of her iconic Gal! Vibe!
Welcome to Galverse, Carla! We’ve welcomed heaps of new Gals from all over the world and internet over the last months. Happy to have you.
Chelsea with the Gal meet up vibes! She’s right, the best meet ups happen in Tokyo when the Gals get together!
Ghunter showed off the fan commission of their Gal from superstar friend of the project, Maco! Thanks to the artist and subject for sharing!
It’s not just Tokyo! Jo showed off this awesome meet up of Gals + Clones in LA recently. FOMO!
Ikumi’s squad grew ever more badass with the addition of two ribbon Gals! Let’s go!
Katou went all out generating Gals for the TITLES contest! Look at that color palette!
Sally shared Gals with the next generation of game designers, engineers, and badass anime Gals! STEM to the stars!
Time for a quick snack! Devin Dimension with this cup noodle special!
The 3D wonder continues! Yuki got Zero dancing for this awesome video!
Contest winner Meemo got her TITLES creation printed on a shirt IRL! That’s what we love to see!
That seems to have started a trend… Montako also went for it! Fashion Gals!
That’s all for this month! Join us in the Discord, check out the video for ‘I like u’, and follow us on Twitter!