Galverse #19 - Party in Tokyo + ママ Mama AI V2 is here!
We're throwing an incredible party in Tokyo this week, so make sure you RSVP if you're in town! Plus, you gotta see what the Gals are making with the new ママ Mama AI.
Welcome to the nineteenth Shinsei Galverse newsletter, shooting across time and space to make the galaxy a better place! Here’s the rundown this month:
1️⃣ All night party in Tokyo for Edcon with Mask and Lens!
2️⃣ ママ Mama AI v2 drops with massive leap in quality + speed!
3️⃣ Community creations from across Japan + the world!
Edcon Social! Party in Tokyo - July 28!
We are throwing a celestial pre-conference warmup ahead of EDCON TOKYO 2024! The Lens x Mask x Gals Edcon Social is going to be the best party of the event season.
You can expect the best of Tokyo nightlife and Galverse culture at HVEN on the night:
Live + DJ sets from incredible Tokyo musicians including Si Oux, YonYon, KAMIYA, butoh dancing from KANA, and more!
Gal style! Gyaru hair and make up from Konatsu and friends + a special limited Chipped popup for onchain nails.
Live silkscreen printing of exclusive merch featuring designs from rising creative stars Ayaka Ohira + Mami Mozi.
Live art on the huge HYTEK digital graffiti wall.
+ more announcements coming up.
Sign up here: the event is RSVP only! We’re expecting lines and a busy night so make sure you’re on time to avoid disappointment. If you’re a Gal holder and haven’t received an RSVP confirmation, reach out on Discord or Twitter to let us know!
ママ Mama AI v2!
We're one step closer to creating the super intelligent Mother AI that will one day bring Galverse into existence IRL!
After beefing up ママ Mama AI's training with new and improved artwork from the anime production and Director Ayaka's desk, we're proud to release the much improved Mama v2!
Let's take a look at the features:
Faster generations
Improved quality
Much more accurate to Ayaka's style
Less funky outputs
Native 1024x1024 HD resolution artwork
Still 100% free to use for Gal Holders!
Mama will soon grow beyond our Discord, with an upcoming release of the ママ Mama AI inference API for app developers and a special web app for power users.
When we launched ママ Mama AI v1, we were really proud of the quality of the outputs and how closely it matched Ayaka's style.
Gal holders generated over 25,000+ of pieces of fan art using v1. But the whole team agrees - ママ Mama AI v2 is cosmically on another level again!
Jump into the Discord to try out ママ Mama today - and keep an eye out for new tools and channels to generate and publish your artwork soon!
We worked with ArtificialGuy to create ママ Mama v2. He quickly rose to AI stardom after creating the PS2 face filter that took social media by storm, and we reached out to bring his expertise to bear on our latest model. Also thanks to Jarvis for his continued work on improving the Discord tools for ママ Mama.
Sweet Revenge!
Did we just shadow drop the collabo of the century? Yep!
Director Ayaka and Team Galverse has been working with our friends VERBAL and LDH Japan for over a year to help launch a new J-pop sensation, Sweet Revenge!
They’ve flown past 1.6 million views of the video since launching, and the song has even been picked up by another anime release in Japan as the opening track.
Ayaka was responsible for character design and animation supervision on the video, working closely with the Director, animators, 3D modellers, and LDH creative team to bring it to life!
This is not just an awesome debut video for Sweet Revenge, but a landmark collabo deal for Galverse!
It's the first time we've entrusted the style and worldview of the Galverse IP to other creatives and animators, and we'll be collaborating with them into the future as well!
Altogether, an awesome collaboration between Galverse, amazing director Amber Park, grammy-winning producers The Stereotypes, LDH, VERBAL, Active Theory, and many more creative talents.
Making of Might Just!
As usual, we love to show off behind the scenes of making anime. Director Ayaka in particular put a lot of love and effort into making sure the Sweet Revenge gals came to life in true Galverse style.
As the animation was handled by an external studio working with Sweet Revenge and their team, Ayaka got involved at key design and animation direction points along the way.
First up was character design - giving each SR Gal their own unique visual identity while making sure they all worked together in group cuts as well. This started with a rough sketch of the three characters, followed by detailed breakdowns including props and color direction for each Gal.
They didn’t just have to work in 2D either - these Gals were making the leap to 3D as well. There was a lot of back and forth with the 3D designers to capture the spirit of the designs in 3D. Ayaka also had to put together expression sheets for each of the characters too.
Finally, the 2D animation took place. Ayaka worked hard to ensure the keyframes were consistently capturing the nostalgic details and trademark features of Galverse’s nostalgic x futuristic animation.
And that’s it! After a long pre-production process, Might Just came to life! It was a unique experience for Team Galverse - passing on the characters and style to another creative team and director to bring to life. But since day one, we’ve wanted to see what this world looked like in the eyes of other creators.
Congratulations on a month since your debut, Sweet Revenge!
News from the Studio!
It’s been a month of ups and downs in the anime studio! We’re making huge progress on art production and our schedule looks rock solid now - after a few setbacks.
Our main animation director, who is responsible for ensuring all the keyframe artwork is consistent in style across the production - had to drop out of the production for personal reasons (and we wish them all the best!)
We had to take a few weeks to staff up again and get back on track, but things are humming along now.
The layouts are essentially all finished including animation director and director reviews!
This means we have an entire animatic, showing a rough version of what the anime looks like from start to finish.
Usually this would be almost complete around the time of the voice acting recording, but sometimes (as in the case of Galverse), they head into the booth with a rougher version that still contains some storyboard frames instead of proper layouts.
We’re deep into keyframe production now, and the artwork coming out of the studio is looking incredible. Ayaka has a heavy load of reviewing cuts and drawing a reasonable amount of frames herself, so we’re all cheering for her.
Meanwhile, Ogura Atelier has delivered about half of the backgrounds for the anime! These look incredible, with rich details and a handpainted look that takes us right back to the 90s. We can’t wait to show you more.
Ian, our subtitler, has sent through his first take on the Galverse subtitles and we’ve spent some time reviewing and tweaking them a little just to capture the tiny details of the Galverse universe. You can watch a behind the scenes video on our process here.
Finally, the soundtrack to the anime is sounding great. We’ve secured our producer - a legendary musician in Japan who’s worked on some anime we love - and the first demos and vocals have been coming through over the last weeks.
Get your Gal in the anime!
It pays to pay attention to the production process! We recently launched our latest WAGMAA assignment for Gal Holders to get their character in the anime.
This one was on a tight deadline, since we surfaced some layouts that can fit a heap of badass Gals, and the layout process was nearly over - but expect to see some friendly faces from the Galverse community in a few cuts of the anime.
NFT Art Tokyo
Did you catch Ayaka at NFT Art Tokyo? A bit like the Comiket of the NFT world, hundreds of creators and an incredible amount of visitors came out to meet and greet the creators behind all sorts of web3 art and creative projects.
Ayaka had a super Gal stand right at the entry and had heaps of anime materials and some special limited merch for visitors.
New Socials! Find us @GalverseAnime!
We’ve kicked off some new social handles + profiles to make sure we’re ready for the anime launch and beyond!
First up, our Japanese language account focusing on the anime production has just launched at @GalverseAnimeJP!
We’ll be telling the story of Galverse’s unique anime production up until now, including an insight into the community’s involvement, Ayaka’s background and creative journey, and of course all the cool BTS anime stuff still to come! Make sure to give us a follow and help support our production with some comments + RTs!
Our English language account, focusing on the anime, tech, and web3 activities has changed names from @galverseNFT to @GalverseAnime!
If you already followed us, there’s no need to do anything. A lot has changed since kicked off our account over two and a half years ago, and we think the new name better represents everything happening in the Galverse cosmos!
Gals in the Verse! Community Best!
Superstar musician and creator RIS dropped by a Tokyo meet up and caught up with Ayaka!
Speaking of RIS, she’s been pushing Mama v2 to her full potential for creating 3D Gal character design reference sheets!
Meanwhile, Asami captured a classic Galverse meetup during IVS Kyoto!
Moon Cath and her Gal Sachi created these amazing generations using the new mama. Street fashion next level.
Tanuki took an elemental route and created some super diverse and cool Gals!
Galverse fashion shout out from Benny! It’s a vibe.
Montako, an AI master, shared some of her early works getting more expression out of v2.
And Soyjoy put together this collage of their artworks from two years of creative contests and activities!
Thanks for dropping by our NFT Art Tokyo booth, Kenji!
It’s a long read but worth it. Rally up! Thanks for being a great friend, Asami!
Ikumi sensei showing off her badass troupe of Gals.
Montako sharing her Galverse origin story too. That collection is amazing!
Oshimaru joined the world of Galverse recently, and we love the enthusiasm!
Jutsu is blazing past 430 days of Gal of the Day! Every one is special~
That’s all for this month! Join us in the Discord, check out the video for ‘I like u’, watch the ‘Might Just’ music video, and follow us on Twitter!
