no mere stone addendum: extras/easter eggs/long thoughts
thanks to everyone who's voted in the poll! it was made so i could decide which quote to add onto the 2nd poster <3
thanks to @laurellleaf and @zhongscara for commenting on my liyue film crew post <3 your input was v helpful :D
[transcription: a mock movie credit box that reads: "Qixing Films presents, in association with Guili Assembly, a Glazed Moon Studios film No Mere Stone starring Zhongli Kun Jun Jiu. Costume designer Menogias, music by Madame Ping, edited by Ganyu, production designer Xianyun, screenplay by Yun Jin, story by Xingqiu & Hu Tao, produced by Ningguang & Keqing. Directed by Guizhong & Rex Lapis". there are several logos below and a PG 13 rating. The film is released on April 28. end transcription]
crew casting: it ended up being about a 50/50 split between liyue adepti and mortal characters—this was mostly a happy coincidence though! I remembered that Menogias canonically likes designing intricate outfits and also made Zhongli's clothes, so he's the costume designer instead of cloud retainer. since she's handy w mechanical things and inventions + has a sense of the arts and style (eg ganyu + shenhe), I put her on production designer instead. she'd probably be able to come up w some pretty inventive set designs I think. I was between madame ping, guizhong, xinyan, and yun jin for music—originally I intended to make the cast most/all adepti, so i'd decided against yun jin + xinyan. in the exquisite night chimes cutscene with madame ping and guizhong, ping was stated to value music's human expressiveness and emotion—and I thought that was more fitting for a movie composer!
originally i was going to have yanfei be editor LOL, since she's probably pretty detail oriented as a lawyer and able to do the fine tuning and editing of cuts/scenes—went for ganyu in the end, partly because she feels more connected to the rest of the crew, and also because the vibes of secretary and editor just fit together better lol. they're both one of those mostly under the radar jobs that don't get much attention but are really important to something's success. I added in xingqiu and hu tao as story writers pretty late; originally yun jin was going to do both story and screenplay, but I split it up and put them both on story after seeing the vision (below).
xingqiu's legend of sword flop combined with hu tao's reputation gives this hypothetical movie a greatly increased chance of absolutely tanking in liyue's box office!!!
keqing and ningguang are producers just because they're members of the qixing—originally guizhong was going to be a third producer but I bumped her to director later on (for a rather mundane reason: i was running out of space on that line). ok finally we've come to the directors. I thought it would be funny if rex lapis was listed as a director, given Zhongli has too many names and outfits. you can use your imagination to make this make sense in a real au :) guizhong getting added as co-director was also a nice thing that happened coincidentally—I found it neat to have the two founders of liyue as directors and kept it.
logos: I decided to go all in and slapped some designs together for qixing films and glazed moon studios! these were lowkey fun and they turned out pretty well honestly! quality is bad tho, i didn't make them full size or svg RIP
2 versions of the glazed moon studios logo—the 1st one is unused bc i decided against the way the m and o are joined together. tbh I don't know whether this looks enough like a logo for a movie studio instead of say, a perfume brand or high end pastry bakery, but it's good enough
the website is a fake but there is a real page at that link about ancient history school presentations
april 28 was the release date of the no mere stone quest! and pg13 is. idk warnings for character death i guess. and genshin is supposedly rated for people 12 and up so i went with that
concepts/process: originally I was going to have the entire thing be one poster:
the white stuff behind kun jun is supposed to resemble the white wisps of energy that he had near the end of the quest when he's close to disappearing. and I struck out his eyes because of the huge huge thing the quest had about Morax's gift of sight—his glasses, Zhongli as the sun to a blind dragon, I thought it was a fitting nod to that whole theme.
overall tho this version was too cluttered, had no focus, and also didn't have enough room for a potential credits block. so i split it into two—one with the background, and added the small retuo in front, and another w kun jun and the credits. i think it worked pretty well!
and. 1 final version of the kun jun poster, with the alternate quote "if it is fated, Morax, we will meet again." you can see some of the old crew choices and logo designs—and Qixing Films was originally Celestial Films haha
oh! one last thing: take this transparent kun jun (and several others) for the road :)
