Grey Cellz

Some spooky places from Somali and the Forest Spirit, the series I art directed in 2019. 

Battle of a Forgotten God and Conquistadores

https://www.instagram.com/grey_cellz/

The Guardian

Done for Feb 2020 CdC, theme “Carnival of Brazil” 

Memories of the loved one.

https://www.instagram.com/grey_cellz/

“Protector”. 

https://www.instagram.com/grey_cellz/

Necromancers 【I】Banshee 【II】Imposter 【III】Songstress 

The Whale Snatcher. Done for Jan 2020 CDC, theme cormorant fisherman

“Close your eyes and everything’ll be fine”

Moving to Instagram so follow me there: https://www.instagram.com/grey_cellz/

Will double up my posts on this now-lonely Tumblr : ) Also will post a few times per week instead of a few times per year haha

My entry for this month’s CDC (theme: animal skatepark). An orca skatepark with sealion skaters (obviously inspired by the infamous killer whales toying with sealions - seen in a more positive way)

Somali and the Forest Spirit, some of my work on episodes 2-3

The 12th and last episode will be aired tonight at 00:20 in Japan (and all your good legal and illegal streaming platforms), if you feel bored during our semi-confinement.

Other samples of my work on Somali and the Forest Spirit (the story of monsters and the first city)

Somali to Mori no Kami-sama (https://somali-anime.com/), the series I was the background director for, is currently aired on CrunchyRoll and every Thursday night on AbemaTV/TokyoMX in Japan. I know it's super late to make an announcement since 6 of the 12 episodes are out already, but I needed a serious time off from an exhausting year and a difficult first-time experience as a BG director.

Production time was tight and the backgrounds we received were of mediocre quality to stay polite. To fix some 3200+ color backgrounds across 12 episodes, we were just 2 people to redraw as many as we could, around 1700 in 3 months, with the priceless help of the talented Loic Locatelli. On most episodes we did only the most important fixes (120/270 BGs on average) We redrew entirely episodes 8 and 12 and most of episode 7 which will be aired tonight, so please look forward to them. Sadly we did almost nothing on episodes 5 and 9 which were entrusted to 2 other BG artists; while I'm very thankful to them (because their experience helped me a lot over the course of the production, and because those specific episodes would have been worse without their help), the quality is honestly a bit painful to watch and I'm sorry about it.

All in all it's just hard to achieve an ambitious BG direction with the current standards of japanese productions (low budget, short production time, complete outsourcing to overseas studios with subpar skills). To be honest, I made countless mistakes myself which made the production even more difficult to manage for the other departments, and I'm sorry about it... But learning that our 2 man-team was supposed to be 5 or 6 people in usual conditions, also told me that I sacrificed my health and time pretty pointlessly for an entire year (with hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime work just to make this series watchable).

I'll be way more careful for the next opportunity, and won't undergo any project without the support of a solid team. As always I'm optimistic though, and will try to make the most of this strenuous experience in the future.