[Music+Art] Awesome Atelier Album Project DISCUSSION THREAD

[Unassuming Squid]

See you, Hakurei. Good luck.

Etch, just submit it when the whole thing's done. Not much point in submitting something halfway done.

[Mushyrulez]

G'luck Haku.


:V Halfway done my composition, one more week (that'll be some 4 hours of composing) and I'll be finished.

Affinity, you're 45 years old? :V

[Primula]

I'm interested on doing the album cover. However, my coloring and graphics skills are not that great.

[Marin The Magus]

I'm interested on doing the album cover. However, my coloring and graphics skills are not that great.

You have to try for the sake of Gensokyo!!! xD
We are not profesionals here. Everybody has different styles. Just give it a try. My coloring skills are the worst, and still I'm trying !!

[flamezero16]

You have to try for the sake of Gensokyo!!! xD
We are not profesionals here. Everybody has different styles. Just give it a try. My coloring skills are the worst, and still I'm trying !!

Haha well said amiga =p

Yup Yui, if your interested couldnt hurt to try. Even if ya dont make the cover, you may still make it in the art booklet~

[Affinity]

Ah, yes, I was surprised by the exact same Aki avatar.  D=

And I'm not 45... I'm 19.  And alright about the discs...

[Unassuming Squid]

THE DONATION POOL HAS BEEN SET UP

Any donations should be sent via PayPal to pyram1dh3ad@yahoo.com.

Current goal is $500.

[Coin Spire]

I've had some sort of idea for the cd cover image... Unfortunately I'm just average at drawing.

Here's how I wanted it to look, more or less:


I...have no idea when it comes to coloring, at all.

Here's the two layers of images that I used, it it could help:
It's slightly off-center, yes.


Both images done by me, though the background was done using pre-existing images that aren't done by me.
I just want to hear some opinions about it before I delve into the dark arts of coloring...

[HakureiSM]

Hm, that's p awesome

Although I will have to require you to post it in the submissions thread, where we're discussing content.
Let's keep this thread for organizational and administrative purposes only :s

But no, really. It looks quite good.

[Coin Spire]

Thanks for reply, I'll post in the proper thread next time.^^

[Unassuming Squid]

It's cool, I'll edit my post in that thread to add this.

On that note, it looks quite good. It would be great if Reimu was colored in, but as it stands it's a good contender. We need more art anyway.

[Gappy]

Hi guys, Flame's told me about the donation drive. This came as a surprise to me as I never heard that this project will be requiring any external funding (next time, please let me know these things beforehand, thanks.) Before you start waving collection tins in front of everyone, there are a few formalities you need to get out of the way, as I told Flame in a PM earlier.

Firstly, can someone please write up a summary post containing the following:
a) Who is doing what.
b) What has been completed so far.
c) What still needs to be done.
d) Schedule, schedule, schedules. What is your deadline? What do you plan to do up till then? Is it feasible and realistic to achieve this schedule?
e) Cost/Expenditure outline. What exactly will the 500 USD fund?
d) What you hope to achieve with this project? What are the expected benefits/returns? Are they realistic?
e) This charity - where is it going to? Who are you donating to when you're done?
f) Past experience of similar projects. (Optional)
g) Vouching/opinion from people who have done similar projects before. (Optional)

N.B. And most, most, most importantly....who is responsible? Who will the donators go to if they want to see where their money's going? Who will I have to contact to make sure everything's going well? Who will be held accountable if the project does not, Suwako forbid, come to fruition?

Any donation drive must have all these to inspire confidence in prospective donators.

My apologies for being really fussy about this but 500 USD is a lot of money to expect people to donate towards, so it has to be done properly. I hope you understand. The above is just a worst case scenario which I'm sure won't happen.

Other than that, I hope to see this succeed. Good luck. Thanks!

[Unassuming Squid]

A) Currently, I'm the one in charge of managing the project and ensuring that the process goes smoothly. N-Forza is the one who will actually be making and distributing the copies of the album. Flamezero16, HakureiSM, Sercan, and Autumn are involved in counseling and planning.

B) At the moment, we're just submitting music and art entries to be judged on Dec. 1st. The voting will decide which songs are on the album and which piece of art goes on the album cover. The remaining art will go in a booklet in the CD case.

C) After everything is judged, we need to send the completed material to N-Forza for production.

D) Deadline for submissions is Dec. 1st, which will allow N-Forza enough time between then and Winter Comiket to produce the albums. As stated, until then, we're just submitting material and planning what will be done with the profits.

E) The $500 will be used to make the CDs and give each one a decent case with a booklet containing all/most of the submitted art.

F) The aim is to demonstrate the skill of those in the Atelier to people outside MotK. Our hope is, of course, to get enough profit to make up the $500, and also to give publicity to our various artists.

G) Charity is currently undecided. I was under the impression that it would be you (Gappy) who would decide the charity.


As stated, people can go to me if they want to know what's happening with their money, how progress is going with the project, or most things related to the project in general. If the project does not succeed in one way or another (which I highly doubt, we have a lot of great potential here), I know I can be held accountable for such a thing.

[Dead Princess Sakana]

F) The aim is to demonstrate the skill of those in the Atelier to people outside MotK. Our hope is, of course, to get enough profit to make up the $500, and also to give publicity to our various artists.

That makes me wonder: Wouldn't it be more reasonable for that goal to promote the album within western communities and sell it on western conventions?
If you sell it at Comiket, sure, that is quite a success, but that's it. It's unlikely you'll get much feedback, especially in a language you can understand. And you won't reach people that could easily get in contact with the artists through MotK and support further work either (again, language barrier). I dunno if the publicity-effect will really be that great the way you plan things now.

[Infy♫]

we'll have to be selling really good in order to regain the cash required for this project... which means the stakes are even higher than before.
for some reason i think putting reimu on the cover would be very unoriginal. how many albums have i seen with that same shrine maiden on the cover?
i think putting a link to this site would help. totally. my idea to reach the goal was, to get this to the big boss of the forum.
as for Coin Spire's cover: i dont think its a good idea to use existing images. but damn that background looks professional. totally fitting for the back of the cover.

i forgot why i was originally posting here.
oh well, i'll say it when i remember

[HakureiSM]

@Gap, we see your point, I'm having basically the same conversation with TSO right now.

@Squid, let's talk about that list and details on IRC, refine it, and provide the staff with a more resolute and formal one.

@Sakana, I can't really agree with you on that, because it supposes there's an unsurpassable barrier between western and eastern. Also the main goal is not make publicity to MotK, but to promote it's capacity to create art. I could elaborate but I'm too hungry to make any sense, but I hope you got the idea.

[N-Forza]

To be honest, I kind of pulled the $500 figure out of thin air. After getting some real info from Talka, it turns out it will be quite a bit higher.

For example, printing off 100 CDs in a slim case with just a slip for the cover will be 110,000 yen, or $1,315 at the current USD rate. Of course, the more you print, the better value (1000 CDs is 150,000 yen, or $1,793). For even a regular case and 4-page booklet we need to pay another 33,000 yen. So yeah, it's not going to be cheap, but economies of scale are at work here. The more money we can put up front, the more CDs we can print for a better value, and the lower we charge for it, the more likely people are to buy it.

Of course, you could go the economy route but that wouldn't be terribly impressive/eye-catching.

[Mushyrulez]

Then again, we're also going to get money back from selling it regardless; so if we did something like 'you get your money back after the albums are sold', i wouldn't seem like that big of a deal...?



A thousand bucks is quite a lot :V

[flamezero16]

Then again, we're also going to get money back from selling it regardless; so if we did something like 'you get your money back after the albums are sold', i wouldn't seem like that big of a deal...?



A thousand bucks is quite a lot :V

Indeed, but we cant really guarantee that we would get enough to cover the donations, and that is alot. Were workin on ideas about where to go with this, but selling actual CD's seems like an unattainable goal at this point. But please wait warmly, and we'l let ya know what we figure out~

[HakureiSM]

Yeah I was doing some math here.
Then I had to leave the computer. Will do it again soon
I think it'd be doable, if we ever managed to get $2000.

edit: I have a couple other ideas but I can't get on IRC today. Please wait warmly.

[Kommisar]

perhaps offer a download for the album that would be less than the physical cd? this would easily broaden the horizons, worldwide even.

[Infy♫]

a free download would sure do. but i dont think selling download codes would be very useful.

[HakureiSM]

That's a good idea.
Perhaps it would be jumping the gun a lot less if we made a first album available free and online, and tried to make it as popular as possible.

[Kommisar]

this was assuming we wanted to make more profits for donations, but that's up in the air. perhaps offer a free download, and if they like, add a 5$ donation link where you can download lossless quality album with bonus artwork? idk

[flamezero16]

You guys are good~ Thats pretty much the plan thus far. We want to set up some songs for download as a demo, and perhaps see about having some flyers with the url handed out during comiket, if it can be arranged. This way we can still use a piece of art from the submissions on the flyer.

[HakureiSM]

Or we could distribute the art with the songs, online?

[Unassuming Squid]

More specifically, I think we decided on doing one song per artist.

We're still a bit in the air about how to do the art, but we're working on it.

[チソウ タイゼン]

Waaaaa
My Candid Friend thing is going horribly

I don't think I can learn anything else by ear either

If you want to listen to it I guess I can hand over the midi

[flamezero16]

If you want to listen to it I guess I can hand over the midi

Hmmmm don't believe I've ever heard anything from ya before, so I wouldn't mind hearin it~

[Anunsew]

If you want to listen to it I guess I can hand over the midi

Let me arrange it? Please?