HIP-16: Dream of the Endless: an animated short, featuring Necromancer Judas of the River

Project Lead and Team Information

Project lead & audio director: ershin Independent composer and sound designer for video games. His works can be heard in games for IPs such as Harry Potter, Transformers, Game of Thrones, and Lego.

Visual director & animator: GMOshiro Experienced illustrator and animator for games, and original manga artist with a distinctly identifiable style.

Beyond their individual accomplishments, ershin & GMOshiro share 5 years of collaborative experience in video games and interactive art projects. Their indie game, Two Strikes, was recently invited to present at the Game Developers Conference Day of the Devs event; the biggest independent games showcase in North America. This is a team that's successfully worked together with strong artistic competencies and proven results.

Summary of Project

Create a short animation that captures a moment in Necromancer Judas' journey in the Runiverse.

The project will feature hand-drawn sakuga (showcase level animation), custom soundtrack and sound effects that draw inspiration from iconic works such as Mamoru Oshii's 'Angel's Egg' and Ken Ishii's 'Extra.' The aim is to create a professional, dream-like audio-visual experience that is enjoyable for cult members and outsiders, alike.

Project Goals

First and foremost, we hope to focus on artistic expression; an "art for art's sake" endeavour that embodies the core tenets of the Forgotten Rune's Wizard Cult:

• It will be lore-centric,
• It will expand upon the Elf's intentionally "primative" expression of our Wizards, and
• It will be fun.

Beyond this primary goal, I believe the resulting deliverable can also serve as quality promotional material for the cult, aligning with the community's sentiment for marketing. Further, we aim to create a quality deliverable that'll inspire others in the cult to creatively invest into their character(s) and make the most of the resources that are available through the House of Wizards.

Externally, we hope that the animation can also attract members into the cult, especially those who are interested in developing art and lore for their character(s).

Specifications

Project Timeline: Upon project approval and reception of initial payment, we estimate 3 month of full-time production. This will include:

• 0.5 month of planning, consisting of narrative development, character(s) design, environmental design, story-boarding, research of reference material, and creation of the style guide
• 1.5 months of full-time production, composition, sound design, recording (as needed), and mixing/mastering. Approximately 160hours of work on the visual scope, and 40hours of work on the audio scope.
• 1 month of contingency to be utilized in the stages listed above (as needed)

Ershin will provide project status updates to the House of Wizards once every two weeks

Rights & Licensing: Full rights of the deliverables (animation and audio) will be granted to the HoW. Indefinite licenses to be granted to GMOshiro and ershin (respectively) for non-commercial usage of said material (e.g. portfolio showcase)

Funds Requested

We are asking for $6,000USD (or equivalent currency) to complete the project over 3 months. This is broken down as follows: $4,500 for the visual scope ($29/hr base rate), $1,000 for the audio scope, $500 for project management. Payment milestones are as follows: $3,000 upon approval of project. $3,000 to be paid upon confirmed completion of project scope.

Additional Comments & Notes

We've left out potential monetization approaches for this proposal, as we want the focus to remain on the artistic merit of the project. As applicable, we would be happy to explore monetization and methods of recuperating funds for the HoW using the project's deliverables. Thank you very much for your time and consideration!