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I finally remembered who Olrox's design sort of resembled...

And it's f-ing Victor Veloci from DinoSquad!!! 🤣🤣

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Was in fact giggling and kicking my feet while drawing this

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Alucard? Again? Yes!

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Do you think that Trevor and Sypha ever started adding information about Alucard to the Belmont library?

Sypha for academic purposes and Trevor for funsies.

Like Sypha suggested that they write a book on dhampirs just in case they ever needed something to reference back to for the sake of Alucard's own self preservation, because almost none of the town healers knew heads from tails about his biology, and Trevor just started sneaking in really silly notes one day.

Like:

"Can occasionally become moody when hungry, teasing not generally recommended in times of famine" is scribbled haphazardly in Trevor's chicken-scratch signature just below Sypha's complicated essay about the many negative side effects that prolonged starvation can have on a creature like Alucard, and how they found out about these health risks the hard way during an extended monster hunt gone wrong.

Just really silly shit intertwined with actual heartfelt care, because neither Trevor nor Sypha want their descendants to be uneducated on the needs of their immortal bestie/partner. It's their way of looking after him, even from beyond the grave.

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I'm sure this varies heavily depending on advertisement vs serialized shows and also budget and time constraints, but how 'super particular' can a production be about the way something is animated/how something looks, etc? Even though everything is preplanned, there are guides/model sheets to follow, and drawover/ correction artists are there to help keep consistency between different artists' works, there are still massive differences.

I had always been curious about how in Nocturne (wow, what a shock I'm bringing this up hahaha), the exact same character will look slightly different per cut or that the way a character moves is slightly different to the point where you can start mentally picking out who worked on what. This also brings the question of how much an artist's own style is allowed to peak through? Whether that be how they treat the movement of the character or just how a character is drawn. Or are the differences just preplanned out?

This got really long my bad but tldr;

How pedantic is a production on strictly following style guides? Does it get looser depending on the constraints or does it stay the same throughout?

2. How much is an artist's own style allowed to shine through in a project?

Thank you for reading my wordy question, I hope it makes sense and hope you have a nice day :D

Very good question! The short answer is that it depends on both the artist and production schedule.

For Nocturne Season 1, one of our animators, Tam Lu, has a very unique style. You can see it in episode 3, which he directed. He's basically well-known enough and liked by the Deats bros to go and lean into that. He can also do on-model normal anime stuff if need be as well if the scene calls for it. When you get to a certain level/notoriety, you get some more leeway. Like, if you bring in Masaaki Yuasa to work on an Adventure Time short, you're gonna get something VERY Yuasa in style.

When you're a smaller artist, you're going to have less bargaining power, unless the director really likes your work and wants your style to shine through even more. Basically, the director or showrunner get's to decide how on model you have to be.

Next comes production time. Let's say, you're an animator brought on Nocturne, who is good at motion, but struggles with putting Maria's cat on model. If you're fast enough, there's time for drawovers and redlining from one of the supervisors. But what if you ran behind and animation needs to get shipped out like, tomorrow? Well, the only time to correct them is going to be in post, unless the outsourcer cleaning things up does it (most likely will not). Now it's kind of a well shit situation. The team does what they can to fix things before air but sometimes there's not enough time and you gotta hope nobody cares ahaha.

ALSO. The budget of a show determines how much time you have making style sheets. Look, we'd all love to have the insane bibles that 2D Disney movies used to have. I've seen some of them, and it's like, woah. You have a whole section just talking about how hands are done for this one movie. It would be nice if we could have more information to give the animators on how to put things on style. Alas, that is not the case. You get what there was time to make and then you pray AHAHA.

With all this said and done, it's impossible to completely erase someone's unique touch on a piece. That's just the way art goes. When you have a show that outsources it's animation, anything done in-house is going to stand out. The shot is going to have more love and time spent on it. The outsourcers are wonderful artists in their own right, but when you got a quota and deadline, you can't spend any time giving something that extra love. A walk cycle is going to be so basic and evenly timed cuz you got way more on your plate (and honestly not enough pay but that's another conversation). You can see it in kid shows in the US where you're like hold up that shot was so pretty and well done ohhhhhhhhh it was done in house ahaha. It would be nice if everything could be done in house, but networks aren't going to give use Arcane budgets LOL. God....imagine... 250 million for a season.... You could do all the personal walk cycles....

Hope that answered your question and shed some light on production!

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Just a quick reminder, I'm glad you're excited for nocturne season 2 but I can't answer any questions about it because NDA. Thank you!

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Hi, I'm not even sure you can answer this, but does Bathory have *anything* going on for her in S2? Everyone else gets an interesting plot line yet she's constantly overshadowed despite being inspired by a really cool historical figure... I get that she's evil but she deserves a proper story. Just saying.

Once again, I can't say anything until season 2 is out. However, do keep in mind that us folks at Powerhouse are not the writers. We don't have control over that for the most part. Sometimes we can make edits to the scripts if the producers agree to it. There's also the issue of the amount of episodes given for each season. I've seen about two episodes worth of story get cut for time. One thing that was cut was something I really really liked.

This isn't unique to our shows either. When you're watching any show or movie, there's going to be a lot of good ideas and plot that have to get cut for time. That or some producer has a stink over something (like Disney with anything queer).

NDAs prevent a lot of folks from speaking up about things publicly unless it has expired or they're like, famous enough not to care. A lot of us little folks gotta play nice though.

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Alucard shirt on fangamer

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Alucard Castlevania Nocturne fanart

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© jaesanshi

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Castlevania Nocturne S2 Trailer

Alucard in motion

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Had to pause from my personal projects to sketch this up after seeing Castlevania Nocturne‘s latest S2 trailer.

As someone who’s more into the games, I enjoy the fresh direction the show is taking. Thanks for your hard work, animation team. Rest well

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EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING NEW NOCTURNE TRAILER HAS ALUCARD SMILING

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Alright, so *possible spoiler ahead*but here's my analysis of Castlevania Nocturne's Season 2 trailer

1. Richter's Fall and Rise:

So in the Trailer we're given a moment where we see Richter seemingly getting overwhelmed by Erzsebet's power and he presumably takes a fatal blow in this scene.

Followed by him lying on the ground, bleeding out and at death's door.

This and Julia's death are eerily similar if you see them side by side.

But where Julia falls, we see Richter rise again.

That is not the same Richter who got outclassed by Erzsebet. He definitely tapped into the full extent of his recently awakened magic, seemingly reaching the level of his video game counterpart.

But how did he reach this new level of power? Well that leads to the second theory.

2. Alucard Being Benched in the Battle Against Erzsebet

We see a close up of Richter's Flaming Fist for a split second, but if we look carefully, we can also see someone behind it.

It's most definitely Long Blonde Hair. And there only 3 characters who have long hair and are Blonde. They're Maria, Alucard and Tera. But why do I think it's Alucard? Well here's why.

Alucard straight up says that if he isn't strong enough (or if he dies) to defeated Erzsebet, he needs a Belmont to Put a Stop to it. And if we go back to the first Season 2 Teaser, we get this scene.

We've Richter (No Glowing Eyes) and Alucard squaring up against Erzsebet. I'm guessing that Richter is going to be fatally wounded in the confrontation, and Alucard is going to step up and possibly give him a power boost which might cost him his strength, severly weakening him. (he's got 300 years of magical experience, so he probably learnt a lot of new tricks)

We've got Richter covering Alucard and showing Erzsebet the business.

3. Dark Maria

Maria is going through the ringer this season, having a father who tried to sacrifice her, only for her mother to offer herself as one for her sake and get defiled in the process. I believe her emotional state has started to effect her powers because:

That is not how she summons her creatures, normally.

In the collage below we see her usual summoning ability followed by her newest summon:

We see her summoning her creatures through a portal of light. The summons so far look "friendly". Her newest dragon summon looks more menacing and "evil" as it kills a mook with impunity, its as if Maria's turbulent emotional state had brought it forth.

Either that, or Maria knows how to access and summon more violent and dangerous beasts but didn't do it as she recognised the inherent dangers of doing so, but since she has lost her mother to darkness, she's out for revenge and is no longer holding back. Resorting to more darker aspects of her power to get revenge.

We see Maria alone throughout the trailer, she's probably going to go off on her own little quest as she tries to save her mother. (The rest of the group probably told her to stick to the plan, but we know she's not the type to listen to adults, as we saw in season, when she went alone to see her father)

In the Trailer we see a brief shot of Juste and Tera squaring off and, with what appears to be an ice prison in the background;

We see Maria in it. Tera and Juste are fighting over her, with Tera probably wanting Maria to join her and Erzsebet whereas Juste is trying to save her soul. Whoever the Victor of this fight be, it'll probably snap Maria out of it.

Thats about it for now. What do you think this new season might bring? Will we reach a point where we're going to get Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night Adapted?

Share your thoughts in the notes <3

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This Poster is so interesting

Okay, can we quickly talk about this poster? Because boy, this is interesting.

Maria's familiars are and always were inspired by Japanese/East Asian mythology. In the Games originally they were called Suzuku, Genbu, Byakko and Seiryu. We see Seiryu in the new trailer - I am assuming at least that the dragon we see is Seiryu.

But this here? This looks like a bear. I know, because I spent a good while obsessing over a certain bear. :P

No, but for real. This is very very interesting from the perspective of Japanese mythology. Because in the old Japanese mythology (aka pre-Heian) bears were thought to be manifestations of the gods. Something that still holds true for the Ainu mythology (as anyone who watched Golden Kamuy will have learned). But yes, originally the gods manifested as bears, with foxes as their messangers.

So, given that Maria's summons are all inspired by Japanese mythology, and I know that there are certain nerdy people in the crew, I am personally going to assume they are very much aware of this. Maria is summoning a god.

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WHY IS HE SO HANDSOME AND REFINED?! WHY IS HE SITTING LIKE THIS??!!! SOOO CUUUUTTTEEE!!! AAAAAAAHHH!!!

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I'm going to eat cement.