CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Hi,
I just wanted to introduce myself on this forum because my (small startup) company is going to attempt to serve a need in the Christian community that is long overdue, but we wanted to provide a discussion area on our website as well to not only get people involved, but serve as a critical mass to move forward what we are planning to do.
My company just released its first video game called Victory at Hebron, which was actually a diversion from what we wanted to do which was make an anime-style Christian RPG game, but we needed to raise some capital to be able to afford hiring on CG people to do keyframing and also aquiring talent that can draw backgrounds and people at the level of professionalism that may allow us to break into the softer parts of the secular market.
We figured that many of you on this board can help us either with encouragment, information or even talent. Information-wise, we are looking for japanese or korean animation studio contacts that have a heart for the Lord. Talent-wise, we are also looking for CG or anime artists proficient with illustrator, photoshop and has no weaknesses in human anatomy form and drawing fighting styles or for background artists or mech or military weapons artists, no deficiencies in perspective drawing and pays attention to detail like sonada, the artist behind Bubblegum crisis or gunsmith cats. However first and formost though, we really need people that have a heart to reach GenXers or kids that don't know Christ or have fallen away. Even if we have the most talented person working with us, if he or she isn't walking faithfully with the Lord or at the very least honestly is seeking, it's not worth it to us.
Anyway, our website is still a work in progress, but ultimately, we'd like to set up a full anime forum as well as have some webpages where we'd like to have contests, fan art and encourage people to talk about anime and anime style games. Please visit if you get the chance. All of us here have played many of the favorites on snes, ps1/2 and gameboy and many of us have felt the angst that many have about how many anime games or movies seem to touch on elements that seem religious or spiritual, but it's either ambiguous or they full out do a 180 and embrace and occult theme or a New Age theme....like breath of fire 2, which now kids can play on GBA, how fun, now they can "pray to God" (which in the case of the game is an idol) all over again and mix up a new generation of kids (I'm being sarcastic of course).
Satan has a handhold on many areas of this amazing, breath-takingly beautiful medium, but if only someone shows how much more amazing and more beautiful a work created by a mind shaped by God can create. It's not an easy job, and we understand that we'll need a lot of encouragment, prayer and support from the Christian community that supports anime. Trust me, it's hard enough that non-christians would think that a christian anime based RPG is boring, some evangelicals and so forth that I personally have spoken to think most anime is of the devil. So it's not easy from both sides, but it's comforting to know that there are christians that understand and appreciate anime.
Thanks so much for your time. I apologize for the long message, but we're all very passionate about this project and we felt that it's important to really reach out to you guys and make a good strong contact.

In Him,
Scott Wong
President, Brethren Entertainment Software

http://www.brethren-et.com

Welcome and enjoy your stay! I hope we can assist you in whatever you need. Great website BTW.

Yo dude. Long post.

I can provide only encouragement. And a wolfy welcome!

You've got a good idea. May God bless your venture.

Hi, I'm a newbie here, too.

But, I just wanted to say... I am a graphic designer looking for work. My experience and bent is for print media, though. I am proficient in both Photoshop and Illustrator.

My art style isn't quite "anime"... more like a weird cross between an anime-style and realism, and much more fine art-ish. I'm not too confident in how I draw human forms, but I do very well with drawing animals.

I'm not much of a gamer, myself - I'm more of a reader and an artist/writer... but maybe I can be of help somehow. If you are interested, please check out the websites in my signiture. The first site is my original art, the second site is devoted to fanworks (mainly of animes), and the third is a comic that I draw. If you are interested in hiring me or anything at all, please take a look around my sites to see if my art style resembles anything like what you are looking for. (It probably doesn't, as it's not overly anime-ish, but, I don't really know exactly what you are looking for).

Awesome--another fellow Christian game developer; it's good to know I'm not the only one. Welcome to the boards and enjoy your stay! ^_^

You and yours are most certainly welcome on board here. We will help support you however we can.

Hi! Welcome to the forums! I've created a few games of my own. I doubt I can be of any help in that area, at this time. You have my support, though!

heysa!!
^-^

Hi, welcome to CAA! Sounds like an awesome idea and project you have going there. I will pray for you.

Spiritsword

Welcome. I am greatly pleased to see others working for quality Christian work in various mediums. Though I cannot view your site at this terminal, I promise I will do so when it becomes possible.

I take it that from what you have posted you already have plot and more technical elements worked out? I fear that is the only area I can provide professional level help in. Anything else from me would be sadly inadequate.

Looks interesting what you've got going there, can't wait for some screenshots of the Redemption game I'll have to DL the demo when I'm at my Mom's next (broadband).

PHIL

thanks everyone, we really appreciate the welcome. If we can be of service to anyone here, let us know too.

In Him,
Scott
President, Brethren Entertainment

Awesome, man, sounds good.

Yoroshkuu!

As a game theorist and wannabe game programmer myself, my hats off to you and yours, as well as prayers that He blesses your work as He is blessed and glorified!

:2)

Well if you ever want to bone up on your programming skills, we have a programming forum on our bulletin board on our website. Some of the best programmers in the field stop by our site. I had a conference call with some colleagues at Sierra games, Microsoft, squaresoft, remnant and shine studios about it and we want our bulletin board to be a place where amateur and professional programmers, illustrators, animators and game designers alike can congregate and get their question answered by people that really know the field. The best thing to do is visit and post questions. When our links section is up, there will be a lot more resources for you to draw from.

In Him,
Scott
President, Brethren Entertainment

http://www.brethren-et.com

Whoa. I'll have to check that out. Is it the forum on your site you refer to?

Yes, its on the bulletin board on our website. Check the community tab then forums and you'll see it under "game development network".

If you have a specific question, you can start a new topic after you register and ask it. Then you can start a new thread if your question is complex.

We'd like to start an animation one CG vs Cell and eventually a photoshop, AfterFX and premiere one. Other areas will be game design, scripting and "how to get your stuff published" type stuff. the boards are still a work in progress, but over time, we'll get it to a point where people can exchange ideas and get help with their individual projects they are working on.

In Him,
Scott
President, Brethren Entertainment

Sounds like an interesting project! I'm more of a web/db programmer, but I took a 3D gaming programming class in college. Then again, that was long enough ago that I don't remember anything (except that MSVC++ is too picky!) Good luck and God Bless!

Oh yeah, and welcome to the nuthouse!

Greetings oldphilosopher,

thanks. We usually use C/C++ because of its efficiency and speed. Plus its a favorite among game programmers. I think in the past people used object oriented pascal (like Delphi) especially for doing RPGs, but now that they've gotten so complicated, it's really important to save on overhead. Visual C++ indeed is picky, but the game development libraries produced by microsoft are getting better and better. We try to stay away from visual basic though....can you say memory leak? .

This forum is terrific and glad to hear that there are some good programmers out there. There are quite a few ministries out there that could use our talents, you should surf around a bit. One place may be Willow Creek (Bill Hybels church). they seem to be pretty progressive.

In Him,
Scott
President, Brethren Entertainment

http://www.brethren-et.com

hey if you look at VICTOR AT HEBRON the guy on the right looks like JET from COWBOY BEBOP

Have you (the original poster) considered doing any cross-development work for the Macintosh? We'd love a high-quality Christ-centred RPG in our world.

We currently aren't developing and cross platform stuff yet. We were considering using the coldstone author engine that compiles for both mac and PC, but after evaluating it for a while, it's just too limited for what we want to do, so we had to go back to coding it for just PC.

If our RPG does well, we'll most likely port it to xbox because of the ease of conversion and because Sony charges such high prices for the development license.

If enough people want a mac version and it looks like we can at least break even on the conversion, we could do it. Visit our site and make a post. That's the only way we can figure out how many people would want a mac version.

thanks for asking.
Scott
President, Brethren Entertainment

LOL. I didn't think anyone else ever HEARD of Delphi. That was my main programming language. I once wrote an AI othello game in that. (I got me an A in my AI class, mainly because it figured out how to cheat...) I can't really see doing much in VC++, primarily because of the overhead involved in purchasing it. Honestly, doesn't M$ make enough money that they can give away ANYTHING!?! But I digress... Anyway, thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Yes, Delphi was a favorite of many of the old school RPG programmers because linked lists took too much memory overhead and it was pretty caveman.

Well if you think Microsoft Visual C++ costs bank, then you should see the price ticket on 3d Studio Max R5 plus character studio. MSC++ is about the same price as the adobe photoshop bundle with illustrator and acrobat. I think there are a lot of pirated versions floating around for photoshop, but it's pretty expensive, especially if you have to get a site license for several computers using it.

However most of this stuff is pretty expensive. For example, if you ever want to do serious animation, you may have to invest in an avid suite. It is an incredible machine, but the price tag is almost 100K. there are places that you can rent time, but for a lot of heavy duty projects the price will add up.


In Him,
Scott

Aoey, as this user is rarely on anymore, maybe you should email them...that might work out better for you communications wise. Just a thought.

Hi Ash,
sorry i haven't logged on in a while. Hey AOey, hey Ann, what's up? . We've been really busy with trying to raise funds and also contracting an animation studio. Please pray for us over this, but I think we have a studio that can do it within our budget. We'll need a lot of keyframing and storyboarding now, but the prospect of getting christian anime type FMV sequences in our RPG is so exciting. We're trying to move forward, but we just don't know how much support there is for an anime christian game or video yet. We're going to do some market research on this, but we hope that there are many more open minded christians out there that realize that anime is an artform and even though there are anime series with questionable content, there are many that don't. We'll really need everyones help for research if that's ok. I think if I can demonstrate a need for more anime in this market to the bigshots in the industry like the GMAs and the venture capital community, it will do wonders for many on this forum. But we need real data, not opinions. The biggest problem is that people fear kids will become addicted to the pornography or violence in some anime just by us modeling it. That's been my biggest obstacle so far. It's pretty discouraging, but hopefully I can start some threads, get a discussion going and use that data to inform the adults and industry leaders that anime can be good and can be an awesome vehicle for spreading the gospel. We've initiated some contact in Japan and there is interest, but it will take us a while to form an infrastructure. If you or anyone else out there have some articles, blogs or what not that you can refer me to about christians and anime, I'd really appreciate it.

In Him,
Scott

PS. Ash. How have you been doing? hope all is well and that you're getting your rest . PM me when you get a chance, I'd like to see how you're doing. I just love your site and want to support it any way that I can. Also I'd like to ask you some questions about Christian anime and more resources.

Hi and welcome! ^_^

Hi, that all sounds cool i cant wait for the finished project and i here for encouragement
~God bless