ARAURA Production Update
It has been a wild Summer so far for this mighty indie fantasy tale. First off, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who came looking for ARAURA as well found us for the first time at ANIME NYC. What an amazing time we had talking with all of you about ARAURA, and seeing your passion for the story and the characters really fired me up - so thank you! Thank you as well to the awesome staff at Leftfield Media who invited ARAURA to be a part of the show. Humbled doesn’t even begin to cover it. Thank you so much, we’ll do it again.
Now, what’s up with production stuff? I’ll start with animation because that involves a few things - first of all our WILDLY successful Kickstarter campaign. The campaign was a success and I have been using the funds to keep production rolling (and allow me to actually get a little sleep - which is appreciated). Animation is progressing smoothly and I am progressing though the second section of the OVA while also trying to work on completing the opening credit reel simultaneously. This opening reel is really coming along great, and timing it up to Fame On Fire’s incredible track “CHAINS“ (the official ARAUA season 1 opening theme) keeps me grinding! Work has begun on storyboarding part three and part four’s script is being polished. I will be recording performances for part four in November.
On the comics front (or manga-whatever your flavor) I am simultaneously working on volumes four and five simultaneously. Each will have eight chapters and round out around the standard 200-212 pages each. Volume 4 has been so much fun to layout because its basically a big battle with a crazy cliffhanger. I want Volume 5 to come out very close to 4 BECAUSE of said cliffhanger, thus why I am working on them at the same time. I have not decided if I will do a Kickstarter for the books anymore, i may make them a special preorder on here - I haven’t decided on that yet. As Kickstarter for comics is basically just a preorder system anyway, it does introduce a new audience to your work so I do like it for that.
So as you notice I didn’t talk about specific release dates for anything. That’s because I am finding it better to take my time and wait until things are FINISHED before announcing release dates anymore. There is always a production hiccup or some other matter that delays things, especially when you’re doing the impossible. So I am not going to announce release dates anymore until a project is finished. In the past I have gotten so excited about sharing things with you all that I would estimate when something should be ready and just announce it. That’s a big “my bad“. That’s just not how things should be done, so moving forward, I would rather keep you all up to date weekly with where everything’s at and release it when its READY-ready. I can tell you it will not be longer before you get more animation. VERY close on OVA 2. The comics will be 2027, Spring likely for Volume 4 and a few months later for 5 and then hopefully 6 later in the year. This is all in an effort to get more comic and animation content out on a regular release cadence. We knw we’re working on something special with ARAURA, and you-the fans know it too! So I want to be sure I’m giving it my all and doing all the right things as far as production, visibility, and delivering.
That’s it for this week’s production update. I hope all of you are enjoying the end of Summer, I am for SURE looking forward to the Fall!
Until next time, Be Well - and KEEP ROCKIN’!
Ray