Game Project - Team Sprout 05

Week 29 - Day 2

I am very tired. It's been a struggle trying to keep up with so many assessments going on at the same time. I hope this isn't a reflection of real life because if it is then it sucks. Anyway, I've been working on our characters but I've yet to animate the part where the little sprout transitions into our character sprites. I'll work on that this week, hopefully...

So, apart from our character sprites I think we could be with another few sprites of insects, a lilypad, maybe a still of a birds' nest, maybe a leaf fluttering on the stalk still attached to a tree branch...? I don't want too many assets, that might be overkill especially if they're all moving in the background. I could make the leaves an interactive bit of background; it doesn't have to be moving until it's clicked on.

Before I forget, here's a snapshot of our characters in-game. I've yet to sort out the timing of the animation and make their proper transitions but we'll get there...I have a few more weeks to work on this so...I could take it easy for a while...

I need to sort out my assets' folder. I'll work on it later...

Cooking Montage 07

Week 28 - Day 4

I GOT ALL MY SHOTS DONE!! SHOT, SHOT, SHOT, SHOT!! With the exception of shot 06, everything is done and dusted. Well, not completely 100% done yet because I still need to colour them in but I've already fixed the timing for them and they're looking a little bit choppy (haha) but it's a deliberate move. I'm not looking for super smooth, super refined animation. It's a rotoscope and for me, most rotoscope pieces have that slightly stilted look to them. I'm drawing (haha again) a lot of inspiration from the Take On Me music video which has a really rough but pleasantly rustic look to it.

Anyway, I'm pretty confident that I can get all of my shots coloured by the end of the week. I'm putting a little bit more focus on the gaming project because it's been neglected and put on the back-burner for the last couple of weeks...I can finally afford to dedicate some more time onto it which is great. Although, in saying that, it's been really hard to juggle more than 2 projects at a time. I dread the moment when I have to start doing clean-ups for Thaw's animation. It shouldn't be too bad, I don't think. At the very least, not as difficult as the animation we did for Foster Hope.

SO! Agenda for this week, since my schedule is kaput and out the window: COLORING! And then converting them all into SWF files so I can start to composite them for sound editing. I'm not sure if my laptop can handle After Effects since the last time I opened it the whole thing kind of froze and stuttered and crashed on me so there's a good chance I'll be doing most of my editing at school.

Right on. This is me signing off.

PEACE!

Game Project - Team Sprout 04

Week 28 - Day 3

I got distracted by Dane's assessment that I kind of forgot about the group project. Opps. DX But, I was able to catch up with making up some more sprites so in addition to the fire animation and the bunny animation I've also got 4 pieces of ember animation, spiderweb animation, glowworms, fireflies and swaying sprout and a scared bunny animation.

I'm also doing our character designs which I will be drawing up this week and also a lilypad and frog to put somewhere in the level. I'm still a little unsure on how to animate our characters but I think a simple swaying of their flower dresses will be nice to try. I think I'll have them pop out of the ground in a shower of the flower petals they represent.

That's my update for now~ I'll add more later.

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I has a cute frog! My initial sketches were more towards realism but I changed my mind and did a cartoony version instead. It looks good. It fits much nicer with the overall look of the game, I feel. The head moves from side to side. Look at it so happy~

Game Project - Team Sprout 03

Week 27 - Day 3

We had a meeting yesterday to discuss what our level is going to look like and we've managed to get a basic idea down. Tea took what we talked about and got a basic illustration up to better show and clarify exactly what it is we're aiming for in our level design. This includes a tutorial section as well as "secrets" and a "final boss". This is what Tea's done for us:

Taylor and Phoenix are going to be blocking out the level in Unity together using the diagram as shown above.

We also decided to insert ourselves as NPCs in the game via the sprouts the main character will be collecting on the way back to the beginning in the second stage. I've drawn us some concepts using the template of the character Tea previously drew:

I drew Taylor as a lily, Mikayla as a lavender, Phoenix as the phern (fern), myself as a sunflower and Tea as a fuchsia! I'm happy with how these turned out. We so cute~

Cooking Montage 06

Week 26 - Day 5

So I hit a couple more snags with shot 08. The file was too large to bring into Animate and it wouldn't accept an 800mb file which, fair enough. So I took it to school because my version of After Effects was crashing way too much...I tried it to split it into 3 parts instead but then it saved the file as a huge 4.5gig EACH which was totes ridiculous and then media encoder didn't help by a whole lot when I tried that option either. Instead of shrinking the file size from 800mbs to...ehh, I dunno, maybe 300-400mbs but then it kind of...turned into a 1.3gig file instead which, WHAAAAT?? SENSE, NO MAKE?

Another option that Dane suggested was turning it into a PNG or GIF sequence but then it kind of...only belatedly occurred to me that 11mins of an image sequence = A LOT OF PICTURES. So...I stopped that before it blew out of proportion.

Thaw gave me another suggestion of using an OBS screen capture program which helped a lot. I still had to record it into 4 chunks of about 3 minutes each and it managed to get it down to about 50-60mbs per file. Hopefully, that's small enough that Animate will accept and just...let me animate. If not, I can download the program and re-do it as 2 minute chunks and go from there.

I mean, I'm still early enough of that shot that I don't actually need to get it ready for animating right this instance but it'll be good to have everything prepped up and ready for animating, right? Because cooking is the same way: you don't chop a garlic, start cooking it and then start chopping an onion because by the time you're done with the onion the garlic is probably already burnt to a crisp which is just...no beuno. Anyway, yes, yeah, that's my progress for the past couple of hours.

Huzzah~

I'm about...halfway done with shot 02 and hoping to get it completed by tonight and then I'll see about starting shot 03 if it's not too late. In any case, I probably won't need a WHOLE WEEK to dedicate to coloring the frames since style #5 is a pretty solid color base which is nice and easy enough and should probably only take a day or two max. I can use that week, if need be, to catch up on the rest of the shots and getting them completed.

Cooking Montage 05

Week 26 - Day 3

After some consideration, I decided to change the shots in the storyboard a little bit. Not by a huge amount but just enough to make things a little easier for me to read. In any case, not including the parts where the montage is included within the storyboard there are a total of 10 shots within the whole animation. I estimated about 50 seconds give or take a few here and there but I gave myself a little bit of allowance for the opening and end credits.

In a random fit of creativity (so pro) I decided to make my establishing shot a part of the opening sequence so that'll take up about 5 seconds. The text will fade to give a better view of the kitchen as an establishing shot before moving on to the second shot of vegetables being murdered for the greater good that is this assessment. Anyway...

I started drawing up the first shot before I realized, heck, I really need a folder and dedicated animate files with their shots embedded into it so I spent most of tonight just doing that as well as plotting out exactly where I want the frames to start and finish (more or less). I'll be animating in 25fps as well and, if my calculations are correct, there's going to be about 2000 frames in this whole animation, give or take a couple hundred here and there depending on whether I need those extra seconds or not. Most likely not because...I'm predicting this here, but I will be reduced into a puddle of tears by the middle of next week.

Wish my luck...I think I may need it.

...

...

2000 frames? Honestly? What the frick-a-frack was I thinking?

Cooking Montage 04

Week 26 - Day 1

So I've finished all 30 of my concept sketches based on the selected style of Mambo Number #5. I also did up a rough storyboard but Dane said I should try to alternate the angles a bit more which I completely agree with because I hadn't realized how BLAND it looked until it was pointed out to me. I'll do that later tonight and change the angle of the chopping board and the cutting to a different angle while hopefully still sticking to the 180 degree line of my kitchen. Hopefully.

On another note, I've borrowed a camera and tripod to try and do some recording later. It's mine for the next 3 days and I'll be returning it on the morning of the 13th. This should be more than enough time to record everything I need and to change things if need be due to poor lighting. The weather forecast looks a bit dreary for the next week but Dane told me that I could use adjustment layers in After Effects to bring up the hues and saturation of everything if I need to. Hopefully I won't have to resort to that because I'd like to color pick from the actual palette within the recording but I guess we'll see, eh?

I've changed my schedule again because I completely forgot to take into account the actual filming. Hopefully I can get all of the filming done by the time Thursday hits and then I can spend the rest of the week doing a rough animation to follow the basic storyboard.

On my to-do list for this week:
- Storyboard (revised)
- Filming
- Rough animation

I've already got a few snacks to play around with for audio but I'll wait for when I've got the animation done before I do that. I'm thinking I might need to sacrifice one week of audio and sound design for animating but this is just a tentative plan for the moment; it may not come to that. I'm not doing too badly for time but...yeah, we'll see...

Cooking Montage 03

Week 25 - Day 5

I finished all 15 of my target concepts but unfortunately I took an extra day to get them done. Also, I've changed up a little bit of my schedule to allow me to grab some feedback on the possible selected styles I might end up animating my final project in. I'll spend Thursday night, Friday and Saturday morning collecting feedback and compiling votes and, depending on how many certain styles people like the most, I'll do an extra bit of concept work within the selected styles for Saturday afternoon. I'll put the last pieces of concept sketches up on the forum again and spend Sunday replying to them, hopefully coming to a conclusion by the time Monday hits.

I referred back to my schedule again and, apparently, I decided to make myself do the storyboard and the animatic within the first week. (Yay...) I don't think it is feasible for me to attempt the animatic this week but I'll definitely spend some time on the storyboard while waiting for feedback on what the overall animation is going to be like. I'll possibly spend the first couple of days next week to get the animatic sorted before moving to a rough version...

Although, in saying that, depending on how simplistic the storyboard is going to be, maybe an animatic might not be necessary. But, we shall see. It would be good for me to attempt it anyway. Hopefully, I can still keep on top of everything before the end of the second week. If I need to take an extra week out of the audio section then I'll have to do that and sacrifice some of the time that I put aside for the opening and ending credits.

UNTIL NEXT TIME.

Cooking Montage 02

Week 25 - Day 4

I meant to make a post last night but I was tired and I forgot about it pretty much the next minute so here it is now; late.

Anyway, I managed to do more rotoscope concepts last night so that's 13 out of 15 done. I have 2 more to do today and then I'll make the post on my progress and grab some votes for Thursday, Friday or until I get enough votes to satisfy me. I'll work on the 30 extra concept sketches in the weekend in the selected styles and then move on from there to the next part.

As you can see, I've already muddled up my first week's schedule just because I forgot that I really need to ask for feedback from the concepts. I mean, the beginning stages are pretty critical to any project so yeah, I should've given myself a little bit more time to doing concepts as well as receiving feedback. HINDSIGHT!!

I need to review my schedule again but I'll do that once I've got the first concepts up and while I'm waiting for some feedback. I've already got a couple of favorites that I think I'll have some fun (and frustration) playing with but it'll be good to see what other people think!

UNTIL NEXT TIME.

Game Project - Team Sprout 02

Week 25 - Day 2

SPRITES!! ARE!! Cute but also very finicky and it made me angry for a little bit because NEW PROGRAM! Yay!

Anyway, here's a picture of what the animation looks like. I have no video to show because I don't have the program to record from the screen so yay~

I have more sprites to do but ugh, just for the submission this is enough. I'll do more as the week progresses but for now...SUBMISSION FOLDER!

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We had "meetings" throughout our holidays via Facebook group chat which was nice to be able to know where everybody is at in terms of progress. I think we all went a little bit overboard with our assets but it's better to be over-prepared than under.

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Also, I figured that I CAN ACTUALLY KEEP THE FIRE GOING ON A CONSTANT LOOP!! HUZZAH!!!

Here's a screenshot.

Bunny, get away from that fire. Fire bad for you. FIRE BAD.

Anyway, these are the two assets I'm keen on putting in our unity project. =D WHEE~~ I'll package them tomorrow for easy import/export because honestly, Git confuzzles me. DX

Cooking Montage 01

Week 25 - Day 1

Okay, so, I managed to get 2 out of 15 rotoscope concepts done and I am honestly not sure I can get them all done by Wednesday. I have Thursday and Friday to churn out 30 more sketches based on the selected styles and I think I might've bitten off more than I can chew. I spoke to Dane about my concerns about falling behind on my schedule and it's only the first day and I already feel a bit...all over the place. Wow, ain't that a nice feeling?! Anyway, I might cut it down from 15 to 10 concepts and then 30 down to 20 sketches. I'll keep to my original plan for the moment but it may or may not change as the week progresses. I may end up eating Thursday working on the rotoscope sketches UNLESS I absolutely cannot think of anything else to try and add.

I'll be posting my actual progress on my forum but this is more like a...progress bar of what's going on currently with the project so I don't end up making my posts go offtrack where it's not necessary. Phew!

Hopefully, I can get another 2 more done before the night is over but...ugh, I almost dozed off on my cintiq so 1 is more feasible than 2, honestly. X'D Yayyy~~

BACK TO THE GRIND!

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I just dished out 2 more. Get it? Dished out? BA-DA-PSSH!!! SKDFJHSDFJJSDFSDHFKS

Goodnight...

Game Project - Team Sprout 01

Week 25 - Day 1 (Holiday? What is that word?)

So, I pretty much spent the entirety of the holiday preparing for the Overload Convention, and writing up the Literature Review and drawing up some sprites and concepts for the gaming project for Team Sprout. YAY! RELAXATION!! MUCH FUN. SUCH HAPPY.

Anyway...so, I made up some sprites for fireflies (x3) to be dotted all over the place, some ember pieces (x4) of varying shapes, a spiderweb, a fire animation, and A BUNNY!!!! <3 Bunnies~~ <3 That's 10 pieces total because...there can't feasibly only be one piece of ember or one group of fireflies. The bunny can be re-painted into different colors to add more variety but I'll do that later now that I've got a basic animation of the bunny. I also made a rough background concept but it's not the best so I'm not keen on using it. Everything else is top notch, though! Whoop~

I'll add the gifs and the background concepts when I get home BECAUSE I only brought the sprites and I'd rather show the whole thing.

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TA-DA! I AM NOW HOME TO UPDATE THE BLOG ONCE MORE!

Here is the background concept. It's a bit yeecghkdjfs...

As for the rough concepts, I pretty much stuck with my initial ideas but I had to draw a few bunnies and a couple of spiderwebs just to figure out which way I was going to go. It wasn't until I was done with these that I decided, oh, a semi-realistic but "casual" approach would be nice.

Everything else after that was sussed out enough for a clean-up, color and animation. Whoo-hoo!!

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And here are all of the animated frames I've done so far. I may or may not add more as we go on with the project but for now this will work as a basic guide for the interactive background pieces.

Initially, I didn't have a "sleeping state" for the bunny but I changed my mind and decided to draw a couple more frames to make sure it'll loop nicely around and around until I click out of it again. I had 3 bunnies of slightly different styles altogether but this was the one that tugged my heartstrings the most.

I struggled a little bit with embers but I wanted fairly organic shapes as well as "sharp" edges despite using the waterbrushes. I tried to go for grey embers and then really dark embers to have a clearer glowing effect. It's supposed to loop continuously and I'm assuming that that will be the "idle" state so it's just constantly glowing in the background. Whoop!

FIREFLIES! I actually had a lot of them all over the screen but I asked Tea and we decided to cut it back by 30%. There are actually 3 layers currently visible but those layers can be split and independently animated to add a little bit more variety in the scenery.

PHEW. Also, animating fire using waterbrushes IS HARD. LIKE. I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN DO THAT AGAIN! But if need be I will. Just know that I was tear my hair out, lose a bit of sanity, probably shout at my tablet a lot...but I'll get there. X'D

In saying that, this was probably, by far, the worst of the entire lot. Not just fire animation on its' own but also for the fact that I was using a waterbrush to draw everything with. I'm quite...happy with how it turned out. I mean, the reception it received from the rest of the group was awesome so it helped boost my confidence a lot about how it would fit in the scene. I can always alter the colours a little bit if we needed to add a bunch of them together in the same area.

Spiderwebs! This will animate with a nice swaying motion that'll make it look like the wind is moving it. I had 2 concepts, 1 which I refined a little bit more while the other one was a bit too simple. I looked at a few more pictures for some ideas and I really liked this one the best simply because of the weight I could see in the lines behind it. I like that it looks like it "breathes" a little bit when it's animated so that's awesome, too.

I've got all of my sprites converted into PNG format so all that's really left to do is to turn them into animated assets in the Unity Program.