Cooking Montage 09

Week 31 - Day 2

I don't like recording sounds. I don't know why but the sound quality for some of them are super clear and CRISP while others are weirdly muted and...faded in the background. I talked to Dane about it and he pointed out that the mike was a...one-directional mike? And the way I recorded some of the sounds was that I ended up either recording some of the audio from the back or from the side. YAY. Anyway, they're not too bad because there's still a good chunk of recordings I could use (about 40+) as opposed to the ones I couldn't (about 10+) but at least I still got my original target of 20 sounds as mentioned in my schedule so that's awesome.

Also, I don't like the background white noise in the background of a lot of them. I'm assuming it's because of the lack of padding in the sound room and too much echo going around that the mike is just picking up. It's muy bien...

I've added some filler noise for a few of the quiet parts, such as when we're moving from one shot to another and there's a gap of audio between one action to the next. I threw in a really subtle noise from one of our recordings I wasn't planning to originally use just because we could barely pick anything up but heck, looks like it'll be put to good use after all! Huzzah!

As a little nice extra, I added a nice track at the end during the end credit scene that I'm pretty happy about. I'm excited to show it next week. Out of the entire "movie" the end credit is my favourite part. XD

This is it for now...I shouldn't need too much more on the audio section. I think I just need to go through the audio files a few more times to polish it a bit more. I'll probably ask a couple of people to have a watch and listen before I convert it into something viewable for the final submission. I'm aiming for a nice 1920 by 1080. Whee!!

Chur...

Cooking Montage 08

Week 29 - Day 4

Oh, mah, gah, the forum layout on moodle is so weird. HOW DO I CHANGE THIS?!? ALL THIS WASTED SPACE!! SOMEONE HELP ME!

Anyway, I recolored shot 01 and shot 05 for the spring onions because the minty colour was just...not what I wanted for it so I made it look nicer. Also, I collected about...40 sound files with the help of Phoenix, Mikayla and Tea and I may or may not record a couple more. I think I'll try and for for a bottle opening just for the cracking sound of it being twisted open, water being poured into a cup and some popping candy noise. I forgot to record an audio file of me going "ew" or thereabouts for the last shot so I need to remember to do that long with the other recordings.

I should be able to start compositing everything by next week and hopefully get at least halfway through the animation by the end of next week. I should be able to do the title and end credit scene in After Effects without too much trouble, too, but we'll see...

All in all, a pretty productive week. I've been falling asleep on the bus ride back home and, a couple of times I woke up just as the bus was driving past my house because I didn't wake up in time to hit the button. XD I don't usually get tired enough to just doze off but man, I have been so tired recently and my energy levels are just low. I can't wait for this entire project to be over so I can take a breather. At least I know where my limits are when it comes to self-directed projects and I'll probably cut back 15% of the workload just so I'm not so overwhelmed. If this was the ONLY THING I'm doing for the entire term then it would've been just fine, but as it is it's just too much on my small, tiny plate.

Anyway, I'll give another proper update on moodle once I've more or less got some scene with the sounds thrown on top of it. See y'all next time!

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!

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.

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!

--

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

Goodnight...