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!

--

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.

--

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