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.

--

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...