Thursday 20 December 2012
Wednesday 5 December 2012
Possible Collaborations
Now that this project is over I've been thinking about what I might possibly want to do for one of the open briefs where I set up my own proposal. I've been considering collaborating with both people in and outside of college for a character design and or audio based brief. These are the two areas I would say I'm most interested in and it would be silly not to follow that up because by doing so, it gives me a chance to improve and learn new skills. These are only initial thoughts for now and I'd like to perhaps do some work with the people I have in mind before setting up a full on project because I need to find out how well we work together and how they work because everyone is different and has their own ways of working.
Tuesday 4 December 2012
Recording Studio and Sound Effects
Today I quickly arranged some of the sounds we recorded in the sound booth to create a track for our level. All of the sound effects were done by us with exception to the crickets. I used Audacity to record and assemble the sound effects for everything. I had a lot of fun in the sound booth recording sound effects using our voices and any objects and things around us that we could get our hands on. One of my favourites would be the fire crackling we achieved by using the crisp packet. Sadly this won't be used as we don't have any torches in our finished environment.
Listening back to the track now, I'd definitely want to alter some sound levels because the monkey is obnoxiously loud and it should be part of the background in the depths of the jungle not at the foreground where it sounds like it's close by if not visible.
Overall I am pretty pleased with the general arrangement. There are a few sounds that overlap that sound s bit messy but I really like the subtle knocking sound and the clicking in the background. The bird sounds were fun to do and I had a listen to some bird calls before I decided to do them but they still aren't anything fancy.
Listening back to the track now, I'd definitely want to alter some sound levels because the monkey is obnoxiously loud and it should be part of the background in the depths of the jungle not at the foreground where it sounds like it's close by if not visible.
Overall I am pretty pleased with the general arrangement. There are a few sounds that overlap that sound s bit messy but I really like the subtle knocking sound and the clicking in the background. The bird sounds were fun to do and I had a listen to some bird calls before I decided to do them but they still aren't anything fancy.
Finished Environment
I'm really pleased at how the finished environment has turned out. Considering it was split between two people I think we did a great job at putting the level together.
The overall look and layout of the level looks really good I think. It has a nice logical shape to it and more importantly follows that of Daryl's initial layout and ideas for the environment.
Although I did make the walls double sided when there's no need for it to be in terms of developing a game it has the potential to be turned into a maze or labyrinth in which the play can explore.
I really love how the textures were done, nice and simple which goes hand in hand with the toony graphic style we were aiming for. One of my favourite features are the texturing shadows. I would never have thought to ask if such a thing was possible and i think the dotted shadows really give that cartoony comic feel. It also adds a point of interest and helps to fill out the plain textures by adding a little dazzle to the scene.
The overall look and layout of the level looks really good I think. It has a nice logical shape to it and more importantly follows that of Daryl's initial layout and ideas for the environment.
Although I did make the walls double sided when there's no need for it to be in terms of developing a game it has the potential to be turned into a maze or labyrinth in which the play can explore.
I really love how the textures were done, nice and simple which goes hand in hand with the toony graphic style we were aiming for. One of my favourite features are the texturing shadows. I would never have thought to ask if such a thing was possible and i think the dotted shadows really give that cartoony comic feel. It also adds a point of interest and helps to fill out the plain textures by adding a little dazzle to the scene.
Monday 3 December 2012
Animating
I had a lot of fun animating the characters but I got very frustrated with it for the most part. I found myself having to change and fix things such as the weight painting while I was animating which wasted a lot of time. Daryl came across a lot of problems during the rigging process anyway and had to repeat the process again and although we're all still learning I would have liked to have just got stuck into the animating rather than having to go back a few steps and fix things in order to do it. I think this will really slow down the process and I'm quite concerned because of the amount of time we have left.
Overall though I'm pretty happy with the walk cycles I managed to achieve despite the problems. For the Elder bird Adam had to change the geometry because the weight painting was so touchy and difficult to fix for the cape so in order to make some progress we scrapped the cape and I managed to animate him efficiently. I think perhaps the arm swinging animation could do with a bit of work because I got really confused at which point the arm starts to bend which really bugged me because the arms ended up looking really robotic without it. I think I'm alright with animating but I definitely need to observe body movement and use more references next time. It was also really hard to imagine how the characters were going to move so I gave them what I believe to be a generic walk sequence but I'd have liked to add a bit more personality in the walking especially with the age difference between the characters.
Overall though I'm pretty happy with the walk cycles I managed to achieve despite the problems. For the Elder bird Adam had to change the geometry because the weight painting was so touchy and difficult to fix for the cape so in order to make some progress we scrapped the cape and I managed to animate him efficiently. I think perhaps the arm swinging animation could do with a bit of work because I got really confused at which point the arm starts to bend which really bugged me because the arms ended up looking really robotic without it. I think I'm alright with animating but I definitely need to observe body movement and use more references next time. It was also really hard to imagine how the characters were going to move so I gave them what I believe to be a generic walk sequence but I'd have liked to add a bit more personality in the walking especially with the age difference between the characters.
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