Sounds like trouble - SPnU

After the recent weekly, the sound design was mentioned. More specifically, we needed to look into getting a voice actor to do the breathing and gasping sounds (something I overlooked). Ellie, our sound creator, sent us a few foley sounds a while ago, before we animated roughs, and I crafted a sound design spreadsheet (oh yeah) to keep everything organised. This also helped us identify what we need the supposed voice actor to do. We considered getting a voice actor to do the audio, but it seemed unfair to them to simply breathe and gasp, so we opted to do it ourselves.

We also updated our roughs and made notes on things to fix as we started the tie-down phase of the animation. Our sound designer, Ellie, also supplied a lot of the foley used in this:

The feedback this weekly also mentioned my starfish fire rough for the last scene (though I didn't see anything wrong with it, I acknowledge the audience might not think the same way as I do) so I tested out creating embers using reference (I didn't have much to go on but I used artistic license to make it look good):

Starfish fire (in the top-centre-left)

Floating sparks and embers (a lot more randomised in the final)

What went well:

• Efficient communication meant we were on top of things and organised,
• Having regular feedback sessions (both in and out of the Weeklies) meant we fixed problems before spending too much time on them.

What could be improved:

• Having the same deadlines for all of us for the stages of production meant I spent a lot of time procrastinating-with-justification (I was done with my roughs quite early), a better method would be to have the deadlines be recommendations or to have personal deadlines too. 
• On a more personal note, I'm trying to learn to take any criticism, even criticism that doesn't seem constructive, as something to improve on (sure, I can't appeal to everyone, but I can try to understand why people think the way they do).

More rough animation... AND FX! - SPnU

I managed to finish the rough animation of the scenes assigned to me early, so I got to work on some of the fx work. I roughed out the fx of a few scenes which already had rough base animation, using reference footage for this was a godsend, since cigarette smoke acts in a very unique way and has a consistency that's a cross between incense and chimney smoke:

While compiling a lot of our roughs together, we realised the cut between scene 0 and scene 1 felt a little off or rushed, so we decided to add a scene 0.5 of Kilo getting out bed (we also cut out scene 15 because of the same reason). I decided to reuse a background (so as not to overburden Halli) and I got to work on animating it. The problem here was the complex perspective on this background:

So I did what worked for me in Days of Heinz Past - using a Maya previs, and thanks to Tisa's room model she made during the storyboarding phase, this wasn't too difficult:

This also helped with the pacing of the film, building up the anticipation and importance of the dreamcatcher even more.

Vertical Slice Changes - SPnU

When Rob asked us to do vertical slice we got right to it, only to realise we'd already done something similar - a colour test. Halli threw the character design of Kilo into a scene to see if the colours worked right and how shading might work but we hadn't yet followed the processes of the pipeline from start to finish.

Vertical slice by Halli (Kilo not to scale)

I also took a frame of a scene I'm working on from start to finish, to see how everything would potentially work:

I outlined all the brush setting and tool techniques so the final animation would be consistent

I then tested out different styles of shading, weighing their pros and cons:

Flat shading - Pros: Saves time, Cons: Less visually appealing

Background shading - Pros: Matches backgrounds, Cons: feels flat

Cel shading - Pros: Conveys mood well , Cons: time-consuming

 For now, we've decided to go with the middle option, background shading that doesn't move but still shows light and dark. This might change though, depending on how much time we have left.

Tisa also turned a rough scene into a vertical slice to test how the demon looked with the backgrounds:

Link to Tisa's blog post about this

We realised that the grey overlap outlines looked odd in motion, as they bobbed in and out of existence. And so I updated her character design to have completely grey outlines (we also tried black and white outlines, but grey worked best):

Then I put all the character designs into a universal template for consistency (Kilo designs by Damo):

Also did some book/prop concept sketches

What went well:

• Doing the vertical slice proved very useful as we were able to iron out the kinks beforehand,
• Efficient communication and teamwork meant we had 3 times the vertical slices we needed.

What could be improved:

• The vertical slice should've been done much earlier (what if we found that making SPnU was practically impossible after months of work??).