Sprint 02/14

ACCOMPLISHED:
I created a design for the city level and I started on the storyboard for some cutscenes.  I ended up including an old man in the level design, so I had to draw, trace and animate him so that he could be put into the level.

QUALITY:
Cristine really liked the level design and the old man animation.  The quality was good.

EXAMPLE:

EXTRA:
Technically, the old man was all extra work.

NEXT SPRINT:
I'm supposed to fix some animation that are making the guard not work correctly and I'm supposed to get in some more Suni animations.

Sprint for 02/07

ACCOMPLISHED:
I animated Suni.  I made sure she had all of her basic animation in for the demo we did.

These animations included:
Run
Sneak
Jump

I wasn't assigned to, but I also did these two extra animations:
Idle
Walk

QUALITY
Cristine helped me animate the jump, and she was very pleased with the animations I did.  Everyone on the team seemed to think the animations were good.

EXAMPLES:

EXTRA?
Like I said, I did do the idle and the walk animations even though I wasn't assigned to.

I also experimented with switching out some of her body parts to see how easy it is to changer her costume while still keeping the same animation info, so we don't have to reanimate her.  Turns out it's a lot harder than I thought it would be.  Giving her bare legs instead of pants was a lot of work.  I was still able to reuse the same animation data rather than reanimating her legs, but it took a lot of work to get them in there.  So I don't think huge changes to her costume are a feasable option.  However, slight changes, such and changing her color or ading a few extra lines, extra details, etc are very easy to accomplish.

NEXT SPRINT:
For my next sprint I am supposed to start a storyboard for the first little cutscene of the game. And I'm supposed to come up with a level for the city.

Sprint for Tues 01/31

ACCOMPLISHED:
I tweaked Suni's design a little bit.  Mostly, I removed her sleeves and added some ruffles to the skirt of her tunic.  I made a few other minor cosmetic changes here and there.  And the end result is a character I'm happy with.

I separated her body parts and sent them to Alice for tracing and coloring in Illustrator.  This is where we had a slight problem.  She was supposed to get them back to me so that I could have animations done by Tuesday.  That didn't happen.  She had some problems with the character design and wanted to change a few things.  Mostly, she didn't like the baggy pants that Suni wears.  I got my inspiration for those baggy pants from several pictures I've seen of anime-konoichi girls, so I thought they fit pretty well.  But Alice hated them.  She didn't even start inking or coloring until I drew up a set of bare legs and sent them to her.  By that time it was much too late to get any animations done.

Now, Cristine and I both like the ninja pants.  Alice hated them and said we should make a compromise.  We've already discussed having multiple costumes you can unlock in the game, so that seemed like a good compromise to me, but Alice really wanted to get rid of the pants altogether.

Needless to say, Cristine and I were a little bit annoyed because right now is not the time to be discussing the character design.  That was something that we mostly finalized last semester and tweaked a little this semester.  We asked everyone on the team if they liked Suni's design, and almsot everyone said yes, or gave some specific things to change (Jeff, for example, suggested removing the sleeves).  Alice kept suggesting that we try a bunch of different designs, but she never gave us any specific feedback about what to change until now.  And unfortunately, we are very behind, we need to start animating, and this is not the time to be changing her design.

Long story short, after this slight disagreement, we all decided (Alice included) that it would be better if I just take the characters through the whole process from drawing, to inking, to coloring to animating.  Having this multiple person workflow was supposed to speed things up, but so far, it has just slowed everything down.

On the plus side, Alice did do a very good job picking out colors.  I kept the color schemes that she picked out.

QUALITY:
Cristine was pleased with my new design.  She thought the ruffles skirt and the no-sleeves look was a great improvement. 

EXAMPLES:

EXTRA:
The first extra thing I had to do was draw a bare-legged version of Suni for Alice before she would start working.

I also had to re-ink the lines myself, because Alice didn't like the size of the feet and re-drew them smaller.  She also made a few mistakes on the eyes and other parts of the body, and on closer inspection none of her vector paths were actually closed.  So I had to re-ink everything.  But like I said before, Alice's color selections were very nice.  Especially the orange scarf.  It looks very iconic.

NEXT SPRINT:
For the next sprint I will finally be animating Suni!!! YAY!  Cristine will be helping me.  I have the AE file set up so it's very easy for multiple people to animate her.  It's also very easy to change colors and costumes while keeping the same animation data so we don't actually have to redo any animations.

I will be animating a Walk Sequence, a Run Sequence, and a Sneak Sequence.  And more if I have time.  Cristine will be animating jumping, falling, and landing.  And possibly pushing a pulling if she has time.