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.

Sprint in Denmark

Hi, it has been hard to get any internet or computer access here in Denmark.

What I did for this sprint:

I finalized the story for the game and sent it out to all members of the team.

I created a very rough placeholder jumping animation for our main character.

I traced out all of the different body parts of the main character for animating.  But it looks like I will have to do this again since I think we want to tweak her design again.

My posts will be more organized next time.

NEXT SPRINT:
For my next sprint I am supposed to come up with a few tweaked designs for Suni.  We will decide on a final design on thursday.  Then I can trace all her separate body parts and send them to Alice for coloring.  After that, I can finally start animating.

New Semester

The new semester has started.  No sprints yet.  Russell has told us all to come up with some level ideas and bring them in.  I have done that.

Very LAST sprint

Accomplished:
I created 3 animations for the guard character.  Walking, Alerted to Thief's Presence, and Sprinting.  I had a lot of fun making these animations too.

Quality:
Cristine liked my animations.  And Roger and Bob said the walking animation was good when they saw it in class.  Sounds like it was good to me.

Example:
Here are some spritesheets.

EXTRA?
I did 3 animations and only one ended up in alpha.  I'm counting the other 2 as EXTRA work done.  Cristine only really asked me to have a walking and running animation done.  So at the very least, the Alert animation (which was the longest), was extra work.

NEXT SPRINT:
Winter break, baby. See ya later.

Onto the Last Sprint for the semester

TASK COMPLETED:
I was tasked to get more finalized version of the story, flesh out backstories for the main character, and decided what story events will occur in each level of our game.  I did all of this and shared my writing with Cristine via google docs.

QUALITY:
Cristine seemed to like the work I did.  The story may change in the future as we discuss what I wrote, but for now, it works and should help to move the game along and keep the players invested in the character.

EXTRA:
I helped Cristine with the level design.  She's been designing puzzles for the level that will be featured in our alpha game.  I helped her think of new puzzles, helped to improve her existing puzzles, and helped her lay them out in a way that makes sense in the progression of the level (I hope).

NEXT SPRINT:
For this next (and last) sprint, Cristine wants me to finish the animations for the Guard character for alpha.

Getting close to the end

TASK COMPLETED:
I drew finalized art for the guard character so that we could test our our art pipeline. Drew was in charge of inking and coloring.  Cristine was in charge of animating.  And Alice was in charge of putting the animations into the spritesheet.

QUALITY OF WORK:
The work done seemed pretty good to me.  I like the way the guard looks.  And we were able to streamline our pipeline a little and work out any kinks.  It turns out that it only takes about two seconds for the animator to put the animation into a spritesheet.  So having Cristine send it to Alice for her to put it into a spritesheet would have been wasted time.  Also, Drew has a lot of work to do with backgrounds, and Alice is very good with inking and coloring in illustrator, so we figured out that for next sprint it would be better for Cristine to do the spritesheets in a addition to animating, and Alice can do the inking and coloring instead of Drew.


EXAMPLES OF WORK DONE:

This is the final character design for the Guard.  In the second picture all his body parts are drawn separately to make him easier to animate.

ANYTHING EXTRA:
I taught Cristine a lot of tips and tricks for animating in After Effects.  Also I taught her a very easy and quick way to get animations from After Effects into a sprite sheet.

NEXT SPRINT:
Cristine wants me to come up with story events that will occur at the beginning and end of each level.  She also wants me to finish creating character bios for all of the main characters in our game.  Also, if I have time I can help her do more animations for the guard.