Planning And Production
In this section, I'll be getting into the nitty gritty of actually planning out and producing this project. This section always ends up being my favourite part of each unit because this is the part where I'll get to actually make the project, which means writing, storyboarding, character designing (especially if it's for a new IP), asset building, voice acting, animating, composing, ext. So without further ado, it's time to finally get stuck into the pre-production phase.
Pre-Production
This is the stage where you plan out how you want your production to go, from what resources you'll need, the world building (especially for lore heavy works such as Lord Of The Rings) to even how you want to execute the story itself. The reason this phase in particular is so important is because this is where you make your plan of attack when it comes to the story you want to tell. But wait a minute, isn't that what idea development is for? Well you see the way I've come to think of it as of late, while the idea development phase is all about deciding WHAT kind of story you want to tell, pre-production is more so about deciding HOW you want to tell your story. (stuff like how you want the characters to act, whether there'll be dialogue, ext) So without further ado, let's finally get ourselves stuck in to all this, starting with...
Designing The Main Character
Ah yes, designing the main character. This particular step is really important, particularly when working on a new IP since those often involve making up new casts of characters for whatever story you're trying to tell, because without a unique design, your characters will have a difficult time sticking out from the competition no matter how unique they are when it comes to how you characterise them. This is especially important to do for the main character because they're the one who the audience will be spending most of the runtime following, plus it allows you to make designing a lot of the other characters much easier since they can then be designed using a lot of the same principles that were used when designing the main character. (thus making the work as a whole a lot more coherent in terms of design) Of course this time around, I only really have to worry about deciding what the main character looks like, because I already have Super Sheep and Ruff Bup ready to go. (mostly due to how they already had their time to shine in their respective FMPs) With all that said, here is where I would normally go into Pixlr and take a bunch of screenshots and outline my design process as I go, but I'm currently doing this at my house, meaning I'm on my hot new gaming PC, and recently I actually downloaded a fairly nifty piece of free screen recording software called OBS Studio that I want to give a proper test run after doing nothing but recording short test clips with it, of which only a minor fraction were actually successful, so without further ado, let's get going. (think of this as being like when I stream my Dreams evidence but for my computer this time):
So for this new character, I wasn't sure if I wanted them to be male or female, as there ended up being pros and cons to both. For example, if I made the character female, it would give her the unique distinction of being the first female protagonist I've ever created but it would mean I couldn't really do the voice for her because of the fact that I stink at doing women's voices since I'm a dude and dudes can't typically capture the subtleties of a woman's voice so I would either have to make her a mute or get someone else to do the voice. On the other hand, if I made them a male, doing his voice would be significantly easier since we'd both share the same gender, but he probably wouldn't stick out as much since all my other main characters are dudes too. (from Super Sheep all the way to Ruff Bup) Eventually, I settled on making her a woman since I think it'll be interesting for me to at least give the idea of having a female protagonist a whirl, plus I did mention that I could just make her mute anyway, since her still being under development would be the perfect excuse. (plus it's easier than finding someone who can do the voice for me)
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With that being said, besides the change in gender, there weren't too many changes when it came to my usual process, because as the old saying goes "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", so I still drew each part of her in the same order I do for every other character I've ever drawn (be they existing characters like Sonic and Mario or my own creations such as Super Sheep and Captain Cartridge) I did her head first, followed by the face, then the body and afterwards I did the arms and legs. With that being said, the main difference between those other characters and my new character, who I've decided to call Kyoto Kasuma in order to give her name a Japanese origin (since Kyoto is a real place in Japan and "Kasuma" sounds like the family name of someone you'd find in Japan), is that Kyoto has significantly more detailing than a lot of my other characters, mainly with her pants and face and the fact that she's officially the first character I've created to have an eye colour that isn't pure black.
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As for the type of character I'm going for here, I eventually landed on her being a bit of a street fighter (with no relation to the Street Fighter series by Capcom), so in order to get that bit of information across visually, I decided to give her things like ripped jeans, a bandana on her head, sports tape on her arms and even a few scuff marks, a black eye and bruised knuckles and knees to show that she has a lot of experience getting into fights. Her angry face and even her general pose are also meant to signify that she's also quite an aggressive character who isn't afraid to throw fists with anyone:
Overall, I actually quite like the design I ended up making here, as I feel it actually does a much better job at capturing what makes anime appealing than my anime design of Super Sheep (which I am officially naming Tyler Bartholomew since calling it "Super Sheep" just feels wrong to me and that design reminds me of those "OMG look at Tyler memes" you find on the internet) ever could, as I was able to add in extra details, plus a set of coloured eyes for once, without the whole design coming off as cluttered. (and she doesn't even look all that different from characters like Captain Cartridge for that matter)
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Although if there's one thing I could have done to improve this design, it would defiantly be adding a little bit of shading (mainly because I forgot to when actually designing the character), as it would make here a lot more anime like due to how most anime works tend to have a lot of shading going on when it comes to the characters, although I might just let that one slide this time because I still think this character design gets the point across fairly well.
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As for me using OBS Studio to record myself designing the character, I'd say making this change was a roaring success, as it more or less let me just get on with designing the character without stopping every so often to take a screen shot just to annotate what I'm doing (meaning my focus wasn't split between designing and gathering evidence at the same time since the video would serve as evidence), so that's a nice plus right there (although in this recording, I still ended up pausing to check on and change the music sometimes), and because OBS doesn't have a cap on the length of screen recording (unlike the free version of Loom), I was able to get everything done in one take, which really helped with the video's flow. Of course, to make sure this would actually work, I did go ahead and do a couple of test recordings with Chrome moments beforehand because I didn't want this to end up being laggy like my attempts to record Sonic Generations footage:
After going ahead and getting feedback from my friends and my tutor (they all seem to really like the design thus far) I think I'm finally ready to move on with getting the script written up since I've already got the other main character's designs locked down (in the case of Ruff Bup, it's because I made him back in my Final Major Project last year, where as I made the design for Super Sheep many years before setting foot in college)
Writing The Script
The script, sometimes also referred to as a screen-play, for any given project (whether they be a game, movie, TV show or what have you) is where you take the concept you'll likely have already outlined in the idea development stage and expand upon it by writing down everything that you want to happen in your story as when and where you want it to happen within the story, this includes the locations of various scenes, character actions and even who says what lines if you plan on having any sort of dialogue in your story at all.
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The reason the script is so important is because it gives the director and/or producers a chance to plan out how things are going to play out visually via storyboards, shot lists and even shooting schedules (said shooting schedules are mostly used in live action productions to assure that everything that needs to be shot in a specific location is all captured at once, since doing so is easier than making the production in chronological order) and it also gives the actors you end up getting for each role a chance to get to know their lines and even what they'll be doing throughout the production via rehearsal sessions (the actual "doing" part is again mostly reserved for live action productions, as animated productions only require voice actors to give the characters on screen unique voices while the animators can take full control of how the characters themselves move since none of them are real), because without a script, there's no plan for anyone to go off of, thus meaning that the whole production gets stalled and turns into a great big disaster. So without wasting anymore time, let's get scripting:
The first thing any good script needs is a unique and distinctive name, so for this one, I think I'll call it "Trapped in Development Hell" for the time being since the term "development hell" is usually used whenever a particular project seems to be stuck in development forever and ever (examples of this include "Duke Nukem: Forever" and "Foodfight!"), although this is the first name that popped into my head so I'll likely end up coming up with a (hopefully) much better one eventually.
In this screenshot, we've got a few important bits when it comes to how the script is formatted to highlight at once, as here we actually start off by establishing the location in a very specific format that goes "EXT (for Exterior)/INT (for Interior). [LOCATION NAME IN ALL CAPS]. TIME OF DAY. (which you'd replace with DAY, NIGHT, EVENING, MORNING, EXT)", the reason I assume most writers will go with this particular format for establishing scene locations is because it helps get the information of where and when the scene takes place without taking up more than one line in the script itself, which is important because each page (that isn't the title page) in a script generally corresponds to one minute in the actual production.
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Another important detail is that in the very next line, I've gone ahead and briefly described the location itself in order to give the potential reader a chance to visually imagine what the location itself could look like, which will be really helpful once the designers get around to designing it. (even though on this project I'll be serving pretty much every role like I usually do when it comes to these sorts of things)
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I also do something similar for Kyoto Kasuma only this time I'm describing both her appearance and a little bit of her personality, that way the potential voice actor (or in this case actress) will have a guideline as to what to base the voice of the character on (even though I plan on keeping Kyoto mute in order to save myself from potentially destroying my throat attempting to do an actually serious woman voice), the reason her name is capitalised here is because it's the first time the character comes into play in the entire production, and luckily I don't have to do this every time the character's name comes up in the script unless their name is being used in the context of giving them lines, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. As for why I'm specifically bringing up the Windows XP background, it's because I want the development dimension to take heavy inspiration from a computer, and I figured the Windows XP background (specifically the one known as "Bliss") would be the perfect inspiration for Kyoto's starting point (obviously I can't take too much inspiration or else it'll become a little thing called plagiarism, which is something that should be avoided at all costs)
Oh, we're at that bridge sooner than I expected... Ok, so remember when I said about character names being capitalised whenever I need to give them dialogue? well the formatting for said dialogue is completely different from everything else in the script thus far, as the character's name (which remember, has to be capitalised) is actually it's own separate line that you place in the middle of the page in order to make it more obvious that that particular character is about to say their current line of dialogue. Speaking of the dialogue itself, that actually goes into the line just below the capitalised name but it stays in the middle of the page in order to allow the reader to more easily associate the words with the character name, since they'll both be formatted in the same way. Oh, and as for that "O.S" that's right next to Ruff Bup's name, that's simply to signify that he's Off Screen (since "O.S" is shorthand for "Off Screen")
Sometimes, if you have a particular delivery in mind for a certain line of dialogue (like for example, you want your character to be angry when saying a specific line), you may also choose to put specific delivery instructions in parenthesis between the character's name and their spoken dialogue.
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Speaking of the dialogue itself, when deciding what you want your characters to say, you have to be very careful about making the dialogue seem as natural as possible, even in situations that aren't possible in real life. The reason for this is because if you manage to make your dialogue sound natural, the audience won't think of it as scripted dialogue at all, but instead they'll think the characters are really saying these things of their own volition. This can be achieved when the writer regularly tries to put themselves into the character's shoes and think to themselves "what would [X character] do and say in this situation?" Of course, for this to work correctly, you need to give each character a unique personality because if all the characters acted the same in every situation then the story wouldn't be very interesting.
The reason I'm taking a screen shot here is because of the fact that a lot of the location names I'm coming up here (I.E: "The Scripticus Zone") are temporary, since I'm coming up with them on the fly as I'm writing this, so I thought it would be a good idea to preserve at least some of these temp names here as a means to show that these things will change. (In fact, I've already decided to change the name of the place to the Scripture Zone instead since I felt that name would make much more sense than "scripticus")
Speaking of The Scripture Zone, for this place I'm thinking about taking inspiration from word processing software such as Microsoft Word, because as right now I'm leaning towards the Development Dimension being a big metaphor for a computer, thus making the earlier point essentially serve as a big desktop. The challenge at this point will be figuring out how to turn word processing into a more tangible location, especially since there are a ton of different approaches you could take with it, you could have it be a factory that produces the scripts that the characters collect or you could even have it be a big office building run by theoretical writing staff, although the approach I'm choosing to take is that I'm making it a white void full of letters since I want to make it a little bit more of an abstraction.
Ok, I think I may have run into a bit of a pacing issue here, as I'm currently on page four, meaning I'll have already wasted around three minutes establishing the world, meaning if I keep going at this rate I won't actually be able to have the trial go through all the actual stages of development. With that being said, I'll have to put the story onto a slightly different path than I'd originally anticipated.
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How will I do this, well currently I'm thinking about having the trial be more of a fight scene between both Super Sheep and Kyoto Kasuma instead in order to not only add in a little bit of excitement for the audience, but also so that I can establish the way in which both characters would approach a fight, as Super Sheep is a super powered cartoon sheep while I'm planning on having Kyoto Kasuma just be a normal human who happens to be really good at fighting other people, meaning this fight scene won't end up coming completely out of nowhere. With that being said however, I will have to find a way to make Kyoto win the fight without resorting to simply nerfing Super Sheep for the sake of a fair fight, although under these circumstances, Super Sheep would have an easy victory to his powers.
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Another thing I should point out is that whenever one character has multiple lines that go uninterrupted by anyone else, you're supposed to put a little "CONT" (which I assume is short for either "continued" or "Continuity" since they're the most sensible words I could think of that begin with "CONT" as their first four letters) in little parenthesises in order to show that the this is indeed the same character. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why this is done because I feel the fact that the same character's name is even there at all should suffice, but I assume it's done for when there's a heavy amount of action going on in a particular scene, meaning there's plenty of what I'm going to call "dialogue downtime" between a given character's lines. Speaking of the action...
When it comes to how to portray action in your script, you simply describe what the characters are doing in the same vain as you would when describing the location your scene takes place in while keeping it as breif yet informative as possible. (since if your descriptions take up entire pages, leadership may think the story is a lot longer than it actually is and I'm not really writing a book here, so the descriptions of each action has to be as brief as possible) Sometimes it is necessary to also describe how the character is feeling while doing these actions, as it gives both the actors and the people that are helping you make the product get a better grasp at the tone you want to go for in each scene.
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Another bit of information you can get across here is actually how the camera moves in certain instances, as sometimes you'll want to have the camera take a specific motion in order to get where it needs to go next in order to let the folks in charge of the camera know whether you'll need a cut, a pan, a zoom or what have you.
Whenever I need to have one part of a character's line get said to a specific character (or in this case, the audience themselves), I usually like to a direction using asterisks' in place of the parenthesise (because I'm putting these directions in the same line as the dialogue itself) just before the part of the line I want to be said to the specific character in order to remind myself which part of the dialogue needs to be said to what character. I haven't really used this much when it comes to changing who a character says their line to multiple times but I'd like to imagine it makes things much easier to keep track of when using the script as a reference point for the storyboards.
One thing I am toying with doing in this script is having Super Sheep call Kyoto "chopsticks" at least once in reference to how much choppier her movement will be than the other characters. Right now I'm mulling over whether or not this particular piece of dialogue would even be worth including because as much as I want Super Sheep to throw an insult that's based on her choppier movements, I don't want to end up in a situation where I accidentally pull another "Rick ****/Rick P. Rison" situation and end up with a little bit of racism on my hands (only this time with Asian people rather than black people), because on the one hand, the character of Kyoto is based upon Japanese anime as a medium, so the chopsticks comment might come off as a bit offensive. With that being said, on the other hand, the contrast of how much choppier her animation is than Super Sheep's combined with the fact her eyes don't really look like that of real Asian people's eyes (much like a lot of anime characters) should hopefully be enough to help the audience understand that when Super Sheep calls her "Chopsticks", he's referring exclusively to how the character moves, not the way they look. After mulling it over for a bit I've decided to keep this line in there for the time being, although if people do think it's racist I will gladly change it to something else.
Here, I've got yet another temporary name for the final location, which I've decided to call the "Edi-graphics Zone" as to avoid infringinge on Photo-Shop and Pixlr's trademarks, since Adobe (the current owners of Adobe Photo-Shop) and Inmagine (the current owners of Pixlr) would likely have trademarked "Photo-Shop" and "Pixlr" as a brand names respectively (although Pixlr was at one point owned by Autodesk), so I'll get sued if I use those names outright. This is very much unlike the broad idea of a script, which as far as I'm aware, especially given the fact I need to write them in order to get my cartoons off the ground, is in the public domain, so I can theoretically give it any name I want, as long as no-one else owns the trademark or copyright to said name of course. The reason I'm going with "Edi-graphics" is because I feel it gets across that this place is where the characters can get edited, plus it was a good excuse to combine two words in to one, in this case the two words were "edit" and "graphics."
With this line that Super Sheep says in response to his broken back, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to call back to my previous FMP, "The Grand Lamppost Heist" (which is actually where Ruff Bup comes from), where I originally wanted to have Ruff Bup get a horse which he would have used during the big chase sequence. I had to scrap that horse because when I attached Ruff Bup's model to it, the entire model ended up breaking and the only other version I was able to retrieve was heavily unfinished, so I decided to drop the horse entirely, but not without implying that it's back was broken by other characters I own (note how I never specify which ones)
As such, this line is meant to imply that Super Sheep was involved in the incident that broke that horse's back and caused Ruff Bup to do his chase scene on foot. I'm mainly throwing in this neat little callback for those that have already watched "The Grand Lamppost Heist" as well as myself since I think it'll be fun to hide that little Easter egg and those who pick up on the reference get to go "hey, I understood that reference" and thus feel more engaged with the cartoon, plus it allows me to further imply that these characters all share one big continuity without being too in your face about it. (since I also want the stories to be self contained enough to where you don't need to watch the adventures of one character to understand the adventures of another outside of the occasional crossover)
Now here's something I've been thinking about putting into the script on and off for a while, as while I already knew I wanted the characters to mention The Man That Makes at least once, what I really need to be careful of is making sure that the inclusion of The Man That Makes is only a brief one, especially considering how as a whole, the character of "The Man That Makes" is nothing more than a self insert for myself, since I created Super Sheep, Ruff Bup, Captain Cartridge, Guyzo The Mechanic, Billy Billso, Kyoto Kasuma, Detective Griswold and all the rest of them, but this is supposed to be about the adventures of the characters, not the guy who made them, so I figured this brief inclusion as a big booming voice at the end would be the best solution.
Now here's something I'm attempting for the first time, multiple characters saying different lines of dialogue at the same time. If you want have two or more characters say multiple pieces of dialogue at the same time, you have to put both characters' names (which remember, still have to be fully capitalised) on the exact same line while both pieces of dialogue will go on the line just below, with each line of dialogue being placed under the correct character's name of course. This would be significantly easier if I were using something like WriterDuet to write this script since there's a feature on there that allows you to do this automatically, but I'm using Word, so I have to do it manually instead. While this isn't too difficult, you can tell just by looking at this screenshot that it just doesn't look as good. (so unless there's a similar feature in Word I don't know about, I'm afraid I'm a little bit hosed here)
And just like that, I have now finished the first draft of the script already. I have to say, this was actually a much faster writing process than I was expecting, as I've somehow managed to finish this about a day before I'm actually due to start writing this, which usually never happens to me since by now I'm supposed to be wrapping up the research phase and preparing for this part, but since my tutor said I could move on to pre-production early, I was able to get this draft done before I'm even due to start.
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With this in mind, I'll have a lot more time on my hands than I realised, so I'll use a little bit of this extra time to gather a little bit of feedback from others before I start doing the storyboards. (since I usually like to use the storyboards as an opportunity to slightly alter and improve the story anyway, so having a little bit of guidance will certainly help me here)
We Interrupt This Program To Give You Yet Another Project Management Update
Alright, today begins the week where I'm actually supposed to move on to the production phase, but because of my tutor saying I've already done enough to move on, I decided to take the liberty of both designing the main character and writing out the script over the course of the weekend. What I didn't expect however was that I would end up getting it finished the day before I was due to actually start writing the script itself because similar works I've done in the past (I.E: Captain Cartridge and The Grand Lamppost Heist) would usually take around a week or two to complete at least, I'm not sure whether to attribute this to getting better at writing quickly or the fact that this anime-inspired work is a lot shorter than most average anime because on average, anime works tend to last around twenty two minutes.
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Also, after mulling over the "chopsticks" line, I've decided that ultimately, it's not going to be worth the risk of accidentally offending Asian people, so I'm changing it to "Chop-rocks" instead:
With that being said, it's time for me to move on to gathering feedback on the current version in order to see if I accidentally put in any plot holes that need to be covered up or even general improvements to the characterisation of the main cast and what not.
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program: Gathering Feedback From Others
So I put a PDF version of my script in teams in order to keep it a read only document (that way it doesn't get edited over the course of the day) and so far everyone who's checked it out seems to really like it.
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While I was gathering feedback, a friend of mine ended up mentioning how I could have included a little bit of the Japanese lexicon into the script. (specifically the word "Baka", which is the Japanese word for foolishness or idiot) While I personally feel it would make no sense for Super Sheep specifically to say the word "Baka" because he's more of a western character, so him knowing what a "baka" is while also not knowing why Kyoto's animation is choppier would create a bit of a plot hole.
With that being said, that particular discussion led to my other friends (the same people who helped me with the anime research previously) pitching in and suggesting to me about various anime fight scenes I could look into as sources of inspiration for my fight scene and one of them even sent me a small list to look into:
This particular list is going to prove quite helpful when it comes to how to frame my anime fight sequence, since all of these works are animated by Japanese studios who are more likely to know the medium better than western studios such as Disney or Warner Bros ever will.
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With that being said, there was actually a trailer for a new Dreamworks movie called "Puss In Boots: The Last Wish", the animation for which reminds me a lot of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse, especially during the scene where Puss In Boots is going after a giant monster when he suddenly starts being animated on twos instead of ones:
The reason I bring this up is because I want to draw a little bit of inspiration from this trailer for one of the shots in my FMP (the main inspiration will cone from the part where Puss In Boots is running across the rooftops after the giant monster because I find the visual composition to be quite striking due to the camera angle and the movements of both the monster and Puss In Boots himself:
Ok, I think I've got a pretty good amount of feedback from people when it comes to the script and everyone I've asked seems to really like it, although one of my tutors ended up giving me a particular piece of feedback about the formatting that may be the key to explaining why some of my cartoons have had longer run times than the script itself would suggest.
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You see, as it turns out when writing a screenplay, you're actually supposed to give the dialogue lines slightly less width than everything else, meaning the lines are much shorter than everything. This seemingly minor change would mean that a full two lines of dialogue could turn into four smaller lines of dialogue, thus potentially turning an eight page script into a nine or twelve page one (meaning what I've been calling an seven minute script may actually be a twelve pages)
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With that being said, I'm actually thinking about changing the title of the project from "Trapped In Development Hell" because that particular title is a bit of a hold over from when I wanted to tell a slower paced story that involved exploring more of the Development Dimension than the seven minute time window would allow for.
After coming up with a couple of alternative titles, which consist of stuff like "Kyoto Kasuma: Development Hell" and "A Brawl In Development", I ended up combining the two to become "Kyoto Kasuma: Brawl In Development", since the first title I came up with communicated what this is the story of Kyoto Kasuma while the second title communicated that the plot would involve a fight breaking out, so naturally if I combined the two, the title would end up being "Kyoto Kasuma: Brawl In Development", which communicates that this story is about Kyoto Kasuma and that she'll get into a fight at some point in the story.
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With that out of the way, I think it's about time I move on to...
The Storyboarding Phase
This is the phase in pre-production where you get to visualise your script via a series of sequential drawings that map out how you want the story to play out, where you want to put the characters relative to the frame and even what you want them to do on screen. The reason this phase is super important is because it allows the film makers to discuss how they're going to handle all the actors, set design, the special effects and even the equipment they'll need before the practical filming/animation process can begin, thus allowing everyone to be prepared, and more importantly within the project's budget, when it's time to move on to the main production phase. Likewise, if you don't get a good storyboard together and simply move on to production once the script is written, the film makers won't have any time to figure out how they're going to pull off the final production, thus leading to them throwing different solutions at the wall in order to see what sticks, thus making them more likely to go over budget, which will then make the studio really mad and unlikely to want to hire the crew for any future productions ever again.
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Before we begin however, I should establish that I'll be using the exact same storyboard template I've been using throughout this entire course, which is this six panel storyboard template I found on StudioBinder:
The reason I'm using this template once more is because it's helped me through many projects before (everything from Super Sheep in Convention F-3 all the way up to the trailer I did for Super Sheep in Holly-weird Hijinks) because I've become so familiar with it over the course of the past several years of my life, so it means I should be able to get this done relatively quickly (maybe two or three weeks tops), so without further ado, let's get boarding:
As we begin this process, you may notice that the quality of the artwork itself has deteriorated quite significantly, the reason for this is because by their very nature, storyboards are designed to be completed very quickly so that if there do end up being major changes in the storyline, the people in charge can quickly throw them out onto the proverbial cutting room floor and start drawing new ones just as quickly (with the old storyboards likely being preserved for the purposes of sticking them into a "deleted scenes" section on the bonus feature menu when the film and/or show comes out on DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K, 3D-Blu-Ray or even in places such as ITunes and Netflix)
Now here's something I've never included in a Storyboard before, the actual title sequence of the production (which I've officially decided to make the first panel because of something we'll get into later), the reason I'm doing it now is because I want to actually take a different approach to doing the title sequence than what I usually do. I say this because in the past whenever I'd make something like Super Sheep in Convention F-3 or The Grand Lamppost Heist (and what I plan to do for Super Sheep in Holly-Weird Hijinks), the title sequence tends to be more of a title card that acts as a prelude to whatever cartoon you're watching like what they do in Looney Tunes or even the more recent Mickey Mouse shorts.
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However, this time around I want to make the title show up as part of the first shot of the short itself, that way it'll feel a little bit more cinematic than all my previous works, plus it'll be a bit more anime like, as a lot of action oriented anime in particular won't always have title cards before the episode. (one notable exception to this would actually be the Dragon Ball Z series)
Something I only started doing quite recently is actually utilising the little shot box. The entire reason I never thought to do it until recently was because as far as I was concerned that was always what the shot list was meant for since that's a document dedicated to thinking about what shot types you want to use. The thing is, I always end up finding the shot list to be one of the most boring things to write because all I'm doing really is listing what shots I'll be using without much thought going into it. Eventually, I got so sick of doing shot lists that I wanted to find a way of skipping that particular step entirely, which is actually where this small shot box would end up coming in, as I can simply put my shot types in there and effectively have my storyboard also serve as a shot list, thus cutting the dedicated document out of the equation entirely and saving me a lot of boredom, so don't expect a dedicated shot list this time around.
Whenever one finishes up a panel, it's usually customary to have a little bit of text just below the image in order to explain to the viewer what's supposed to be happening since movement and animation is really difficult to do when you only have still frames to work with, although in my case, it's also necessary because the art isn't of as high quality as what I want to make in the final product since I'm trying to get this done quickly.
Ah yes, this is a reliable technique I've been utilising since my days in Creative Media Level 2. Basically, whenever I want to communicate how the camera gets from one panel to another, I usually like to have an arrow that leaps from one panel to another with a bit of text above denoting whether the arrow represents a cut, a pan, a dolly, ext. The reason for this is mainly so that I don't have to include it in the actual text describing what's happening in the scene, although as I keep saying every single time I talk about this technique, I'm not actually sure whether or not this is actually a common thing film makers will do or if it's a trick of my own invention. (almost to the point where I wonder why I never looked into it to find out and clear this up after all this time)
Coming back to our leading lady, getting across the fact she doesn't start with her hand on her head is going to be very difficult without the ability to give her movement, so in cases like this it's a good idea to employ what I like to call "motion arrows" in order to communicate that movement actually happens in this particular panel. Alongside the arrow I also sometimes like to have text that further explains what's happening so that the viewer isn't confused, the only times I don't employ the text is when I feel the movement arrows do a good enough job at getting the point across to whoever may end up seeing this, which usually just ends up being me anyway since I tend to solo all my projects regardless. (although recently I have had help and guidance for the research phase due to not knowing where to start on the subject of anime)
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Another thing you may notice throughout this process is the absence of any sort of background. The reason I don't tend to include backgrounds in my storyboards is because a lot of the time it's not necessary for me to include. The only time any other element that isn't the character comes into play is when the characters are directly interacting with something like a doorway, but even then it'll only be for the panels where the interactions are actually happening, as any other time it's not needed.
Returning briefly to the camera arrows I was talking about previously, whenever the next panel turns out to be below the current one, I like to just have the arrow wrap around to the other side of the page PAC-MAN style (I always seem to compare it to PAC-MAN for some reason) so that I don't end up wasting precious space drawing the line going the long way around since then, there would be a lot less room for other camera arrows to do their thing effectively. Oh, and if it seems like I'm suddenly reflecting on my entire time at college at any point, it's because this is actually the final project I'll ever get to make at college before moving on to university, so on top of reflecting on this project I'll also start reflecting on my time at college as a whole whenever it becomes appropriate to do so.
Sometimes, one can end up changing their mind about the placement of certain elements within a particular panel, much like I've done with this name tag Kyoto finds on the ground. In cases like this, it's a good thing the select tool exists, as this handy tool can actually help save a lot of precious time that would have been spent re-drawing the entire thing all over again by simply allowing me to select which part I want to move and then moving it without affecting everything that's in the exact same layer as it, which is helpful for me since I do all my batches in different layers (batch one is one layer, batch two is another layer, ext.)
It even proves useful for copying and pasting stull over from one panel to the other, thus saving more time
And we have batch 1 finished up already, I predict that this project will take at least as many batches to cover the whole thing as The Grand Lamppost Heist (so around 16 batches or so) because both cartoons are around about a similar length. I also ended up realising that I haven't actually put the entire final script up here yet, so I think I'll do that real quick before I forget (even though when doing this professionally, this would be a really bad idea because then it leads to spoilers)
The Full Script
Kyoto Kasuma: A Brawl In Development
By Sam Gordon
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EXT. A ROLLING GREEN COMPUTER HILLSCAPE. DAY.
We start off in a land of rolling green hills inspired by the default background from Windows XP as we meet our main character, KYOTO KASUMA, a rather aggressive anime woman who isn’t afraid to throw fisticuffs with anyone she comes across and also dresses like a street fighter, as she slowly wakes up and finds a name tag on the ground that says “Kyoto Kasuma”.
She then quickly puts it on and looks around for points of interest, and then ends up hearing voices coming from beyond the hill.
RUFF BUP (O.S)
Wait, why are we back here again?
SUPER SHEEP (O.S)
(Angrily)
YOU IDIOT, I told you a THOUSAND TIMES! the man that makes told us to go find the new guy and see whether or not they’re worthy!
RUFF BUP (O.S)
Oh geez, I’m sorry Supes, I didn’t realise
Kyoto then decides to climb the hill in order to investigate the source of the chitter chatter that’s going on
SUPER SHEEP (O.S)
(Angrily)
Well maybe if you took your head out of the 1930s every once in a while, you’d be a lot smarter!
Kyoto then makes it over the hill, only to find that the strange voices had come from none other than SUPER SHEEP, a rather cocky, blue, pint-sized cartoon sheep with super powers and a yellow cape, and RUFF BUP, a black and white pint-sized cartoon ant-dog creature straight out of the 1930s with a pair of shorts that has a big “R” on the front and a more polite yet mischievous demeanour, who are currently arguing with each other.
RUFF BUP
So where do you suppose the new guy is?
Kyoto then goes over to investigate the pair.
SUPER SHEEP
I DON’T KNOW RUFF! PERHAPS THE NEW GUY’S-
The two dudes stop bickering once she alerts them to her presence.
SUPER SHEEP (CONT)
Oh... I take it you’re the new gu... uuh, Girl, right?
Kyoto hesitantly nods her head as if to say “yeah, I think?”
RUFF BUP
Well in that case, the name’s Ruff Bup, Sis.
SUPER SHEEP
And I’m Super Sheep. the greatest super-hero the world has ever seen. What’s your name kid?
Kyoto then looks at her name tag and then points at it, as Super Sheep and Ruff Bup both look at each other, then back to Kyoto.
RUFF BUP
You ain’t much of a talker, are ya. That’s alright sista, Supes and I started off silent too, C’mon. Your existence trial is a-waitin'
A portal to the “scripture zone” then opens and our heroes step inside.
The portal closes.
EXT. THE SCRIPTURE ZONE. DAY.
Our heroes then step out into a white void world that is full of piles of characters you’d find on a computer keyboard and the sky is filled with those very same letters.
As our heroes are walking through, Super Sheep then takes note of how much choppier Kyoto’s animation is than his and gets a little bit annoyed.
SUPER SHEEP
Uuuuh, sis? I don’t think walking is supposed to be this... Choppy.
Kyoto stops and stares at Super Sheep angrily as if to say “you got a problem, punk” as she threatens to punch him.
Super Sheep also stops while Ruff Bup keeps going towards the Backstory Station
SUPER SHEEP (CONT)
Woah there chops, cool your jets, I’m just sayin’. You should try and like, get some inbetweens or somethin’. Oh, and while you’re at it, maybe work on finding your style of humour. No-one wants to sit around watchin’ cartoons that aren’t funny.
Kyoto then gets really mad and decides to try and beat up Super Sheep.
Our hero then manages to evade her punch using his Super Speed in order to gain a little bit of distance.
SUPER SHEEP (CONT)
Right, that’s it! You wanna throw down? Because I can throw down, human!
Kyoto then cracks her fists and gets into a fighting stance as if to say “bring it, shrimp”
SUPER SHEEP (CONT)
Tell ya what, I’ll make this one quick for you.
Super Sheep then decides to charge towards Kyoto at great speed.
Before he can get his punch in however, Kyoto quickly grabs a big exclamation mark and then whacks Super Sheep with it, knocking him backwards into a pile of letters.
Super Sheep then uses his super strength in order to get out of this predicament.
SUPER SHEEP (CONT)
Ho-ho, *to the audience* this one’s got some bite, folks.
Super Sheep and Kyoto then charge towards each other as Super Sheep manages to uppercut Kyoto into the air.
Super Sheep then decides to fly into the air in order to continue wailing on her.
Ruff Bup then walks back into frame with Kyoto’s backstory in toe.
RUFF BUP
Alright Kyotes, I’ve got yer back-story right he- *realises Kyoto and Super Sheep are both gone* uuh, Kyoto? Supes?
Ruff Bup then looks up and finds the two jumping from letter to letter as they keep their fight going.
RUFF BUP (CONT)
HANG ON TOOTS, I’LL RESCUE YA!
Ruff Bup then springs into action as he climbs onto a letter that starts flying into the sky.
EXT. THE SCRIPTURE ZONE: THE SKY. DAY.
Kyoto is currently chasing a flying Super Sheep down while dodging his laser vision and jumping between giant letters, numbers and punctuation characters.
Eventually, Kyoto runs out of keyboard characters to jump between as Super Sheep hovers above everything.
SUPER SHEEP
I bet the ability to fly’s suddenly looking real good now, huh chop-rocks! Now let’s see how you handle a delectable dose of ULTRA OMEGA LASER BEAMS!
Super Sheep then decides to charge the “ultra omega laser beams”
Kyoto goes to turn back, but a bunch of the keyboard characters disappear before she can reach them, leaving her cornered on a full stop.
Meanwhile with Ruff Bup, he manages to make it just above the action, where he witnesses Super Sheep charging his ultra omega laser beams.
Ruff Bup then thinks about what to do next and then gets a brilliant idea.
He then whips out a handheld mirror and backs up in order to give himself a running start.
He then runs towards the edge and makes a great big leap of faith.
RUFF BUP
HEY KYOTES! CATCH DIS!
Kyoto then sees Ruff Bup as he throws his mirror towards her.
As Ruff Bup falls, a portal to the “Edi-graphics Zone” opens up and he falls in.
Kyoto rushes towards the mirror, just barely catching it by the skin of her teeth using her index and middle fingers.
She then quickly gets back up as Super Sheep fires off his ultra omega laser beam.
Using the mirror, she just about manages to block the ultra omega laser, causing it to bounce right back at Super Sheep.
The laser makes a direct his on the unsuspecting Super Sheep, causing him to fall unconscious.
As Super Sheep is falling, Kyoto jumps down to follow him so that she can finish the fight.
As they’re both falling, another portal to the “Edi-Graphics Zone” opens up and our fighters fall in.
EXT. THE EDI-GRAPHICS ZONE. DAY.
We’re now in a world inspired by software such as Adobe PhotoShop and Pixlr that has a greyish sky that’s full of various tool icons (I.E: Pencil, Liquify, eraser, fill, ext)
Our three sentient beings fall out of the portal shortly after one another despite Ruff Bup falling into his portal long before everyone else, Ruff Bup comes into view first, followed shortly by Super Sheep and Kyoto Kasuma.
Ruff Bup finds himself falling into a vat of coloured ink that’s being carried to the fill tool icon in the sky.
Super Sheep then manages to slowly regain consciousness
Before he can do anything however, Kyoto decides to use Super Sheep in order to break her fall, thus breaking his back entirely.
The two manage to create a massive crater in the ground.
Kyoto manages to slowly get up and recover from falling down so high.
SUPER SHEEP
(muffled)
That was pretty clever, chops-a-lot. *attempts to get up* But I’m gonna win this fi- *his back breaks* OW! Now I know how that horse must have felt.
Kyoto then grabs Super Sheep and stares at him quite angrily.
Just before Kyoto can punch him however, she hears the voice of Ruff Bup coming from outside the crater.
RUFF BUP (O.S)
KYOTES!
She then looks up as a now colourised Ruff Bup slides his way into the crater and gives Kyoto her new backstory as she and Super Sheep stare at him like something’s wrong.
RUFF BUP
what? *looks at his glove, which is now yellow* HOLY CANOLI! WHAT’S HAPPENED TO ME?!
THE MAN THAT MAKES (O.S)
Congratulations, Kyoto Kasuma. You’re action packed shenanigans with Super Sheep have earned you your rightful place as the lead character of your own Intellectual Property.
Super Sheep and Ruff Bup look at each other with confusion.
RUFF BUP SUPER SHEEP
Way To Go Sis! Are You Kidding Me?!
THE MAN THAT MAKES (O.S)
Well Supes, I did have something different planned, but I couldn’t squeeze it all into a 7 minute window for the audience, so this'll have to do.
SUPER SHEEP
(sarcastically)
Oh, how clever.
THE MAN THAT MAKES (O.S)
You want me to fix your back or not?
SUPER SHEEP
Sure I do.
THE MAN THAT MAKES (O.S)
Then can it! *To Kyoto* Now then, where were we?
The Man That Makes opens a portal to the cartoon world.
THE MAN THAT MAKES (O.S. CONT)
Just step through this portal Kyoto, and your real story will begin.
Kyoto then looks back at Super Sheep and Ruff Bup.
She goes towards Ruff Bup and quickly pats him on the head before she goes through the portal into the cartoon world as the screen flashes to white.
THE END.
Mistake Rectified, It's Back To The Storyboards Now
Returning to the whole each batch is it's own separate layer discussion, the reason I do this is because I don't really want to open up a blank storyboard template every time I complete an entire page of storyboards, since doing that would mean having to spend time re-typing the title of the project, re-naming the background layer and all that mess, so I just have all the batches done on the one page to cut down on all the hassle and simply focus on doing the boards themselves.
Whenever I'm doing storyboarding, another method I use to try and speed things us is that I try and have the script open in another tab so that once a particular batch is done, I can highlight that part of the script so that I can immediately know that I've already covered that part of the story, thus meaning I can move on to the next stretch of the story without having to fuss over whether I've already done that part.
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Another thing this screen cap shows off is that I usually like to use this as an opportunity to re-think some of the dialogue and try and improve upon it in small ways so that it all seems more natural when I do the final product in the end.
Ok, so here's something I never thought I'd have to do, actually give some of the text a smaller font size. The reason I'm doing this for the first time ever is because Super Sheep's big line actually ended going over the top of the the panel just below the current one. (although after using my brain to look at this in retrospect, I think I'll just split the line over two panels instead)
In this shot, Kyoto Kasuma is supposed to be really far away from the camera, so I actually decided to draw her as a stickman here because drawing every single detail at a small scale is next to impossible because there's a lot less space to work with between each of the lines that make up the character, this is actually a trick that is often used in a lot of 2D works for the very same reason (although unlike what I'm doing here, they actually have professional standards to maintain since they need to end up on TV and/or the internet)
Alright, Batch 2 is complete! My ideal method of doing storyboards is to do at least one batch per day since then I get to come at each batch fully refreshed and ready to roll, but knowing that this is a college project, I sadly don't think I'll be able to afford to do this if I actually want a chance of making this project into a reality.
You're probably wondering why I decided to put in a box with arrows pointing towards it in this wide shot of a rather crude looking Super Sheep and Ruff Bup. Well you see, since the storyboards don't have the luxury of being moving images (unless it's an animatic, which I usually don't tend to do much even though I should) , this box effectively becomes the only way to depict the camera moving within that panel. Why the non specific description? It's because that usually depends on which way the arrows are facing, as if they're facing towards the box, much like what's going on here, then it means the camera has to zoom in thus making the box represent the camera's end position. Likewise, if the arrows were pointing away, it would mean the box ends up representing the camera's starting position
And batch 3 is all done and dusted. Don't worry about the random Knuckles picture, that's just part of a little Sonic related in-joke. Doing the low and high angle shots did prove to be a little bit of a challenge since I don't usually draw that kind of thing anyway, so the challenge came from doing the low angle quickly enough to get this batch finished while also making the intention of the image clear enough for people to realise there's a slight angle going on (luckily I have the shot type listed so that the intention is made a little bit more obvious)
Since I decided to make Kyoto a human being, she'll be significantly taller than both Super Sheep and Ruff Bup much like how Captain Cartridge was taller than his crew back in Operation Compact Disc. Unlike that particular short however, I want to give all the characters an equal amount of the spot light, so certain shots may end up presenting what I'm going to call "the Melman conundrum" because if I want all three of their faces to be in the shot at the same time, I'll either have to place the camera far away, or I'll have to do what Dreamworks did with the character of Melman the giraffe from Madagascar and simply have him duck down a lot:
I think I'll try and go for the second approach whenever I can, since unlike Melman (the giraffe who's the namesake of this entire conundrum due to how much taller he is than everyone else), Kyoto is a human being, so I won't have to worry about bending her neck downwards so that her head can be in the same shot as the other characters.
And batch 4 is complete already, so far things this process doesn't feel very tedious to do unlike a lot of my other projects. I think the reason for this might be because I'm getting each batch done relatively quickly, where as with other projects it could be a real drag to do each batch
Batch 5 is now officially complete. The hardest part now is actually going to be finding new stuff to screen shot, since I've already gone ahead and covered pretty much the grand majority of everything I feel is screenshot worthy (I say "the grand majority" because sometimes when I say I've covered all the screenshot worthy moments, I inexplicably find something else to screenshot and the whole cycle repeats)
Here's a little something I'm trying out for the first time, I'm putting in a piece of text to signify that there's a transition effect happening between the final panel from one batch and the first panel of another. The reason I'm doing this is literally just so that I have something to screenshot for the sake of evidence because I'm getting desperate and don't want to repeat any points of evidence I already captured.
When it comes to traveling shots, I usually like to put a T just before the shot type in order to denote the fact it's a travelling shot rather than a static one (you can really tell I'm getting desperate for evidence now)
Yo, batch 6 has officially been completed. I don't know if it's just me, but I think I've actually gotten a little bit faster when it comes to doing the storyboards, since it hasn't even been a week since I started and already I'm on page 4 out of 8 (meaning I'm halfway through the script), if I keep going at this rate I'll be done before I know it. (not something I can really say about the storyboarding phases of other projects)
Another potential solution one could turn to when trying to solve the Melman Conundrum is that you could always just have the shorter character stand on a few boxes in order for both characters to be at eye level with each other. What's great about this simple yet effective solution is that you don't have to put the camera at a far away distance from the characters, thus meaning their body language is more likely to come through clearly, and I also don't have to force the taller character to bend downwards as much since the shorter character can simply stand on a couple boxes and be good to go.
And with that, batch 7 is officially finished up. To be honest, I'm starting to find it a bit difficult to find unique ways to essentially say "oh, I finished batch x", so don't be surprised if I start repeating a few later down the line
We did it, Batch 8 is officially finished up, I anticipate that Super Sheep's first person shot will be particularly difficult to make, as cutting to and from it might end up giving the audience a little bit of whiplash if I'm not careful, especially since I haven't done moving first person shots like this before. (the only first person shot I have done was stationary)
And Batch 9 is in the bag, I'm about to reach the double digits and already I'm near the bottom of page 4, I do actually have a unique finisher for Batch 15 should it ever come along but you'll have to wait and see if there even is a batch 15 to begin with
One nifty feature I sometimes take advantage of when it comes to the arrows is that whenever a character's path needs to end at a specific point, I'll put in a little line at the end where the arrow's pointing, as if to say this is where the character will hit a proverbial brick wall in their path
We're officially in the double digits already, as Batch 10 done! I don't know if it's because of the speed at which I'm doing this or even an attitude shift, but I haven't really been feeling the storyboard fatigue I felt from doing stuff like Captain Cartridge and Super Sheep's cartoons even as I'm out here doing multiple batches a day instead of doing the one batch per day method (if I weren't doing this project in college, I could probably afford to use that method due to having more time than anticipated, but I digress)
We Interrupt This Program To Give You Another Fun Filled Project Management Update
To be honest, I didn't think I would make it all the way to batch 10 by the time this week would roll around but now that I'm here, I'm more confident than ever that I'll be able to get the storyboards done before next week rolls around, especially since I've now gotten all the way up to page 5 on the script in terms of coverage
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program
This is the shot where I want to take a bit of inspiration from the upcoming (as of writing) Puss In Boots: The Last Wish movie. The thing is, if I use the exact same shot as that movie, someone at DreamWorks might end up seeing the cartoon and showing it to their legal team, which will end up getting a lawsuit off the ground. (I know this scenario isn't likely by any stretch of the imagination since I'm just an amateur at this, but I don't want to take the risk) With this in mind, I'll be altering the shot so that Kyoto is running towards the camera rather than away from it in order to make sure DreamWorks can't sue me and steal the rights to my characters.
Batch 11 is finished and in the bag, the hardest part of this one was thinking of how I could take inspiration from a shot in the new Puss in Boots movie without outright stealing the shot outright because you never know what a film company might sue you for these days.
Here's something that's exceedingly rare in Storyboarding, a nice splash of colour in certain parts of the panel. The reason I'm putting a little bit of colour in this panel is so that I can easily signify that Super Sheep is charging up his ultra omega laser beams without having to label it, plus the colour draws the viewer's attention right to the characters eyes because they're the only thing with any semblance of colour in the whole panel
We've got batch 12 all done and dusted, the use of colour to denote the laser beams being charged was certainly the most interesting part since it was actually something new to evidence via screen-shots. Other than that there wasn't much of note that happened
Batch 13 is officially taken care of, I'm beginning to suspect that my estimation of this taking 16 batches to complete might have been a solid low ball, thus opening the door for Kyoto Kasuma to take the record for the longest storyboard I've ever done (surpassing The Grand Lamppost Heist in terms of the amount of batches made for it)
For this project, I'm actually thinking attempting to do a split shot, which is where the camera is focusing on two different perspectives at the same time. The reason I'm thinking about doing this is because I think it'll be a nice challenge to try and pull this effect off, plus it'll make this work just that little bit more anime like, as shows like Yu GI Oh will sometimes employ this technique in order to have multiple characters reactions on the screen at once no matter the distance between them
Batch 14, I've officially finished up batch 14. I anticipate that the split-shot with Kyoto and the Mirror should provide a fun challenge since at that point, I'd only have half the frame to work with for both parts of the shot
Batch 15! Give it up for batch 15! SpongeBob references aside, I'm actually still enjoying this particular process, which is weird because by around batch 10 (if that) I would have gotten sick and tired of doing this process. Maybe it's because it's going by faster than I anticipated
And we're finished with batch 16, but the cartoon isn't fully storyboarded yet, which means now I'll officially be breaking my personal record for most storyboards done for a single project. Originally for this batch I wanted to have it so that Super Sheep was out of focus on the fourth panel, but after trying every blur option Pixlr had to offer, nothing seemed to work how I wanted it to, so I just decided to leave it as it was and just put in a camera direction instead
Batch 17 is in the bag ladies and gentlemen, batch 17 is in the bag, if I keep up at this rate I'll be done before the week's over, thus giving me plenty of time to make everything I need before production begins
We're almost there, Batch 18 is finished. Just one or two more batches are left and then I can call this part complete
Batch 19 is done, we've only got about one more batch to go and then I'm done
Well folks, this is it. The final batch is finished, which means now the storyboarding process is officially done and dusted.
So How Was The Storyboarding Process
If there is one thing I can definitively say about the storyboarding process for this particular short, it would be that this was certainly the quickest it's ever gone by, as it only took me six days to complete all the boards, which is not something I can say about other projects in the past where I needed multiple weeks just to get them all done. (which seems a bit counter intuitive considering this script is a whole two minutes longer than The Grand Lamppost Heist was supposed to be)
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As I was ploughing through all the storyboards, I was honestly expecting it to start getting tedious after a while considering I more or less ditched the idea of doing one storyboard batch per day (since this is a college project after all and not a personal one) right from the get-go. However, something rather peculiar ended up happening instead, because for some reason, I actually enjoyed doing the boards for the entire duration of this section. I don't know if it's because I've gotten faster at this or if it's because of a genuine change in attitude when it comes to this part but you know what, regardless of the reason as to why I seemed to enjoy it more, I personally welcome this change, as the more enjoyable something is the better.
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When it comes to doing an animatic, I'm actually thinking about doing one this time around since I've technically got the time on my hands and it'll serve as a good excuse to come into college on Thursday before I move on to the asset production and animation phases where I'll essentially disappear from college for a while (the latter of which will probably end up going into the practical skills section because it seems appropriate), although I'll be doing the asset list before the potential animatic because tomorrow is one of my days off
The Asset List
Ah yes, the asset list. This part might seem rather arbitrary (and as boring as I often find this part), it is actually quite an important part of the creative process because it allows you to keep track of what assets you need as well as what you already have. These assets can come in the form of locations (be they real or fictitious), music (of both the licensed and original varieties), sound effects (whether it by foley or existing sound effects) and even the characters. (be they humans, animals, robots, aliens or some combination of each type)
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The reason it's so important to even have a list for this sort of stuff is so that producers can effectively prioritise working on creating, or if something already exists, getting, whatever assets haven't already been accounted for yet. In my case, I've already got the models for both Super Sheep and Ruff Bup from when I made their cartoons (although the Super Sheep model was originally meant for a personal video game project that hasn't really taken off) but I don't have a Kyoto Kasuma character model at the moment since she's the newest character out of the lot, so I know I'll need to make her relatively soon.
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Without an asset list on hand, the people in charge of making the project and handling the assets would have to keep track of what they do and don't have on hand manually, which is a little bit more likely to lead to mistakes such as duplicate assets being made or even stuff going unaccounted for until the last minute, which can really put a damper on productivity (and thus lead to either a delay in production or worse, the whole project getting cancelled entirely, with it's only hope of coming back being if enough people end up demanding it to where the studio think it'll be worth another shot)
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With that out of the way, l'd better get this done so that I can move on to the more exciting bits
You may notice that instead of going for one big list of assets, I've decided to split it into several smaller lists that each specialise in one type of asset, I.E: one for characters, one for locations, ext. The reason I usually like doing this is just because I find it much easier to track than if I put all the assets into one large list, as here I can simply scroll to the smaller list and tick each box as I go along.
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And I'm pretty much finished here, I don't know how to show the whole thing in a single screenshot without it becoming unreadable so here's the document instead:
While this asset list was still quite quick to produce (and not to mention boring), this did end up taking the longest out of any asset list I've ever done because I'll be needing a slightly larger volume of objects than I usually use in these cartoons, so the asset production phase should be interesting to say the least.
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If you download this document, you may have noticed that I decided to try and add in a nice sprinkle of humour in order to make this part less boring for myself, but it didn't improve the situation very much if I'm being honest with myself.
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With that said, I've not got much else to say here due to how simple these lists are to put together when you get down to it (just put the tables in, type the things you need in each respective table and you're pretty much done), so with that being said I should address an idea I had.
An Idea I Had Last Night
So I've been thinking about how I'm going to pull off the animatic, since the last time I did it was for a live action skit where a crazed Sonic fan (who may or may not be based on me) harassing a Paramount employee about Sonic's old design from the then upcoming Sonic The Hedgehog movie:
As I was thinking about it however, I ended up thinking to myself "hold on, what if I just did some concept art for the various locations instead." Yes this means I'll be skipping out on the animatic phase once again (much like I seem to do every single time) but the more I thought about it, the more I started to wonder if I would even need an animatic phase to begin with. I know this sounds rather cocky of me since animatics are especially important in animation, but I always somehow end up doing just fine without having any animatics despite wishing I'd done some every single time I make a project both in college and in my personal time.
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As such, this time I'll be skipping the animatic by choice rather than due to a lack of time because I feel doing concept art for the three locations will help the actual production of said locations in Dreams PS4/5 much easier in the long run since I'll have a frame of reference that's more concrete than just my imagination. To be honest I never even thought I would talk about a lack of time as something I don't have since usually I'm doggedly trying to stay on track (or even ahead if possible) but thanks to my tutor saying I can move on to production early, here we are, so tomorrow will be a day of making concept art instead. (of course, there's going to be the matter of what I'll do if I finish all the concept art before the end of the day, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there)
Concept Art
Now here's something I haven't had the chance to do for a long time, as the last time I had one of those phases was when I was remaking my Captain Cartridge cartoon two years ago. (oh where does the time go)
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For those of you that don't know, concept art is a lot like a storyboard because it's where artists get to plan out how certain areas, objects and/or characters are going to look before getting to work making the finalised version. Unlike the storyboards however, the focus isn't on how the story will play out so much as it's about where (and in some cases, when) the story will take place and what the characters themselves will look like throughout the story, so you've really got to give it your all as the better the art work, the more clear the concept art will be. Of course, you can still be a little bit rough with it but unlike a storyboard, you actually want to put a little bit more thought into the art itself.
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So without further ado, let's get rolling:
I'm choosing to start off with the Scripture Zone first since I think that'll be the easiest part to work on (since at the end of the day it's mostly a void with keyboard characters both on the ground and in the sky and a backstory station plopped in the middle
My main source of inspiration for this particular location is the 2007 version of Microsoft Word, as I personally think that particular version is the best because it doesn't require the internet to use (plus I've used it for the longest time, so my biases are kicking in on this one), as such, I want the sky to match the old area outside of the main document, which was actually slightly blue compared to the new version's plain grey colour:
This combined with all the random keyboard characters that populate the sky should hopefully make the Scripture Zone much more interesting to look at in general
Next, I'm drawing the Backstory Station because if I draw the centre-piece first, I'll be able to frame everything else around it.
When one draws something that the audience is supposed to see, it's important for said something to stick out from the background as much as humanly possible, and because I decided to make the sky slightly blue, it means the backstory station would need to be slightly red since blue and red are contrasting colours.
Next, I'm going to use the text tool in order to add in the individual characters in the sky since the text tool allows me to just type in a single letter, number and/or symbol and have it appear rather than having to draw each one out manually
As for the keyboard characters on the ground, I'm choosing to just draw them as big black blobs since it would take too long to draw each individual character in both piles (especially since you won't get to see all of them regardless
And I have done my first piece of concept art already (see if you can find the hidden Sonic reference), this one was quite easy to make since all I had to do was colour in the sky, the ground and add in a few extra flourishes in order to make it more interesting to look at it. In fact, drawing the Backstory Station proved to be the most difficult part, not because of any actual difficulty, but because of the fact that it simply took the most effort to do out of the bunch.
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With that said, I think I'll work on the Edi-graphics zone next because I actually want to do something interesting for the sky and ground:
For this, I'm giving the whole thing a chequered pattern because that's what comes up whenever you start making a transparent image by default. The reason I'm doing this is because if I don't it'll just be an uninteresting grey void with nothing of note in it.
Now here comes the easy part, drawing up the tool icons I want to put in the sky because when drawing them, I can just go ahead and use the actual tool icon as a reference point to draw from within the software itself (meaning I don't have to go out and get the reference material on the internet)
Ok, now the Edi-graphics zone is finished, at first I wanted to make the tool icons to be a plain grey colour but then I decided to go ahead and give them a splash of colour instead so that people will have an easier time seeing them against the grey chequered background. Speaking of the grey background, once I added in the grey chequered sky, it ended up making the ground much more difficult to see than I ever thought possible, so I had to add in a bevel effect just so that the ground would stick out from the sky.
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With that, I'm a little bit concerned about how quickly I'm managing to get these done because then I might end up with nothing to do for the afternoon. (I know that being ahead is usually a good thing, but if I get too far ahead now I'll end up hitting a metaphorical brick wall eventually) With that in mind, it's time to move on to the most colourful of the three locals, the hillside Kyoto starts her journey at.
First thing's thing's first, I've decided to make the sky using the gradient tool because in real life, the sky gets darker as you get higher, and I want the audience to think that Kyoto is on earth before hitting them with the reveal that this is actually the development dimension so that the audience will be more likely to remember this particular short in the long run.
Another thing I want to clear up is that I don't want this concept art to be from the same perspective as the original Bliss image because at that point, I may as well just use the original image and claim it's concept art. The other reason for the change in angle is because I also want to make it so that we actually see the computerised part of this area (that way I can have the reveal be a bit more subtle)
In order to have a seamless transition between the natural side and the computerised side, I've decided to do two versions of the same hill (one of which is actually a duplicate of the other), fill them both with different colours (with the computer version also having a grid effect inspired by the Tron movies) and then erase one version using the eraser tool's softer settings in order to give off that gradient effect. I plan on doing the same thing to the sky as well but it might be a bit of a challenge to do the whole "two skies" trick in Dreams PS4/5 itself
Ok, so I'm experimenting a little bit with adding an effect to the black sky and I really like the way the scanlines effect so I think I'll keep it in
Ok, I have now finished up the computerised hill-scape, meaning I've now officially finished the main round of concept art before lunch. I actually quite like this one because it's a lot more colourful than the other two were and the fading between the normal hill and the computerised area beyond because it creates a bit of a contrast between the two areas while also revealing to the audience that this is actually a development dimension.
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With this in mind, I'm now going to have to find something else to do for the afternoon because I've pretty much got everything I want to finished and I can't start producing most of the assets until I get back to my house.
A Little Bit Of Voice Acting To Kill An Afternoon
Ok, so I've figured out how to effectively kill most of the afternoon and better refine Ruff Bup's voice specifically. Basically what I did was that I went off to go do some voice recording for Ruff Bup in order to see if I could pull off the voice I'd been thinking of giving him for a good while now. The voice itself is heavily inspired by the likes of Curly from The Three Stooges and Jabber-jaw from... Jabber-jaw, as I feel that particular voice lends itself really well to Ruff Bup since he's stylised to look like he's from the 1930s:
As such, my job ended up being to mimic the base sound of Curly's voice while trying to think of a twist that could make Ruff Bup stand out from both Curly and Jabberjaw. Needless to say, I ended up getting very carried away with it:
I only intended for this to be an interaction with Ruff Bup and Super Sheep, but I also ended up roping Hugo, The Night Pig and Captain Cartridge into the mix as well, The reason for The Night Pig being there was because I'm thinking of changing his voice after I saw a clip of a video by Vinesauce's Vinny where he does a British Mario and Wario:
Hugo and Captain Cartridge meanwhile were thrown in just for kicks. (since they and The Night Pig aren't going to be in this cartoon)
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Uploading the videos to YouTube (albeit as unlisted) turned out to be quite an effective way to kill most of the afternoon because of how long they took to upload, but now that I'm back at my house, let's get down to business.
Asset Production And Gathering Day 1: Getting The Party Started
Now we're really starting to get into the good stuff, as here I get to actually start making and finding everything I'll need for my project in Dreams PS4/5, there's a really good line in Star Wars: The Force Awakens that sums up my feelings on this part and the animation phase that goes something along the lines of "Chewie, we're home" (which is funny because I'm doing this at my house, so I'm home in both the literal and figurative sense), it's just a shame that this'll most likely be the last time I ever get to do this in Dreams (unless I get around to making Super Sheep in Hollyweird Hijinks after this is done, but if not this really will be the final time I use Dreams academically)
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Putting all that aside, let's get on with what happened today.
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You may have noticed that I'd already taken the liberty of starting the collection before doing this live stream since I figured that would save a little bit of time down the road, even if the only things I'd put in it where Super Sheep and Ruff Bup. Speaking of, I decided it would be best to try and get a good chunk the stuff I didn't make together just to get it out of the way as quickly as possible, including the very hands I'd been using for all my characters since I feel that putting the creators names in the streams isn't going to cut it anymore (not that it ever did looking back, as I would be left having to explain the hand situation to others whenever I'd show the cartoons), so I'll be putting them in the credits with everything else like I should have done long ago since without those hands, I probably wouldn't be where I am today. (hopefully this'll clear up that particular situation)
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Doing that was quite easy since all I was doing was bouncing around the Dreamiverse searching for stuff to put into the collection I'm putting together so that I have everything I need in one place. (and yes, this does mean this project is likely disqualified from this years Creative Origins showcase, but I'm not really aiming for that anyway)
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Once that was done, I then decided to get started on the leading lady herself, Kyoto Kasuma, since she's the main character in this whole operation and needs all the attention I can give her. Luckily, I'd already went ahead and made a female base puppet before hand after making a model for Audrey the Astronaut from my yet to be utilised "Micro-trans Dimensional" IP (meaning once again, stuff I did in my off time is coming in handy), so I decided to use that in order to save time, especially since I've got myself a new approach when it comes to the characters, which I've been experimenting with by tinkering around with the models for characters such as Super Sheep and Captain Cartridge, where I basically make their clothes by cloning parts of the body, making the clones oh so slightly bigger, attaching the clones to the original body parts and then making any necessary adjustments in order to make it clear the characters are wearing clothes. (for example, the clone I make of the top part of the body would have a hole cut into the top in order for it to look like the top of a shirt, effectively facilitating the characters getting multiple alternative outfits in one model) Because of this, I thought it would take a lot more time than it did to put the outfit together, but to my surprise I was able to get it all done within the first part of what ended up being a two part stream. (mainly due to dropping off my brother and father at some football match) It's just a shame I won't really be able to utilise this much outside this project given the fact it's one of my last projects I'll likely get to make in Dreams, and if I don't end up producing Super Sheep in Hollyweird Hyjinks by the time university rolls around, it'll be THE last one I'll ever get to make in Dreams. (which is a pity since I only started doing this recently and there's still so much potential I'll be leaving untapped)
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As for her belt and headband, since those are supposed to be tied on, I decided to use the same approach I did with The Night Pig's belt where it was a doughnut shape (also known as a "Torus" if you want to be formal about it), except I also added in a few paint strokes for the parts that are supposed to stick out of the knots, that way I could give them physics and help with the illusion that these are supposed to be bits of fabric she has around her waist and head respectively.
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Afterwards came the face, which is currently unfinished as the modelling session got cut short once my dad and brother came back and wanted the TV (the hair is also unfinished since I didn't include the two chunks that protrude from her head but I can always handle that tomorrow), the main differences thus far ended up being in how I handled the eyes since not only would they be blue, but in the storyboards I also gave her star eyes in order for her to better fit with her anime peers:
I also decided to give her a black version of her normal eyes just in case I ever end up finding time on my hands to use Dreams to make personal animations where Kyoto is in Super Sheep's domain.
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Moving on from her eyes, I actually decided to do something slightly different for her mouth, as I decided it would be interesting to put in a gap between two of her teeth, the reason for this is to further imply that this is a character who gets herself into a lot of fights (since someone would have ended up knocking one of her teeth out during a fight), although one particularly funny idea I had while doing this was to have it so that she would end up buying false teeth that keep falling out during her fights so that she can scam the tooth fairy and score small profits every now and then, but that's for later storylines.
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As of right now, she's currently unfinished, so I may need the next day in order to finish her up, although I'm quite surprised with how much I managed to get done today, so I'll take it as a moderate victory I suppose.
Asset Production And Gathering Day 2: Continued Efforts, A Bit Of Colourization And A Backstory
Today, I managed to finish work on Kyoto Kasuma over the course of two parts (the reason I split it into two parts this time around was because I went shopping between both parts), the main bulk of the effort was spent working on getting everything ready (attaching each mouth and eye change to key frames, making it so that Kyoto's mouth moves with the camera and so on and so forth), adding the two tufts of hair on top of her head, which I did by just cloning the hair from the back and fiddling with the physics ever so slightly because I was lazy and the tuft I had was perfectly suitable, and drawing the scuff marks on her shirt multiple times due to taking different approaches each time (and not really being happy with any of them until the one I eventually ended up with where all the marks on one part of her body are technically one painting)
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After I did that, it was one to modifying the Ruff Bup model I already have in order to allow it to be able to be colourized at the flip of a switch. To do that however, I actually had to make it so that the top part of Ruff Bup's shoes and gloves were separate from the rest of his arm since when I did the model originally, those were just part of the lower arm sculpt. Luckily, doing this was as easy as cloning the lower arm/leg pieces, deleting the actual "arm" part of the model, deleting the white part on the original leg model and then re-attaching said white bits to the original lower arm/leg pieces so that I could colour those rings without affecting the arms and legs themselves. (I also had to do the same thing with the upper legs due to Ruff Bup's shorts) For the most part, colourizing Ruff Bup was quite simple, as all I had to do was select the part I wanted to colour in and just use the coat tool in order to tint each part of the model whatever colour I wanted and I was pretty much done. The same can't really be said for the main part of his gloves because if I did then the black parts would just cease to exist due to how tinting works in Dreams, for those I once again had to use the power of cloning in order to make the base of the gloves yellow via spray-painting, that way I could re-add the black bits afterwards without any hassle, and to make sure I didn't have to do it twice, I simply made a live clone of the cloned base so that when I did something on one hand, it would be replicated on the other hand. (thus saving effort on that front) As for the R on his shorts, I decided to go ahead and add in an orange version manually by adding an entire new frame to the existing painting, which I'm just now realising I probably didn't even need to do, as I just remembered that tinting also works on paintings too. (so that was a bit of effort wasted on my part) The only part I didn't choose to colourise was his mouth, as I felt it would be a bit too much effort to go through just to be able to make his tongue red at the press of a key frame (since I would end up having to delete the mouth on the other side of the face, make new frames that are basically the same as some of the existing frames but with a red tongue and then I'd have to re-do the mouth orientation again, which I don't feel like doing this time around), yes this does mean that coloured Ruff Bup is going to look a bit weird, but I could just have it so that he holds his breath when he falls into the vat of coloured ink.
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After that came the easiest asset thus far, Kyoto's backstory. The reason this one was so easy to make is because all it involved was stacking a few thin cubes on top of each other in sculpt mode and then using the spray-paint tool to write "Kyoto Kasuma's Backstory" on the front, although the main thing I needed to make sure of was that the prop was big enough for Kyoto and Ruff Bup to hold. Luckily, even that part was easy thanks to me being able to just bring in the two character models and sculpting the backstory script around Kyoto's hand. (because making objects is easy when you have a scale of reference to draw from)
We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Yet Another Bombastic Project Management Update
Ok, so far I'm still quite a ways ahead of myself in terms of time, as this week I'm still supposed to be on the storyboarding phase (which I finished up last week), but now I'm currently finding and producing assets for the actual project, which I didn't think I'd be doing until at least halfway into this week because I never expected to be able to move on after doing a little bit of new research for this project. I'd say the early departure to the script writing phase has had something to do with this because while I'm one to move right on to the next task the moment the current one is done (that way I get lots of time at the end), I didn't ever think for one moment that the tutor of all people would ever actively encourage me to move on to the next part after I asked what else I could do for primary research while waiting to go back to doing experiments. (needless to say it was all quite a convenient turn of events)
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Hopefully over the course of this week I can get all the assets done so that the animation phase next week (since I'm technically still on half term that week), although realistically speaking I'll probably end up working on assets well into next week, so once college starts up again I don't expect to be able to see my friends again for an additional two weeks (which is a darned shame, but luckily, I seem to be producing and gathering the assets at a relatively quick rate, so as long as I don't end up going out too much I should be done very soon)
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program: Asset Production And Gathering Day 3: Variety Hour And A Half
Today there was a good mix of both finding assets and making new assets, a lot of which were really easy to produce but we'll get there later because the first thing I did was add in a few extra sound effects into the mix (mainly a few Dragon Ball sounds and even Media Molecule's collection of instruments they made for easy access when I'm doing the music later on), this was easy to do since again, all I was doing was searching for stuff I could use and putting it into a collection so that I won't have to search for it later on.
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Afterwards, I decided to go ahead and make the portal prop, which as I predicted earlier, was easy as pie to make, since all it consists of is a really thin cuboid I loosened up, made glow, added some effects to and then made it so that I could change it's colour between grey, blue and white via keyframes. Overall it was nothing special, as the only note worthy part was that I did have to use Kyoto as a scale of reference to make sure that the portal itself was tall enough for her, Super Sheep and Ruff Bup to be able to walk through.
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After I finished the portal, I did the painted letters, which were quite easy to make since I could just make each letter a new frame using paint mode's animation features so that I didn't have to make 52 individual paintings (since I did both upper and lower case versions of each letter), in fact it was so easy I also decided to throw in every number from zero to nine (since I can then use those numbers to make bigger numbers), punctuation characters and even things such as opening and closing brackets. The surprising thing about all this was that I was able to keep it all under the 100 frame per painting limit since I was expecting to just hit that limit eventually but I only ended up with 75 frames at the end of it all.
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The next set of assets was also made using the paint tools, as I decided to create a few tool icons using the same "each thing is actually a frame of animation so technically this is all the same painting" method I used with the keyboard characters except each frame took longer to do since I also wanted to add a little colour to everything, that way they'd not only be easier to see but they'd also bare less of a resemblance with their respective icons from Photoshop or Pixlr (although I did still use a reference image in order to decide which icons to include), I mainly stuck to the ones for the tools I actually use since I figured those would be the best fit for people like me who want to continue making cartoons in the future. As for the select tool, I decided to go ahead and make it resemble the default mouse curser on Windows computers (much like the one I've got at my house), thus turning this into a double reference.
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Afterwards came the vat of coloured ink, where I just decided to re-use my truck model I made for the Super Sheep City Escape Music Video back in year one of this course (which makes this the third time that model has appeared in my works, as I also re-used it in The Grand Lamppost Heist), since I didn't really feel like making a new model for the carrier of said vat. (all I really did here was change the colours around using the hue tool and then I removed the wheels and trailer) Speaking of the vat itself, I simply placed in a cylinder with a hole in it and extended it ever so slightly so that it covered the entire backend of the truck, after I did that it was just a matter of getting another cylinder for the ink itself and then I was pretty much good to go after I tweaked the material properties of the "ink" cylinder.
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Once that was finished, I capped things off by producing the black and white mirror, which was simple enough to make, as all I had to do was get the basic shape in 3D, cut the whole thing until it looked flat and then I duplicated the model in order to add in the "mirror" portion of the mirror. (I just had to make sure to delete the base so that the mirror part would fit with the rest of the model) Much like with the portal and Kyoto's backstory, it really helped me to have a scale of reference so that I'd be able to model the object to be more or less the correct size.
Asset Production And Gathering Day 4: Variety Hour And A Half 2: Electric Boogaloo
Much like what happened yesterday, I managed to make a variety of assets this time around. The main difference between today and yesterday is that this time, I was able to get everything done in one stream rather than having to split it into multiple parts. (albeit at the cost of potential Sonic The Hedgehog 4 references in the title)
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All that aside, the first things I worked on were the anime speed lines and the anime speed background, this particular job was quite easy to pull off thanks to the paint tools in combination with the surface snap guide and even the cloning tools in the case of the speed background. I was able to actually make both assets at the same time by simply having the first line be a special kind of red that switches shades as I'm painting (much like I used in the original experiment), the reason I did that instead of just doing a black line is because I could then tint the speed line black and then once I was done with that, I could just re-use that line to form the basis for the speed background itself and from there I can change the colours of said background using the hue tools. (and because of the approach I took, I was able to colour each part of the background individually, meaning the walls could be blue while the floor was black for example) While I was working on the speed background however, I decided to experiment with the opacity slider to see if I could use that to add a little spice to the effect and I ended up liking it quite a bit, so I decided to keep it that way. The only other thing I could really say that I think is note worthy here is that I did end up deciding to make the speed background a bit bigger so that I could have all the characters fit in it in case I ever wanted to do a wide shot in the future using this effect (I know this isn't likely given the circumstances, but you never know where you might find the time)
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Next came the explosion effect, which I know was going to be somewhat tricky because of the fact I would have to use the paint tools in order to pull this off but I didn't think it would be as hard as it ended up being. The first thing I did was modify the default platform so that there was a structure jutting out that would be the general shape of a mushroom cloud explosive so that when I used the paint tools with surface snap, mirror and kaleidoscope guides enabled, that way I I could turn one paint stroke into sixty four (since the mirrors create two of everything and adding a kaleidoscope guide doubles that amount to four and the maximum kaleidoscope setting is currently thirty two), the painting strokes would simply run across the whole thing no problem. The problem is that the first time I did this and made additional clones in order to cover any holes that got left in the effect, I forgot to remove the origin stroke I set down so that the mirrors would actually work the way I wanted them to, so I had to start all over again since I didn't feel like deleting those strokes individually.
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After that particularly difficult bit was over and I was able to delete the default platform for the second time, it was all downhill from there in terms of the actual difficulty, as now I could just experiment with the properties of what I'd created until I was happy to call it a day and I even managed to keyframe in a more traditional orange explosion that can be used for Super Sheep's laser beams when they hit something.
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Hey, speaking of Super Sheep's laser beams, the next thing I worked on was Super Sheep's normal laser beams. This was actually very easy to make since all it was was just a modified anime speed line asset I made glow and then I messed around with the colour until I ended up landing on a nifty orange colour I really liked, so I decided "right, that's it, Super Sheep's lasers are orange now, don't question it" (I'll probably still make the ultra-omega lasers red though)
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After I finished work on that I did yet another easy asset, as all I did for Kyoto's name tag was steal the existing name tag from my model for Guyzo the mechanic, made an extra large live clone of it, that way I'd have an easier time writing the new name on it while also having said change affect the original (and not to mention really small) version of the model. At first I had trouble getting the model to stop disappearing once I deleted Guyzo himself but the moment I realised it was because I had the appearance tied to a key frame it was just a matter of making the name tag visible again. I originally considered including Kyoto's entire second name on the tag, but after finding I didn't have enough room I simply settled on "Kyoto K." instead.
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The final asset I worked on today was supposed to be the laser sound effect, but after I started playing around with the "memory pad" instrument, I ended up finding that it made a really good charge up noise when I played a note and dragged it over to one of the effect fields, so what I ended up with were two really good sound effects for when Super Sheep is charging his ultra omega lasers. (one for the initial charge up and the other to loop the high point of said charge) As much fun as I had making this asset however, I'm still down by one set of actual laser sound effects (mainly the laser fire sounds), so I'll need to do those alongside the voice acting tomorrow.
Asset Production And Gathering Day 5: A Wee Bit Of Voice Acting
As the title implies, today was solely focused on me doing all the voice acting for Super Sheep, Ruff Bup and The Man That Makes (who is just a cheap self insert), the reason I chose to do this today is because I knew that it would be the last day my brother and father would be in Portugal because the football match (which Liverpool won) had already ended the day prior. As such I didn't want to let this golden opportunity go to waste, as they'd be back in the night.
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With that in mind, how'd things go? I'd say they went quite well all things considered, as I was able to get it all finished in about an hour due to the fact I decided to do all of it at once unlike with Captain Cartridge in Operation Compact Disc where I tried to do the voices in the respective scenes before eventually giving up on that approach entirely and doing all the voice acting at once.
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What I ended up liking about the voice acting this time around was that I could more or less do as many takes as I needed to, since I knew the boys wouldn't be back until the night time where I'd be more likely to be done with it (despite most lines only taking a couple of takes while other lines only ended up requiring a single take) and I'd already mentioned about it to my mother so I was able to have the living room door closed the whole time. (that way my Duelsense controller's microphone would only pick up my voice and nothing else) I also quite enjoyed being able to get into the minds of both Super Sheep and Ruff Bup when doing their voices, as it's something I never really got to do in a vocal sense when it comes to these college projects. (apart from the occasional grunts and growls the characters would do here and there and Super Sheep and Captain Cartridge saying "We're Dinny Done Here Folks" at the end of their respective cartoons) Part of the reason it was particularly easy this time around is because not only did I do it all in one go without feeling the need to rush through everything, but I also had the storyboards on hand to read off of when I was recording the lines. (even if I did change a few things here and there and I also ended up stumbling a little bit) The most surprising thing really was that I managed to keep myself under the 150 audio recordings per day limit and the 75 minute limit for total recording time per day (luckily, those will both reset by tomorrow), although this was probably due to me dismissing all the failed takes I wasn't happy with. Now that the voice acting has been taken care of, it's time for a part of this process that doesn't involve Dreams PS4/5 for once.
A Part That Doesn't Involve Dreams PS4/5
Whoa, now that's a plot twist if I ever saw one. You see, before I went off to lunch, I'd decided to go ahead and record those keyboard noises I put on the asset list, and I've been waiting until now to actually show them off here because I want to edit them in audacity so that they're louder:
Now that that's been established, it's back to the screenshots for me:
Ok, so first things first, I've got to actually record the audio from the video itself, I'm doing this on my new fangled gaming PC and not the one I recorded sound effects on previously, but luckily I've already managed to figure out how to do stereo mixing on this machine ages ago so it won't be a problem
Next I'm going to use the amplify effect in order to make the keyboard noises louder so that Dreams is more likely to actually record them when I try putting the sound effects in tomorrow
But just in case this isn't enough, I'll also be including Knuckles saying Oh No as a safety measure
I'm also deleting as much dead air as I can so that I can guarantee that the overall length of the sound clip is under 30 seconds (that way there isn't any sort of cut off when I reach the 30 second per recording limit)
Well that wasn't very difficult, but alas, the part that doesn't involve Dreams PS4/5 is now officially over and now I need to get those sound effects into the game so that I can turn them into a drum set (except Knuckles, obviously)
Back To Dreams PS4/5: Asset Production And Gathering Day 6: Turning Keyboard Sounds Into A Drum And Making Locations
Hey look at this, we've got ourselves a three part stream today folks! Today I managed to take those keyboard samples I recorded yesterday and then turn them into a nice Drum kit I can use when composing the music later on in the project. Recording the sounds themselves didn't prove to be too difficult as I just used the same cable I used to import a lot of other sound effects into Dreams (I.E: The Lego Batman Movie and Who Framed Roger Rabbit voice lines), although that pesky buzzing noise managed to make its way into the mix, and no matter what I tried (from plugging different ends into the controller and my phone to turning the volume up and down), I couldn't get it to go away sadly.
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After I finished that up, I decided now would be a good time to start doing the locations I'll need for the actual project. (and coincidentally, each location would end up getting it's own part) I decided to handle each location in chronological order because I feel taking that approach is for the best when it comes to something like this. (especially since it's animated) As such, I started off with the "Bliss" inspired hill-scape, which will hence forth be known as the "Blissful Hillside", since I ended up coming up with that name at the last minute. Overall I had a relatively easy time putting the whole thing together, as all it is when you break it down is an area where one side is a sunny day while the other is a computerised space, although one thing that I would end up having to figure out is how I would even pull off the blending of the two elements, since in the concept art I show it fading from one to the other, and as a friend of mine ended up pointing out when I showed it to him, it gives off the idea that we're looking behind the scenes. I'll admit, I didn't even think about this when doing that originally, as the idea was to have it be this is what it's like beyond the desktop background, but it was still a brilliant interpretation. (this is why it's important to have friends with perspectives that differ from yours, whether it be in a minor way or even a major way) As for how I managed the two skies effect, I decided it would be best to use a few black text boxes that stop at the point of transition via a set of text displayers, although looking back I think maybe taking advantage of the sun and sky gadget's "horizon definition" slider and then just move the sky itself would have been a better option since then I get to keep the fade in effect from the concept art. (I'll be sure to try that out later)
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The hillside portion, while it was fairly easy to make once I found the right size for the base ground thanks to the fact I can blend shapes into other shapes with the sculpt tools, did prove to be a bit more difficult to get a good grasp on, as I hadn't really made a lot of hilly landscapes before, as most of what I've made takes place on flat ground (be it a SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive inspired space-ship, a black and white area, a city or even outside of a super hero convention), and even the hills that are there (which would have mainly been seen in Super Sheep in Hexo's Exos) mostly exist to hide the end of the world.
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Before I actually made the hills however, I decided to clone the ground and make it purple so that I could get to work on the behind the scenes side of things. The yellow grid (which I later decided to add a bit of animation to since I figured it would spice things up a little bit) was achieved using the Paint tools, where all I did was make one line and then clone it across one axis, then for the horizontal lines I did the same process all over again. Afterwards I then cloned the ground so that when I show it in the final product, you can't see the edge of the world (which is also obscured by the text displayers come to think of it)
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Once the hills were finished, it was the same process as before, where I would clone the ground until I was sure the camera wouldn't show off the edge of the world (although to help with this I put a few extra hills near the edge just in case.
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The next location on the docket was the Scripture Zone, which is a flat piece of white ground with piles of keyboard characters strewn about the place where the backstory station is located. This one proved to be a little bit more difficult than the Blissful Hillside, the reason for this isn't because of the piles of keyboard characters believe it or not, as I could simply use a method I found on YouTube in order to create natural looking piles where you activate physics, let the game run until all the involved objects stop moving, disable physics and then grab the group in order to set that point as the new origin (meaning they won't snap back into their original place once you reset time), although doing this did take many attempts and a lot of trial and error on my part since Dreams does have a limit on the amount of physical objects before things start breaking and sometimes I would accidentally exceed this limit, so I had to figure out what the right amount of physical objects would be for the pile to look nice and big.
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Of course, that only ended up being half of the problem, as due to the amount of stuff in the pile, the gameplay thermometer shot up quite considerably, so to fix this I decided to only stick clone the pile I made a few times so that the game wouldn't end up having an aneurism about the amount of stull I put down. Eventually I also decided to go ahead and add in a few 2D piles in order to create the illusion of there being more stuff in the background than there is in reality.
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The backstory Station was easy enough to make, although I'd initially made the wall a bit too thin, so I decided to thicken them up using a couple extra cuboids. (that way making the door and window holes would be much easier) While we're still on the subject, (and since this bit of news has now become relevant) guess which asset I managed to fix up earlier:
That's right, I actually managed to fix the horse's back! Turns out what caused it to break last time had something to do with the physical properties of the group that contained the middle part of it's back and Ruff Bup sitting atop it, as that ended up causing the whole model to break, but now that the model's been fixed I can actually start using it for stuff.
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I originally wanted to give Captain Cartridge a cheeky cameo by having him run the backstory station, but after giving it a bit more thought, I figured it would make more sense of the horse ran the backstory station instead, since it never got used the first time around and I don't want the model to go to waste.
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Once work was finished on the Scripture zone, it was time to move on to the final area I'll need, that being the Edi-Graphics Zone. This area was actually the most difficult to put together for one simple reason, that being the chequered pattern on the floor, walls and ceiling. Don't get me wrong, the sculpture itself was quite simple, as all it consisted of was a bunch of cubes that alternate between two shades of grey. The difficult part was actually getting the pattern to work when I cloned the sculpture, as the pattern seemed to make one of the squares appear longer, so after even more trial and error (more than what I had to go through for the piles of keyboard characters), I eventually figured out that I actually needed an extra layer on the underside with each block being offset by one in order to fix this issue and after a few more attempts (the second to last of which ended in the game almost having an aneurism again due to too many objects) I finally managed to make it work and make it nice and big. For the walls and ceiling, I simply cloned the floor because there's no way I'm doing all that work five more times and then I added in the image editing tool icons in the air, after that I started to make the crater that would appear when Kyoto uses Super Sheep to break her fall, but I ended up getting cut short after my dad wanted to watch the TV. (yup, they're back again)
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I should mention that I'll be off to my nan's house for a sleepover tomorrow, and Saturday I'm having the family around, so I'll have to squeeze in three days worth of reflection on Sunday.
Asset Production And Gathering Days 7 & 8: Finishing The Edi-graphic Zone, Sweeping Up The Remaining Sounds and Getting Started On The Music
Ok, I know I said I wouldn't do this until Sunday, but getting kicked off the TV has given me a chance to knock this one out before everyone comes, so I'm taking it.
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Yesterday was mostly about finishing up the Edi-Graphics Zone, which wasn't too difficult to do because making the crater was a breeze thanks to the sculpt tool, the multi-shade colours and the soft blend feature, and also getting all the remaining sound effects done. (things like the non-ultra-omega laser beam noises and the [portal sounds) Before I moved on to the sound design however, I decided to go back and see if I could use the horizon definition feature in the sun and sky gadget in order to get a proper fade in effect, but then I ended up finding out that the black void that shows up at the bottom of the sky cannot be moved (at least in any way I know of), so I decided to fiddle around with the sky itself to see if I could get anything out of it only to get something that was close to what I wanted but wasn't quite what I was looking for. Eventually, I decided to turn to the text displayer tweak menu for help and noticed that the "texture" tab actually had fading options, which finally allowed me to achieve the "two sky" effect I was looking for to begin with. (hoorah!)
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After that was taken care of, I then moved on to the remaining sound effects, the laser noise and the portal sounds. I decided to see if I could pull this off by simply re-mixing the existing keyboard asset and after messing around with a few filters in order to make it sound more laser-y and less... Keyboard-y I was able to achieve the what I feel is a pretty good laser sound. I then remixed that laser sound, made it ping pong (which means when it reaches the end of the looping point you set it reverses back to the beginning and vice versa) and touched a few things up in order to make the portal noises (both opening and closing), meaning the keyboard sounds I recorded ended up giving me three assets for the price of one.
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As for today meanwhile, the reason it wasn't as long as my usual streams is because I was doing this while waiting for the new Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga to install (from what little I got to play of it I had a blast), so after that finished I decided to go play the game (since technically I'm still on half term and can do whatever I want until college comes back into session)
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The only things I got done were quickly adding the name tag to Kyoto's model as a togglable feature and remixing my "We're Dinny Done Here Folks" stinger so that it would fit with the new IP, as the game finished installing itself and finished applying what I assume is the day one patch for the game (since the game came out on April 5th and I got it on April 9th) while I was composing Kyoto's theme but I'm getting ahead of myself. When I was re-mixing the stinger, I wasn't sure whether to go for a traditional Japanese sound with bits of digitization going on or a full on digital sound with lots of synths n' stuff. I decided to just go with the fully digital sound since this project is supposed to mark the development of Kyoto Kasuma herself, and as such, I felt it wouldn't make sense to give her the Japanese sound right away since the whole thing takes place in The Development Dimension, not Japan. After that was done I got started on composing Kyoto's theme so that I could go ahead and establish her leitmotif for when I do the rest of the soundtrack within the next week. For those of you that don't know or who just need a quick refresher, in terms of music, a "leitmotif" an idea or sound that is repeated throughout the soundtrack, these can be used to let the audience know who's on screen, how they're feeling emotionally and generally enhance the tone of the situation.
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Tomorrow I'll continue working on the soundtrack (particularly Kyoto's theme since it's currently unfinished), since the sooner I get that done the sooner I get to start animating the anime inspired cartoon.
Asset Production And Gathering Days 9: Finishing The Edi-graphic Zone, Sweeping Up The Remaining Sounds and Getting Started On The Music
Today I simply finished work on Kyoto's main theme and that was pretty much it. The main issue I ran into involved the last note of the melody being off beat ever so slightly so I had to take care of that quick and then I was more or less on my way to victory. The only other thing I really added since yesterday (besides length) was a more traditional bassline (despite the instrument being digital), the reason I'm noting the bassline is because unlike a lot of my work where the bass and melody are just clones of each other with slight alterations, here the bassline was actually created from scratch after I finished up the melody (granted, I still made both of them up on the spot, but I haven't the foggiest idea about how writing sheet music works), so that is something for me to be proud of at the very least.
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Tomorrow I'll continue working on making the rest of the soundtrack and finally getting ready to start the animation process.
We Interrupt This Program To Bring You Another Spiffing Project Management Update
Ok, so far I'm still ahead of the track, as this week I'm due to start producing and gathering my assets and right now I've almost finished that particular job, but in saying this, I think the extra time is finally starting to get to a point where it'll start to shrink, as now I've got to start thinking about the animation process, which if I play my cards right, I'll now have three weeks to do instead of the usual one or two from previous projects, and if I play my cards right and finish the animation process on time, then that'll leave me with plenty of time for the clean up and feedback phase.
We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Program: Asset Production And Gathering Day 10: Finishing Much Of The Music
Wow, I did not think I would be able to knock out almost all the music that quickly, as usually for something like The Grand Lamppost Heist or Operation Compact Disc it would take me several days to do this part, although to be fair I did choose to save the music until last this time around and much of it does re-use previous melodies I made previously (particularly the track where Kyoto and the others get acquainted with one another) so I was able to get everything finished faster.
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The reason this was split in two however was because I decided to go on a shopping trip with my mother eleven minutes into part one, thus making the time I chose to start the first part the mother of bad timing (since now there's a needless split that could have been avoided entirely), but I'm getting off topic.
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When I was making "Kyoto Awakens", when I went to add in the leitmotif from her theme song, I ended up running into the same issue I did when making her theme song (which I could have sworn I fixed yesterday) where one of the notes was off beat and throwing the whole flow of the music off, which would be really distracting if it made it into the actual short. Luckily I was able to fix this by moving the errant note back onto the beat and then making sure to apply that fix to Kyoto's theme once I was done by deleting parts of the theme and replacing them with the slightly superior "Kyoto Awakens" versions instead for consistency's sake. (so you could say that working on one song helped me fix both at once)
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Next I did the "Awkward Introductions" track, which was the easiest one to put together because I could re-use melodies and basslines from both Super Sheep and Ruff Bup's themes (although in Super Sheep's case, it's not really "re-using" elements from his theme since I had to cancel the cartoon it was supposed to feature in due to troubles stemming from both a lack of time and the audience needing to be familiar with one of the characters I would have introduced in order for there to be tension), although one issue I ended up running into was actually getting all the parts to fit together into one cohesive track, because I was originally considering keeping the musical genres of each character intact and just switch between them during the track since then the audience would be able to know which character is the focus just by listening to the track, I decided that it would probably be for the best to stick with the computerised style of Kyoto's theme since then the whole soundtrack can be more reflective of where this short takes place rather than the particular characters. (since that's the notation's job) As such, the challenge came from deciding how much of the original version to keep while replacing enough of the instruments with digital instruments (well, technically all instruments in Dreams are digital, but I'm trying to make it sound more digital than what I did for Captain Cartridge) to make the soundtrack more cohesive while also maintaining one or two instruments from the original versions so that all the leitmotifs stick out from one another a bit more.
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The final track of the day was the "New Beginnings" track that'll play at the end when Kyoto proves herself worthy of her own IP, for this track I decided that it would be best to give it a new melody because I don't want the entire soundtrack to consist of reused melodies from elsewhere (whether they be from cartoons I made or cancelled), once I did that, I thought "hey, what if I had the digital sound fade away into something else in order to mark the conclusion of Kyoto's journey through development." Doing this was really easy thanks to the fact I can just copy the entire sequence of notes, select a different instrument and then replace the original instrument with the new one on the new copy of the sequence (plus having fade ins and fade outs at my disposal was a big help too), I even decided to have both Ruff Bup and Kyoto's leitmotifs make one last appearance here since I decided to have Kyoto go back and give Ruff Bup a few pats on the head.
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With that, I'm currently at a crossroad where I can either begin the animation process now and compose the fight scene music while I'm animating it (much like I did with the teaser for Super Sheep in Hollyweird Hijinks) or I could simply take an extra day in order to compose the fight music and have it ready to roll once the animation process begins. There are pros and cons to both approaches, since if I compose the music before starting the animation, I don't have to worry about making it up on the spot when I get to the fight scene since I'll have the music ready to go by the time I get there. (plus I can just alter the music to better suit the scene's length anyway) On the other hand, if I do the animation and compose the music afterwards, I can specifically tailor the music to suit the fight scene right there and then while having the visuals to aid me, much like how original music is handled within the film and television industries, but then that sequence will take me a lot longer to make as a result. I'll come to a decision on the matter tomorrow, as I need time to think carefully about my choice, since this could severely affect the production going forward.
Asset Production And Gathering Day 11: The Complete Collection
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have officially got every single asset I'll need in order to make this project a reality, and now I can finally move on to the long awaited animation phase!
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Today, I ultimately decided it would be for the best if I just composed the fight music first in order to save myself a good chunk of time when animating, but just before I did that I decided it would be best if I also made a separate scene for the sky above the scripture zone so that I don't have to worry about the animation for the fight scene going over Dreams PS4/5's thermometer limits, making this was easy because I just had to delete the floor and bring in those 3D letters again and arrange them so that they'd allow Kyoto to jump over the gap between each line and then I put a letter above it all so that Ruff Bup can throw his mirror for Kyoto to catch and reflect back at Super Sheep.
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As for the music itself, I decided to shorten the name to "Anime Lady Vs Cartoon Sheep" so that I wouldn't have to worry about the original name exceeding the character limit in both the timeline and the asset name itself. Afterwards, it was a matter of messing around with the instruments until I landed on a sound I liked mixed in with re-using and altering previous melodies I made in order to put this track together (since again, I still haven't learned how to write sheet music), the reason I split this one into two was because my mother and I went to Morrisons for lunch.
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To be honest, I haven't really got to much to say here, so I'll skip to the part where I talk about how this phase of production went overall.
So How Was The Asset Production Phase?
I had quite a lot of fun gathering and producing all the assets for this project, as I was able to engage in a variety of task such as modelling and painting, set designing, a little bit of foley work, searching for props and sound effects and even composing music, although my favourite parts will always involve the characters, since they're the emotional anchors that allow the story itself to emotionally connect with people. (and I just really like making characters in general)
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With that being said, despite two thirds of the main cast and a lot of the melodies that relate to said characters being re-used, this still managed to become one of the longer periods I've spent doing this, as I managed to make and gather everything I need within eleven days (where as with The Grand Lamppost Heist, it only took me five days to make everything despite all the characters and assets being brand new at the time), although I think this is due to the fact that the characters go to a wider variety of locations here than Ruff Bup does in his short, so a wider variety of assets is needed.
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For me, the area than needs the most improvement would definitely be the music, as despite literal years passing between Captain Cartridge's remake and now, I still haven't learned how to write proper sheet music which could have benefited me in the long run and even helped me avoid having to go back and patch Kyoto's theme in the first place, since by then I would have had a reference to go off of in order to get it right the first time round. (I suppose sheet music has more or less become the next "wah wah, I wish I'd done an animatic" situation)
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With all that said, I think I'll move on to the animation phase at some point tomorrow, which will go into the practical skills section since now I'm getting into the good stuff, and if this reflection seems a bit shorter than normal, it's because I really want to get started on the animation phase as soon as possible.