BSA215, final comic colouring, 31 October, 2016

Page 15:

Not so lucky last:  I had an hour of mouse painting at home and half an hour the next morning with the pen and tablet.  The words and bubbles are the next priority.  I got halfway finished before I had to turn the comic in.  I'm going to get a reduced grade for the assignment, but I should be able to get it bubbled in time to have it printed.

BSA228, Mood lighting, 1 November, 2016

Lulu and the talking topiary

quite by accident, there appears to be a second facial toiary in the garden.

Lulu considers which maze she's going to explore first

Lulu in the lavender maze

At the front door with the door knockers that she found in the mazes.

pre-set skybox.  rotating the directional light around changes the position of the sun in the sky

Super moody!  a little backlight at the back is great to throw the castle into relief.

Lady Greigh's talking topiary is looking ominous

Greigh Gardens with the addition of a free downloadable skybox from the Unity store that Rachel showed me how to manipulate.  A layer of blue over a cloudy sky darkened it up enough to pass for sunset.  Then I added a harvest moon into the right background plate

BSA228, splash screens, 31 October and 1 November, 2016

minimum requirements,
splash screen with start game and quit buttons
splash  screen should be separate from level one

in Unity, open new scene and save as start
drag and drop it so they're in exact order as game should be played in build settings
3 layers on every seen
U- user
UI-user interface
game
Game Object to UI to canvas, which is like a  photoshop file
UI components can be added directly into canvas through add component bar- anything in a website is available.
problems with going straight into canvas: ex: typing into text box means it won't move separately from the canvas, we can only rely on paragraph alignment tools.
instead,
game object- UI- text which makes the text it's own object and it can move independently from the canvas.  if the text gets bigger than it's box, it will disappear.  change box size in rect transform, which is where you can also move the text around in the game.
if you don't want ARial as the font, you need to put the font in the build.  go into photoshop and figure out what font you've used
create folder in assets for fonts
embed them in the game by saving them into the font folder
in C drive, under windows, go into fonts folder if you want to use fonts from your computer.
Can also download fonts from fonts.com
hit overflow if you don't care about box size.
buttons do care about overflow, so size up box instead of selecting overflow options
game object- button
automatically says button but that can be changed
button and text can be moved separately

remove white button after sorting out the layout by hitting alpha? bar under color in inspector
keep space between the buttons so game doesn't get confused

Bring in background picture by
create folder in assets called UI elements to bring in picture (without fonts)
save as PNG
in inspector, can choose sprite 2D and UI for more options
change image size from 100 by 100 to whatever the size was in Photoshop

Ipads are:

4:3

One of the selling points for the iPad is its use as an e-book reader, using Apple's iBooks software, and Jason Snell sees the iPad as a great device for displaying comics, saying, “the iPad's 1024-by-768-pixel display, while in the unfashionable 4:3aspect ratio, is just about the right shape for a comic-book page.”Feb 1, 2010

My game font is Century Gothic Bold in 72

1st November
Ipad aspect ratio isn't important at this stage, so I went back into photoshop and resized it to fit the canvas in Unity. Rachel showed me

BSA215, comic turn in, 31 October, 2016

Covered in Shame.  Half of my comic doesn't have bubbles or words.  I underestimated how long it would take to bubble and letter a double-size comic. When I go back to it, though, Rachel has kindly shown us how to make shape bubbles in photoshop with the shapes menu.  It will go in white and then I can click to the sideo f the layer to bring  up the effects menu and choose a 4 pixel black stroke to go around it.  huzzah.





half moon addlayer  and curbes layer at top of hierarchy

put it all into one photoshop file

drag out rulers to take two mil off edges
save each page as a jpg, save as page numbers (cover is page one, back cover is page 20)


open adobe acrobat, file, create, combine files into single pdf
drag and drop into box and reorder if necessary, then hit combine files to save as one big pdf.
title combined pdf with my name

to avoid pixellation in pdf, make everything a tiff and take them into indesign and take them out to PDF from there.

BSA227, Rotoscoping in Photoshop, 29 October, 2016

Things are starting to pick up now that I'm working in PS.  I tried to rotoscope one last time in After Effects but decided that while it was significantly faster this time (probably due entirely to working with one small clip and not the whole movie), the only thing I need from AE now is to turn all the frames black and white in one step (colour correction menu) and then export the sequence to photoshop.  It's more helpful to see what the figures are like in their environment- it's easier to pick up lost bits when I can see them moving with the black and white figures.

 Above, you can see where I've cut out the background of the frame I'm working on and the figure has moved ahead slightly in the frame just below it. I will next change the image to black and white to catch any bits that didn't get caught in AE, then the dark strokes filter, and finally a little bit of line work for emphasis.

S24 movie on Vimeo

BSA215, comic colouring, 27 October, 2016

lava pit inspiration and texture for The Machine's lair

page 13:

page 14:

Now, I have to deal with my problems!
page 15:

I have to bring the bear and McMurdo back, finish off The Machine and link it to the final page 16:

Well, nothing to do but to do it.  I might have better luck finishing it up if I work out the script first.  Then I'll know exactly what I have to show and say in order to wrap it all up.
Before that, though, I've reordered page 3:

Revision 1 v. revision 2

BSA215, Comic colouring, 26 October, 2016

Page 10:

Page 11:

Page 12:

2 more pages to go for colouring and page 15 needs the drawings/story finished to connect back with page 16.  Then bubbles and words and some rejiggering here and there for story sense.

BSA215, Comic Colouring, 25 October, 2016

If I want to have as many blog entries as I did last year, I need to do 55? before 31 December.
Can. I. Do. It???
Should . I. Try???
Anyway, more comic colouring.  The deadline approacheth!

Page 8:

Page 9:

These snow filters don't look as good as I'd hoped.  HOWEVER.  Pushing forward.

Only two finished tonight because they were 75% yesterday.  Three more are now 75% done and should be finished tomorrow.  Yay!!!

BSA228, World Decoration, 25 October, 2016

 From behind the conservatory door

I installed all of the pieces I made this weekend (except for the Curio Cabinet) in the game today.  You can barely see Lady Greigh's topiary bush- lighting or a different texture will help it pop out.  I wanted her mouth to open wide enough so Lulu can walk through (creepy!) but I'm not sure how to make that happen.  The alternative is to have her gesture with her glasses and her head and arm to separate to reveal the hole in the hedge.  I have to animate in Maya and "bake" it in before exporting it to Unity.  I think that we have four more classes until the games are played at the Flix.    

There's no good view of it yet, but I made a ceiling and covered it with purple floral vines.
This image from pinterest

has inspired me to think about a chandelier of my own for the room.  It'll be made of a prefab tree and surrounded by a particle effect that looks like fireflies.  Whoo whoo!

BSA228, Curio cabinet, 25 October, 2016

Dianne Hoffman, assemblage artist

This is an inspiring curio cabinet.  Maybe I can set mine up halfway with what the player has seen and they have to fill in the rest?

BSA206, Film Review "Drugstore Cowboy", 25 October, 2016

This is only the second Gus van Sant movie I've ever seen (To Die For being the first) as his subjects don't interest me very much.  His editing techniques and imagery are interesting, even beautiful, though.  And on review of his filmography at imdb.com, I'm surprised to find that he directed some very good music videos which I HAVE seen: Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge" and David Bowie's "Fame ('90)".  The following stills were from sequnces that I found quite striking: Bob's narration as he rides in an ambulance at the start of the film, his champagne bubles and pill-induced excitement, and his drug-addled car ride.  The last two have tiny images floating over the screen conveying the character's drug euphoria.  Was it van Sant's intention to glamor or de-glamorize drug use?  

BSA228, final assets, 24 October, 2016

Lady Greigh's talking topiary

Lady Greigh's glasses, one of the collectibles of Level One

not too fancy.  But maybe if I take it into mudbox...

calling cards to alphabetize

Stuff it.  I've more to worry about than the curly whirlies on a serving platter.

curio cabinet

door knocker 1 (collectible)

door knocker 2 (collectible)

BSA215, comic progress, 21-24 October, 2016

I blogged way too much about my comic progress last year and filled it with entry after entry of tiny changes.  This year, I'm just going to post when I've finished colouring them.   As I'm not saving on a day by day basis, either, I hope that I'm not headed for disaster.  I have saved line versions of everything, so fingers crossed...

I can see the face on the back of the cover, but will anyone else?  I was inspired by this image:

and decided to have Amelia Earthart's face looming over the scene in the background.  It may just read as a face... I hope to connect the story dots within the comic.  Of course at this point, finishing seems like it's going to be THE achievement, and not comprehensibility.  Hmmmm.   No soft turn-in Monday because of the holiday, so totally done for the 31st?  Ten days to go!

 Page one:  I spent 5 hours colouring this a few weeks ago and realized afterwards what a huge mistake that was.  Looks good, but my process needs to speed up significantly.

Page two:  My plan was to repeat the same action over and over (colour her hair and face, then do her clothes, then do somebody else, etc.) but got excited and finished the whole page.  I was so close, anyway.  The colouring process feels much faster this time because I did all of the experimenting and failing and succeeding last year.  I'm just pushing forward with what I already know.

Word bubbles will probably be added again at the last minute.

I have to make 19 pages (page 20 will be an ad for SIT because everybody knows that Sea Monkeys are totally fake) which includes the front and back cover.  I've gotten 5 done as of Saturday morning.  Hooray!!

Page 3:

Page 4 is in progress, but I'm trying to leave problems until I've done everything I know to do and there are two panels that need better drawings.  I may yet get back to it this weekend, in which case I'll post the update in sequence.  

I decided that I liked the flow of having everything happening in order so much that I swung back and made myself fix the problems with page 4 now rather than later.  The figures behind Pierce and his spotlight were badly drawn so I went worked them up and the colour, too.
page 5:

I've put an "oldy timey" colour mask over the flashback scenes which I hope will help the viewer read them as such.  Word bubbles should do the rest.  And some time and date markers.  I've also added bits of The Librarian skulking around in the back.

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 Page 7:

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