Responsive Collab - More of the same

With all 3 archetype stories now on the go, it was getting a bit confusing keeping track of who had done what, who needed to do what, what needed to be done and who needed to do it. Our Facebook page feed has been getting some serious action! But the good thing with our team members is that we've always been contactable and responsive to messages - no-one has gone a.w.o.l at any point, leaving a load of work to be left undone. Everyone's been available for meetings when we've need to get to gather to assess the state of play, which has been a positive thing, and has made getting on with the project that much smoother. From what i've been told no everyone in the class has been so fortunate. 

But onward. 

Various drafts of the American diner sorry had been send back and forth between myself and Joe, for approval and additional tweaks. The animation side of it was now complete, so i could sit down and a have a trawl Youtube for some suitable accompanying sound fx and add them to the animation. Some of them took a fair bit of searching for the 'right' sound - it's surprising just how many smack and whack sounds there are out there! We had discussed some concerns about the whole copyright infringement 'thing' in relation to the sounds we'd found and used, and had a read through this article about 'Fair Use'. Scanning through it we determined that as we're not using any entire songs and certainly not using the songs for longer than 20 seconds, that we probably fall into the Fair Use camp.If this was going out to a global audience i would be more worried, but as it stands - no one apart from us, our tutors and the judges are ever going to see this, and YouTube probably have bigger fish to fry, you'd hope. 

Overcoming the Monster (without audio)

Once i'd found (and converted to mp3) enough sounds to fill each scene, some of them needed chopping up in WavePad (audio editing software) but some were short enough to be able to be dropped into After Effects and tinkered with in there. I played around with varying volume levels, so it want just the same level all the way through - for instance the diner exterior and kitchen scenes i made the audio dip down to give the impression that the music was coming from a different room. Little details like that. Overlaying similar sounds to beef them up a bit. I took a lot of inspiration from ridiculous, over-the-top cartoons like Ren & Stimpy, The Tick & Spongebob when it came to loud noises and dramatic music. Even the close ups of faces that i had drawn for it were a nod to those programmes i'd watched in my younger days. Adding audio to it makes so much difference - bringing it all together and making it feel like more of a finished product.The difference in our drawing styles didn't seem be appearing too much of a chaotic mishmash neither! 

Overcoming the Monster (with audio)

Looking back at it there are a few bits that could do with editing/adding to - the pictures inside the frames on the diner wall for one, but these are pretty straight forward little details that shouldn't be too much of a pain to sort out.