The Final video - Steps

We will be using After Effects to compose and animate our video.  We both have little experience in using the software so it will be very tricky.  We're just lucky we have a good bit of time left to work on and through trial and error our video should hopefully be successful! We thought it would be good to show our progress through the production of our video. This way we can look back and reflect on our performance and see what went well and what didn't.  Below is a series of videos showing out progress.

Our video will be created at 24 frames per second as this will give the animations a more smoother look.

Bus and Background Test

As we set up our After Effects file the first thing to do was to set up the background so it would move along with the time.  Our video is 2 minutes and 30 seconds long so the image will move slow but just the right pace for the bus to travel along the top of the screen.  A platform was used along the top of the screen for the bus to travel along.

https://vimeo.com/150105437

Adding Game Sprites

Next we decided to add some downloaded sprites from the Super Mario Bros 3 game.  We added platforms, pipes and boxes to the scene.  The sprites were parented to the background so they moved along with it.

https://vimeo.com/150105449

Adding Our Own Sprites

Next we decided to add more Super Mario sprites and a couple of our own sprites to the video to see how everything looks.  So far everything is looking very good and we are very pleased.  Next is to add the rest of our sprites and green screen objects.

https://vimeo.com/150105453

Adding more sprites and footage

Next it was time to add more of our own sprites, green screened objects, downloaded footage and additional images.  The layout was important here when deciding how Mari would tackle the level.

https://vimeo.com/150685282

Animating the objects and footage

We decided to animate the objects before adding Mario into the video.  Everything has been timed and the last thing we need to do is add Mario and sounds.  The animating was very difficult to do and took a long time to set up.  Everything has been parented to the background.  As we took these test renders it took quite a while to complete because of the amount of frames and everything happening at the same time.

https://vimeo.com/150685283

Video Script

Script

Before creating our video we decided to write up a script to help plan out the video.  This allowed us to keep track of how long each animation should last like how many seconds it takes Mario to jump or how long a jump should last.  It allowed us to break up the video into parts like where Mario should be and when.  We would simply fill in the blanks when it came to the actual creation.

Ryan: I would have liked to do the script in more detail and be more specific on what is happening through the video.

Lavinia: Me and Ryan took down notes while making our video as we were trying to get everything to move right and put it in right time frame. 

Video Sounds

When we have finished our video it will be very important to add some sound and music to it.  We used the websites below to gather sound sprites for our video.  The sounds will be added to our video via Premier which hopefully shouldn't be difficult to use.

Sounds to add from the websites:

• Background music track
• Mario going down / up a pipe
• Mario jumping
• Mario collecting a coin
• Mario interacting with sprites and objects

Super Mario Sound

http://www.mariomayhem.com/downloads/sounds/mario_all_stars-sounds.php

http://themushroomkingdom.net/media/sm64/wav

Super Mario Music

http://www.superluigibros.com/super-mario-bros-3-music-mp3

Both

http://www.emuparadise.me/links-and-downloads/Gaming_Music/[MP3]_NES.PAL.Super.Mario.Bros.3.OST/1050

Ryan: By adding sounds from the Super Mario Bros 3 game our video will be alot better.  I think if we didn't add sounds then it would seem boring.  Yes the animation would look cool and that but come on you sound is definitely needed to bring everything together.

Lavinia: Looking at the sites to get sounds for the Mario went great as me and Ryan got good sounds and believe it will work very well in the video. Sound makes the video better and will bring it all together, will explain the story better.

Additional Sounds

As well as having sounds from the Super Mario game we would need to look for additional sounds to go with Mario interacting with real life objects.

We needed to look for:

• Someone sleeping / Snoring
• Someone having a drink
• A vehicle starting

Sounds were downloaded from

SoundBible.com
http://www.grsites.com/archive/sounds/category/12/

When deciding what content to add to our video we really needed to sit down and work out what we were capable of doing.  We were very ambitious with our ideas and needed to be more realistic with what we can / can't do.  We both are inexperienced with animation, sound and video editing so adding in so many pieces of footage and ideas would be very hard to do.

Green Screen Footage

Green Screen footage found on YouTube

As well as our own footage we will need to consider some downloadable footage from the internet to add to our video.  Gathering the necessary footage like Mario drinking a beer or a coffee would be hard to take ourselves.

Ryan: When looking for footage I was a little worried that we didn't have enough images of the objects so I looked for some on YouTube.

Lavinia: Me and Ryan tried looking at different green shots that we couldn't do or get right.

Apple

Ryan: When I showed Lavinia this image we both had a discussion and ended up disliking the idea of it because it looked more realistic and 3D whereas everything else is 2D so it would look weird in the video.

Lavinia: Me and Ryan really wanted our video to be kept 2D and tried not to put in random 3D green screen videos of items. We were discussing a lot of what we should put in the video or not from looking through these green screen clips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpNLHQOkhI8

Cup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWmKNx2DwMM

Ryan: Similar to the apple above this footage would be bad because of the angle the cup is at.  If it was a side view then maybe it would work but right now its too 3D.

Lavinia: Looking at this video, I didn't think it will work in our a video and Ryan agreed, was leaning towards the 3D side.

Beer Mug

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMtqGi1ThKQ

Ryan: As we want Mario to have a drink of beer during the video this piece of footage would be very useful.  We can use the full animation to our advantage and time it with Mario's movement.  With some sound we can create the illusion that Mario has drank it and is feeling the effects of it.

Lavinia: We really liked this one, and believed we would use this clip in our video as we thought it will look cool as we were thinking of Mario jumping in the drink of beer and come out drunk. He will get a little bit shaken after just to add different effects. 

Splash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZOm3wLeoEQ

Ryan: As there is water in the background of our video we could use this throughout it to have the background animating.  It wouldn't effect Mario's movement because it is in the distance.

Lavinia: Me and Ryan thought this would work as it would look nice in the background, to have some interaction with the background, would work well. 

Iphone 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiFLf4DIptE

Ryan: I think it would be cool to have Mario jump through the iPhone from one side to the other.  In doing so the camera will take a photograph of him.

Lavinia: Ryan thought this would work well as it would be another item that Mario can interact with. 

Gold coin rotating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFWWJ8GGCyM

Ryan: As we couldn't get a good rotation of a coin for the video we decided to look else where which is a shame really because we wanted to add a pound coin.  This footage is very good and the coin moving up and down should work well with the video.

Lavinia: Me and Ryan thought it would be best to get a footage of the coin spin as me and Ryan had troubles with trying it ourselves, couldn't get the perfect spin of the coin. It was a shame that we could't use our own coin but we did try different methods. 

Light Bulb on and off

Video was too big to add.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNeZoDrDj8Q

Ryan: We could give Mario some control over his surroundings by pressing a button to turn the lights on and off.  This would allow him to access to different areas of the level or reveal some secrets.

Lavinia: We could get Mario to interact with switches to switch on and off the light bulbs, would be nice to do. 

Bus test

Ryan: With my lack of experience with animating I needed to have a few trial and errors with getting the bus to move or creating the illusion of movement.  I needed to save the frame of the bus and the two wheels separately in order to animate them.  Parenting the 3 objects kept them together as a group and I just needed to add the rotation of the wheels and move the position of the entire bus from one place to another.  I drew the bus at 80x36 pixels and scaled it up to 400x180 pixels.  In doing this I was able to add more detail to it.  I did this to keep up with the pixel 16 bit style.

Bus frame

80x36 pixels

400x180 pixels

Bus Moving Test 1

Wheels 1

Ryan: I did these wheels in the same pixel like form as the sprites and bus frame to keep up with the style.  They were drawn at 65x65 pixels in size.  In the video I think they look nice but a little strange because of there shape.  The movement is nice aswell.

Bus Moving Test 2

Wheels 2

Ryan: I did these wheels more circular to see if they would look better on the bus.  They were also drawn at 65x65 pixels in size.  I think these look pretty bad and random.  Everything on the bus is pix-elated with no curves so these wheels look out of place.

Lavinia: Me and Ryan decided to both design a bus for the video. This is my design of a bus,I went with the style of a Super Mario game, I believe I got the shape of the bus good, wheels I believe could be better. I believe the GIF of the bus looks well. We both decided to use Ryan's bus in the video because felt it looked better and the bus looks more realistic than mine. 

Bus GIF with Background

Bus GIF

Bus Image

Background Test and Final Background!

Background Test One

https://vimeo.com/149313721

Background Test Two

https://vimeo.com/149331630

Ryan: Background two was more random than background one.  The overall scene looked nice but unfortunately didn't make any sense.  Some buildings looked out of perspective whereas others had different lighting.  If this was fixed then the image may look better but still very random.  The purpose of these tests is to see how the background will move on the video.

Final Background 

https://vimeo.com/149332348

Ryan: So we finally decided on what to use for our main background image.  The image is made up of a mixture of different photographs.  We needed to make sure each was a very high resolution to prevent blurriness when scaling up or down.  I am happy with this background image so now we can apply it to the video! 

Lavinia: We tested out our background images to see how they look in a video, to see how the movement goes, and to see if anything looks out of place. Our final background image looks the best and very pleased with the outcome. 

Background Images

Background Images 

Derry City Images mixed together-Ryan

Ryan: This background image was created using a mixture of different panoramic shots around the city of Derry and a couple of images from the internet.  I like this background image but feel that the buildings carry too much detail and when scaled up it might not work with our objects and sprites and of course Mario.

Derry City Images mixed together-Lavinia

Lavinia: Me and Ryan started the process of combining the images from the internet with our background images, this worked very well as the combined images were looking good, putting every image in different perspective. 

                                     

Navan Quarry Armagh, Derry City mixed together-Ryan

Ryan: I took this photograph when I was at home and thought it would work really well with our project.  We can use the water and sky to our advantage and possibly add some animations to it like on the water where we could add splashes or fish.  Maybe we could also add birds to the sky.

Same Image, One section taken out-Ryan

Ryan: Something on the right side weren't working and ended up being removed. The image also needed brightened up so I decided to make a slight adjustment.

Final Background Image-Ryan and Lavinia

Lavinia: Me and Ryan decided on what image we are going to use for our final video, I added in some of the images I have in to the background image to have some of my work into it.

Ryan: With a combination of my image and Lavinia's added images to the background we were happy with the final image.  This image is 6400x720 pixels in size.  We thought that using an image that was 12800x720 was too big and would move too slow with the screen.

Background Contact Sheet

Background Contact Sheet

Lavinia: This is a contact sheet of images, me and Ryan found on the internet to possibly use in our video to combined them all with our final background image. 

Ryan: As well as the photographs we took in Derry and Armagh we looked for high quality images to use and add into the background on Google Images.  We looked for buildings that are famous and buildings that could be seen as castles.  As we created out background we used a trial and error method with the images.  Some needed the brightness and contrast adjusted and others needed there colours adjusted in order to fit in with the already created image.

Creating our own Sprites

Ryan

I drew my 64x64 pixel sprites firstly on graph paper at 16x16 pixels which allowed me to work out there animations frame by frame.  I used a square on the graph paper as a pixel on Illustrator which was handy when re-creating the sprites.  With the pixels being vector based images scaling them up was easy and no detail was lost.  In the Super Mario games the characters movements are looped so I felt it would be better to create them as gifs instead of animating them frame by frame on After Effects.  I used Piskelapp to add the different frames and was able to adjust there speeds as well.  At this moment I am not entirely sure on what movement my sprties will do during the video but im sure that will come along further on in the project.  For now I am very pleased with my sprite designs.

64x64 Enemies.

Sketches drawn at 16x16 so they can be scaled when drawn digitally.  Bigger sprites drawn 32x32 to add detail but still need to be scaled.  I drew the Goomba first as a test run to see how they are broken up into pixels.  Each square equals a pixel on Illustrator.

Clipper

Strawberry

Pear

Doughnut

Carrot

Brocolli

Tomato

Pencil

Me

I created myself as a sprite for the video to travel on the bus.  I used the same style Mario is drawn in and made alot of adjustments to suit my body form.  My clothing was based on what I was wearing that day.  I think I look pretty cool as a sprite don't you?

Bus

Bus Body

Wheels

Lavinia

Lavinia: These are my sketches for designing my enemy sprites for the video. I sketched out my banana, blueberry, orange and also sketch out the bus stop sign and the basic outline for my bus. I believe it went well as sketching them out first, gives me a good idea of what shape Im looking at when creating them on illustrator, will make it easier for me. 

Lavinia: I was really pleased with designing my own sprites, The piskel website was really great to use to help me and Ryan to create our GIFS for our sprites, it was very easy to use. 

Banana

Blueberry

Cherry

Orange

Me

Bus Stop Sign

On Switch

Off Switch

Bus

Exclamation Mark

Week 12 Presentation

Powerpoint Version

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3Rliyh8Y2-RWU5JV044YkxPcW8/view?usp=sharing

PDF Version

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3Rliyh8Y2-RNkptREM5MWl1YmM/view?usp=sharing

Ryan: We were asked to do a presentation to share with our peers documenting how our project is progressing along.  During this time we were able to show some of out tests, sprites and discuss other areas of our project.  Things are going great through the project and through hard work we should have everything done in time for the deadline!

Lavinia: This is an update of were me and Ryan is in the process of our project. I believe we are working together in good time and will have time together to finish off our video before the deadline, we are continuing to have meetings on what we should plan next. 

Background with objects and sprites test

Leading up to the final video we wanted to carry out more tests so we can see how our objects will work with the created sprites and a background.

Below is the first test we did which features a background image (panoramic shot of Derry), some of our green screened objects, some Super Mario sprites and some of our own sprites as well.  We noticed a slight error with our sprites.  When a gif sprite was imported into After Effects it still had a white background.  Removing this was done by using using the Linear Colour Key filter.  The only problem with this was it removed all the white from the gifs meaning it removed the white from the eyes and mouth of most of the characters.

Test 1 - No Eyes

Ryan: Aside from the sprites looking weird with no mouths or eyes I am very happy with this test because it shows how far we've come with all of our tests.  Everything is finally coming together!  We just need to decide on the sprites movement and positioning for the final video.

Lavinia: We then added our own enemy sprites in our test video with the background image and objects to see how they sit and move in the video, in this test video we made the mistake of not having a background behind our sprites as we ended up removing one of our colours which was white, that then means it removed our eyes of our sprites. 

Fixing the issue

Before

After

The solution to the problem was to change the background colour to something that isn't apart of the sprite itself.

Test 2 - Eyes

Ryan: Thankfully this issue was easily fixed on Piskelapp.  We just needed to add a different background colour for the Linear Color Key to remove it from the sprite.  Everything is starting to fall into place and I can't wait to do the actual final video!

Lavinia: We then fixed the problem by putting on a background on our sprites. We then retested the video using the background sprites and in this video, our sprites have there eyes back, which made the test video so much better as the sprites look really well with the background image and objects, we believe this is coming along good. 

Test 3 - Doughnut

Ryan: I thought it would be good to test my doughnut sprite and have it roll down a hill during the video for Mario to jump over.  Apart from a slight dip in the movement I am happy with this and can easily tweak it.  We could use this technique further on with other sprites.

Lavinia: In this test video, we tested out Ryan's doughnut sprite, Ryan animated the doughnut to rotate, we believe this worked well and we have the idea of using this technique  in the video for Mario to jump over in the level we will create.

Piskelapp - Making things easier

Piskelapp

http://www.piskelapp.com

Ryan: While creating the different enemies for our video I came across Piskelapp.  It allows you to create animated sprite gifs and export them out.  You can change the speed of each gif and add an unlimited amount of frames to your design.  We used this for the sprites as it would be easier to loop the animation on After Effects instead of adding in frame by frame.  Piskelapp is similar to Photoshop with the tools available to use.  It is easy to use and gives you full control of your work.  We imported our drawn up sprites on illustrator and animated them here.  Our sprites were drawn up 64x64 pixels.  Below is a screen shot of the Piskelapp interface.

Lavinia: When creating our enemies on illustrator, Ryan came across this site called Piskel For me and Ryan this was really handy to use because we didn't really know how to make our sprites into gifs, it allows you to adjust the speed and add as many frames as you want to use. It made things quicker for us and was a great tool to use. 

Created Sprite Brocolli

Below is one of the sprites I created.  This was drawn up on Illustrator and then imported. Here I could adjust the colours and shape if needed.  When adding the sprites to After Effects we will be be using a Linear Colour Key to remove the background of the gifs.  We couldn't leave them white as the eyes on our sprites would disappear and look weird.

When your gif has been created you can then preview it and go back and edit it if necessary.

With sprites drawn up you can save them in your gallery or download the files.  This was useful if something needed changed.

Using Piskelapp made things easier as Me and Lavinia don't have much experience with animation.  It really helped bring the project together. 

Looking at the screen shots, that Ryan took, shows step by step how the site works, you can easily share your work to the public on the site.