I'm taking a project management course and I'm discovering so many things that I've been doing wrong trying to work with my cartoon team. Keeping everyone working productively toward a goal is an artform in itself. But I think the toughest part of keeping a volunteer team together is the commitment, especially because your project is very long term. Once the pilot is done, you might have a whole series worth of animation to do. That's great for the project, but it's daunting to commit to be there through the whole thing.
Perhaps people could chip in on the project without committing to it. Then instead of actually joining studio mars, they could be "special thanks to" people. I've often thought it would be a fun exercise to work on your rigs or to animate a small scene from your project, and perhaps others feel the same way. But trusting anonymous people with your files could lead to disaster. I definitely wouldn't want to see your work get ripped off.
Haha, so I guess I don't know of any ideal solution.
New Series I'm Working on.
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
It's not easy to be a project manager. I have been a part of some kind of or another project since my college years in the early '80s through today and I can say with 100% confidence that you will encounter this on every project.
If you look at my profile you can see I am a Industial Engineer and have tought Project managment in the past.
Have you tried using a "Gnatt" chart? I would highly recommend using this tool. I can't live without it at work. Not so much for my animating projects because i'm not as envolved in it like most of you on the forums as my animations are usually done while watching TV and drinking a beer after work.
You say you are taking a class so I won't go into the discipline or constraints as it would be just repeating what your instructor(s) will go over if they have not already.
You have chose wise to take a project managment class!!!
If you look at my profile you can see I am a Industial Engineer and have tought Project managment in the past.
Have you tried using a "Gnatt" chart? I would highly recommend using this tool. I can't live without it at work. Not so much for my animating projects because i'm not as envolved in it like most of you on the forums as my animations are usually done while watching TV and drinking a beer after work.
You say you are taking a class so I won't go into the discipline or constraints as it would be just repeating what your instructor(s) will go over if they have not already.
You have chose wise to take a project managment class!!!
Last edited by sbtamu on Sun Apr 11, 2010 1:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
With all your experience with project management, this stuff must be like second nature to you! I have to take the course for non-animation reasons, but I'm realizing how much it applies to animation projects. We haven't gotten to Gantt charts yet, but I know we'll be covering them soon.
The things I've found useful so far are all the pointers on holding productive meetings like setting agendas with clear goals for each meeting, "parking" ideas that are unrelated, and covering the more controversial ideas later in the meeting so that we can at least make progress on the less controversial things. It's also a relief to know that it's natural for teams go through a "storming" phase. We had a big debate on scifi vs fantasy as a genre for our story arc. But I'm hoping that the nuances of people's criticisms and love for each genre will result in a better final cartoon. :D
The things I've found useful so far are all the pointers on holding productive meetings like setting agendas with clear goals for each meeting, "parking" ideas that are unrelated, and covering the more controversial ideas later in the meeting so that we can at least make progress on the less controversial things. It's also a relief to know that it's natural for teams go through a "storming" phase. We had a big debate on scifi vs fantasy as a genre for our story arc. But I'm hoping that the nuances of people's criticisms and love for each genre will result in a better final cartoon. :D
I'll definately look into that (Gnatt chart). I guess it does come down to management. This may be tricky stuff, I'll try to set some goals here.sbtamu wrote:It's not easy to be a project manager. I have been a part of some kind of or another project since my college years in the early '80s through today and I can say with 100% confidence that you will encounter this on every project.
If you look at my profile you can see I am a Industial Engineer and have tought Project managment in the past.
Have you tried using a "Gnatt" chart? I would highly recommend using this tool. I can't live without it at work. Not so much for my animating projects because i'm not as envolved in it like most of you on the forums as my animations are usually done while watching TV and drinking a beer after work.
You say you are taking a class so I won't go into the discipline or contraints as it would be just repeating what your instructor(s) will go over if they have not already.
You have chose wise to take a project managment class!!!
I know I'm bouncing around on the scenes a bit. Waiting for Voice work, so I punched this out tonight. Here is the establishing shot for the arrival scene. A dimensional gate is opening over the city of New Salem. This is where the Tupaul first make contact. Hope you all like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQpbopZCx24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQpbopZCx24
I was just using layer masking with the same setup as my eye example and realized that the outlines on the eye whites layer will get covered by other layers. So if you try building those masked eyes, you'll need to duplicate the line art onto a top layer in the folder. That means you'll need to adjust two layers when you animate the eye shape. What a bummer. :( I didn't notice on my characters because the pupil is the same color as the line it overlaps.
Nice city!
Nice city!
Ok, Here is a little mini trailer for the Dream Walker scene. Featuring Laura Post. She just sent in all the lines for this sequence, so I'm very excited! Im going to start putting the scene together this week! Let me know how the sound is on your end. How is the volume, and over all sound quality?
New Scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qtIQZZ6fVI
New Scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qtIQZZ6fVI
Yeah, I think I can fix that. I used "Gain" in my movie edit program, because the Volume was to low. I probably need to go into my audio software, and just bring the volume up. I dont know what the difference between "Volume" and "Gain" are. I know that "Gain" with my guitar usually bring distortion into the sound. I'm learning as I go.lwaxana wrote:Great scene! There is a very small amount of buzz in the voice. I think it must be from static removal. But I could only hear it when I listened very closely to the audio. When I was paying attention to the story, I didn't notice it at all.
I think if you're using a program to supply the gain as opposed to a preamp, then there's no difference between increasing gain and increasing volume. But I could very well be wrong! :D
One thing I noticed with my own audio is that it can sound great in the original recording, but if I export the audio as part of the animation, then I'm bringing a compressed version into my video editor. Then when I export it from my video editor, it gets compressed again. Then when I upload it to vimeo, it gets compressed again. And by then it sounds all distorted. Of course I've been using the smallest possible files because I'm just doing tests. But if I follow Muffy's advice about minimizing compression and waiting until the end to do it, I should be bringing the audio file into the video editor separately from the animation.
One thing I noticed with my own audio is that it can sound great in the original recording, but if I export the audio as part of the animation, then I'm bringing a compressed version into my video editor. Then when I export it from my video editor, it gets compressed again. Then when I upload it to vimeo, it gets compressed again. And by then it sounds all distorted. Of course I've been using the smallest possible files because I'm just doing tests. But if I follow Muffy's advice about minimizing compression and waiting until the end to do it, I should be bringing the audio file into the video editor separately from the animation.
Is there a way to keep sound files from being compressed inside "Anime Studio"?lwaxana wrote:I think if you're using a program to supply the gain as opposed to a preamp, then there's no difference between increasing gain and increasing volume. But I could very well be wrong!
One thing I noticed with my own audio is that it can sound great in the original recording, but if I export the audio as part of the animation, then I'm bringing a compressed version into my video editor. Then when I export it from my video editor, it gets compressed again. Then when I upload it to vimeo, it gets compressed again. And by then it sounds all distorted. Of course I've been using the smallest possible files because I'm just doing tests. But if I follow Muffy's advice about minimizing compression and waiting until the end to do it, I should be bringing the audio file into the video editor separately from the animation.
By the way that humming sound... I used a background sound called "Tibet", I added it to put suspense in the scene. Is that the humming sound your talking about? I dont want others to interpet that as bad recording. Just checking.
Hmm... I really don't know how AS treats the audio. Maybe the full frames "uncompressed" option also leaves the audio uncompressed. But I really don't know. If no one answers that question here, you might try asking in a separate thread. I don't know anything about uploading to youtube, but on vimeo, they supply compression guidelines. http://vimeo.com/help/compression "For best results, we recommend using H.264 (sometimes referred to as MP4) for the video codec and AAC (short for Advanced Audio Codec) for the audio codec." But as of now, I have no idea how to use separate codecs for audio and video. :)
I don't know which sound is the "tibet" effect, but I heard the sound effects you were using before you added voice and I think this is a different sound. It mirrors the pitch changes of the voice and makes the speech sound fuzzy. You can hear it most at the lines "always has for the last thousand years," and "to live forever would be a godsend." But I really have to listen for it to hear it, with headphones! So it's not obvious.
Another possibility! Are your voice actors sending you unedited files? Because if they are removing static on their end, you'll have no control over any distortion their static-removal techniques might introduce. If they did send you edited files, they may still have the original recordings.
Geez. All this technical stuff is so confusing.
I don't know which sound is the "tibet" effect, but I heard the sound effects you were using before you added voice and I think this is a different sound. It mirrors the pitch changes of the voice and makes the speech sound fuzzy. You can hear it most at the lines "always has for the last thousand years," and "to live forever would be a godsend." But I really have to listen for it to hear it, with headphones! So it's not obvious.
Another possibility! Are your voice actors sending you unedited files? Because if they are removing static on their end, you'll have no control over any distortion their static-removal techniques might introduce. If they did send you edited files, they may still have the original recordings.
Geez. All this technical stuff is so confusing.