The past few weeks have been an absolute blur. Between Practicum, dealing with my cat, working at the flower shop, and general Covid exhaustion, it feels like we’re moving at terminal velocity. Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to work with someone so patient and accommodating. It’s crazy how low my threshold for dealing with stress is during the pandemic, and I know a lot of others are feeling the same. Practicum has been a great break from the reality of it all, as well as a good way to pace the weeks (it’s also been super nice not having homework).
Anyways, earlier this past week I finished up my storyboards and stitched them together into an animated sequence using Photoshop’s timeline feature. It’s super efficient, especially because I typically draw/sketch on Procreate, which allows me to convert those files to PSD and airdrop them straight to my computer. I love convenience. After I got approval on the animation, Nathan recorded the script with his very talented son, Jack, who is the voice talent for Big Dinosaur! It was such a treat hearing my script come to life, and I couldn’t stop smiling. With the audio files, it was then my responsibility to add the audio to my storyboard animation. I ended up needed to draw some additional scenes in order to fix the flow, but overall it was such a blast. I haven’t worked much with audio in the past, and it was surprisingly challenging trying to make the dialogue flow naturally alongside the animation. But a fun challenge, of course!
After that, Nathan gave me a tutorial on how he typically animates in Unity. It’s a bit intimidating, but it looks fairly similar to how I animate using a timeline in Photoshop and After Effects, so maybe it won’t be so bad? I don’t want to speak too soon.
From there, I created a list of assets that we’ll need for the episode and collected links so Nathan wouldn’t have to hunt them down, as well as mood/reference boards for the art direction. During the hunt for assets, I had the idea that I myself could make one of them! Part of our plot involves a donut (Big Dinosaur loves them), and there’s an infamous Blender beginner tutorial that teaches you how to make your own 3D donut. Even though it’s a simple asset, I asked Nathan if he’d be cool with me taking this on as a challenge. He was absolutely down for it, so I’ve been slowly picking at the tutorial ever since. Excited to see what this week has in store for us!
