After meeting with Dr. Rice on Friday, I have updated the google sheet containing all the needed animation assets with the next set of animations! There are less animations for this section in general, and many less assets that won’t be reused for this section! Below is an image of the new google sheet:
Just a text update today! As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been working on a bunch of PPT Video edits for the previous 2 semesters of the RUS online course. Those videos are in their final stages! I’m sending Dr. Rice the last videos for her to approve before she gives me the notes of which videos are being split into two parts. After the videos that need to be split are complete, the RUS406/407 videos should be complete and we can begin on the RUS412 Videos.
I also met with Dr. Rice on Friday to show her all of the wonderful assets that everyone has created for the animations, and she was super pleased with how everything was looking! She loved the backgrounds and variety in characters! Preproduction is almost complete for this first set of animations and I’m excited to get them finalized. I’m meeting with Dr. Rice on Friday to go over the next set of animations!
For the new semester of Russian Animations, I have decided to do watercolor style drawings in Photoshop for some of the backgrounds, especially “revamping” the ones I created last semester. Here’s the cafe set I’ve been working on!
So none of this is actually my art! I just wanted to show how I’ve been framing animation tasks for other STAs. I try to be as descriptive as possible; telling STAs specifically what I would like to see incorporated with each reference image I provide them. I also give them colors to use or explicitly tell them that they can choose a color themselves. I also usually provide instruction for how the file should be organized, especially if the task is a little more complicated!
I wanted to include some backgrounds I’ve made so far for the RUS412K Project. These were hand-drawn and painted on paper and then scanned into the computer. There’s still some coloring the paper illustrations will need. Also, they will need to be sufficiently flattened before the final scan (since the paper tends to bend you paint it with watercolor) and the backgrounds touched up in photoshop! All of these backgrounds are based off of real Russian spaces, a step up from last semester!
Things have been moving forward with the RUS412K Project. There are always so many different things I have to do for the Russian Online courses that when the project is in full swing I feel like I always have to be on my toes! We’ve been working on editing the previous semesters’ powerpoint videos, switching videos from different units, removing/adding audio and so forth and I found out last week that I’ll be taking on some of Samantha’s responsibilities for keeping the project on track while she is away for 3 weeks! So I’m working with multiple new google sheets and a more direct communication with the professor, as well as keeping the Box storage for the project organized. But I also have a video STA helping with some of these edits and he works really fast on Premiere so hopefully we’ll complete these edits soon! The preproduction for the RUS412K Animations is chugging along as well, and hopefully I’ll have some pictures to post on my blog by the next STA meeting! We already have a number of new characters and objects created and I’ve drawn 4 or 5 backgrounds!
ALSO!!! The Chinese powerpoint video project is officially complete! So nice to hear:^))))