Sound
The sound file and the screenshot of our communication:
After communication with the voice students, they finally gave us a very satisfactory dubbing. I can’t thank them anymore. The voice makes our project more appealing to the audience. The background music of starting animation gives us a feeling of emptiness. I add it to the animation and send it to group members. They give me some advice:
- They hope the splash voice had been louder at the beginning of the animation.
- The end of the sound is a little abrupt. We hope to do attenuated processing, fade out the animation before the high melody, or cut the high pitch. Because stopping at a high note makes the transition from animation to game a little jarring.
I checked out the tutorial and turned the sound of the initial crash into the sea as loud as possible in PR.
When dealing with the high notes, I first tried to subtract the high notes, but I found that the two audio clips before and after didn’t mix well. If we want to solve this problem, we need to contact the voice of the students. Considering the deadline, I decided to explore other solutions. So I tried the fade-out effect in the final image. I added the last frame at the end of the animation and fade-out the still image. As it happens, this works very well, the fading of the picture and the fading of the sound are synchronized organic, and the extended time gives the audience time to react.
Here are the videos before and after amending:
The conclusion about cooperation:
We have a group discussion every week, we would show the work content of the week in the group, and then give each other modification suggestions. From positive at the beginning to tired in the middle and excited in the late stage, we encouraged and supported each other to promote the project. In the beginning, we created miro and Onedrive cloud disks for the group, which was convenient for everyone to upload materials and achieve the effect of resource sharing.
https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOI4xRLI=/
Since our game project was a fairy tale adaptation, we spent a lot of time talking about the script. At first, we decided to make it all in 3D. We decided to create five character models, five scene models. But it was too much work, and after a week of doing the model without rest, I told them this way cannot work. So together we revised the script again, reducing it from five plots to three. Turn regular expressing stories into memories, telling them in flashbacks. And select two scenes, draw the scene in 2D and make the fake 3D effect.
We used the change of the scene of the rabbit in the sea to express the mood of the rabbit. From the beginning of the panic when it fell into the deep sea, to the end of the sea scene gradually brightened to express the rabbit’s nightmare disappeared.
Fortunately, this week we added new 3D animation students to help make characters and scenes. Everyone was happy. After all, many hands make light work.
I was in charge of the 3D model of the rabbit, and the opening animation. Since the model has to be finished first, students majoring in VR can test it in Unity, so I still had a heavy task in the early stage. I also quickly gave them a preliminary model within a week. When it comes out of the model, we add some action. There was a lot of excitement, a feeling that the project had started, that there was hope.
For the next few weeks, VR students worked on games involving rabbits. VR students often have long discussions with game design students in meetings. Typically, the discussion is about when the desired style and practicability have conflict. At this point, we 3D majors are a little confused, but once they consider changing the model, we have to give our opinion.
When the prototype of the work came out, with the help of the teacher, we got in touch with the sound students in the undergraduate course. Before meeting with them, our team came up with an idea of the sound effect, made a document that clearly stated what sounds were needed for what scene, and some reference links. After discussion, the voice students understood our requirements and gave the sound list. They did a really good job, and we were amazed when we got the sound. Thank them very much for their support.
A few days ago, VR students integrated all the scenes, gameplay and animation we did and gave us a preliminary test screen recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PUNcPQVOQP-nNYzCpHb5p0cKC5v4nWah/view.
We also made some suggestions, like adding bubbles to the scene and making transitions more explicit. At the same time, they added some subtitles to make the story development clear to the players. Meanwhile, another student and I finished the animation.
And then there’s the Friday morning test. Everyone was very excited, after all, the almost finished product is out, just need to add the final version of the animation and gameplay. On that day, a lot of students played our game and gave us a lot of suggestions: for example, it was hard to find certain transition bubbles, the sound playing method was too tired and so on. We’ll spend the last week debugging. We also played other groups’ games.
When I finished the game, the mood was very moved. I feel like it’s not easy for everyone, and we work so well together. Everyone worked so hard that the project couldn’t be completed without anyone. So we gave each other a big hug. The happiest part of this group project is that we have made good friends. It is really great that we encourage each other to cooperate.
Here is our curtain call: Very moved when seeing this at the end of the game.