Capstone Animation

Here's the high-quality layer of my animation, for your viewing pleasure. Sorry it took this long to upload the animation... I never bothered to make a YouTube account until tonight.

Capstone Testing Results

Earlier today, we had nine people test our project and fill out the questionnaire I handed them. The physical touch-screen part was not quite working as it should be, but we had a mock-up that had mostly the same effect. Instead of "touching" the screen, the user would shine infrared LEDs onto the screen. The first three questions ask for a rating between one and ten (one being the worst, and ten the best), and the averages of all those are below. The fourth question is in regards to "unusual objects" that I hid in the animation and did not tell the testers about beforehand. The last question asked for additional comments. The other questions had a comments section as well, and I selected a few from each question to post below.

1.) How was your overall experience with the project? 8.7

"The longer I used it the more details I observed. I love that I did not get bored or figure it out right away." Jolene B., New Media

"I've never seen anything like it I believe, it's a very interesting concept." Cameron M., Biology

"There needs to be more physical relationship to the work, this will obviously be remedied when they implement the touch screen part to the project." Brian M., New Media

2.) How would you rate the touch-screen interface? 8.3

"The way it worked was neat, it might have been more fun to actually touch it. The LEDs were slow to go through layers, but the effects of different light sources were fun to see." Alexandra S., Biology

"The touch-screen portion still in developmental stage, yet so far, wand-type interface is very effective." Brandon H., Chemistry

3.) How would you rate the animation? 8.1

"It was really neat and it looked great." Lily O., New Media

"The animation seems really well done, and the fact that there are multiple levels of the animation that are burned through makes the piece that much better." Brian M., New Media

4.) Did you find any unusual objects? If so, how many?

*This question had some mixed results. Some people did not notice any of the objects I hid (or they did, and didn't think of them as "unusual"), while others saw a varying amount of objects. On the questionnaire, I had a range of 1-10 items, even though I only hid five objects. Two people found all five objects. One person circled "seven", which makes me wonder if she either miscounted (which would make sense, as I gave no one any warning about the hidden objects), or saw objects that she deemed "unusual" that were supposed to be there.

"...I did not realize finding the objects was the goal right away, but I think that's because I was excited about the wand and burning things." Jolene B., New Media

"[I did not find any objects because] I spent my time writing neat things on the screen instead." Thomas W., Molecular Biology

5.) Additional comments?

"Wireframe on bottom looks more interesting and dramatic." Thomas W., Molecular Biology

"Perhaps make it more sensitive so that the last layer can be found easier and doesn't take as much time waiting, it'd be a little more interactive that way. Also perhaps start with the actual animation not the wireframe as that's more like uncovering and 'discovering' things and fits with the theme better." Mary G., Biology

"Interesting concept. Great animations and sound effects." Kevin M., New Media

Milestone #3, and Capstone Testing Plan

Here's my updated Gantt chart. I have finished rendering for my animation (sound the trumpets!), and all that's really left that needs doing is for me to finish the audio for it. I have the voice acting done for it, performed by my friend, but it lacks any sound effects. It shouldn't be too hard to finish at this point, though. I'll have all four of my layers ready to present tomorrow in class.

And now for the more important part of this post: capstone testing plan. By March 31st, I will have completed all my testing required for capstone. So without further adieu:

My Capstone Testing Plan

• Audience: I will target new media and studio art students and faculty. I will also ask Jason Walker if he would like us to target other groups, such as computer science students/faculty. I will ask Owen Smith if he has any recommendations for people to contact.
  
• Deployment: Since our project is an installation that can only be experienced to its full potential in person, we will plan on setting up a time and place for people to come and test it out. We will be contacting other capstoners who are doing installations (Kristina Younan and Dan Sprogis, maybe Dana Ransdell if he's setting up his project as an installation, and whoever else might be doing installations. I'll have to research), and we will try to coordinate having the same time/place. I know it is possible for us to use the Collaborative Media Lab as a place to test, but I'm not sure if it is the most ideal spot for the other capstoners yet.
  
• Promotion: I think the most effective way to get the word out is to send out posters for the event. The printed posters would be placed in key locations, such as the 4th floor of Chadbourne Hall, the Collaborative Media Lab, Lord Hall, and the Memorial Union. Other locations may become important depending on the opinions of the other capstoners with installations. In addition, the posters would be sent via FirstClass email to the "NM Major", "Art", and "Announcements & Alerts" folders, would be posted on the New Media Website, and might be announced in the Maine Campus. I think if we offered FREE snacks as well, more people might be keen on showing up (although such a thing would be difficult to pull off at the Collaborative Media Lab, if that's where we end up having it, given the library's ban on food... but there's always the possibility of being extremely sneaky about it).
  
• Feedback Mechanism: Probably the easiest way to do this would be to give out a hard-copy survey for the user to fill out upon testing our project. As the installation really needs to be experienced in person, it would only make sense to have a physical survey, as opposed to an online one. Questions would include "How was your overall experience?" and "What did you like/dislike about the touch interface/animation?", among other questions that we'll need to think up, and would also include an "Other comments" section for anything else the user feels like adding.
  
• Feedback Summary Format: We would have to custom collate our results, since the mechanism used to collect the results is very much not digital. The results would consist of written testimonials (most likely whatever is written down in "Other comments", but it may come from other questions asked) and charts (such as to show everyone's rating of their overall experience, from "Excellent" to "Terrible").

Poster, First Draft

Here's my first draft of my poster. I did not have all the information I needed in order to fill in the details, but the layout of it should be enough for the critique tomorrow, I hope. I'll need to edit this and have it printed by class on Monday.

Milestone #2

This is my Gantt chart as of Tuesday night. I forgot to post it to my blog, though, but as it turned out that my milestone was postponed due to a snow day, I will be presenting tomorrow (Monday) anyways. I have more done than my chart states, though--more specifically, the voice acting is over and my animation is 99.9% done (just need to finish up a tiny bit of lip synching and fix the gravity field for the dirt so that it doesn't "float" down like it currently does). I might have it finished by tonight, except that I also need to work on a promotional poster.

My project has been tweaked again for a number of reasons (one being that it will take me less time and fewer headaches the new way...), and now instead of it switching from one style to another, it has become switching between different levels of "detail" within the 3D animation (wireframe mode on top, followed by a low-quality default light render, and then a hardware rendered low-quality version with scene lighting, and then finally the high-quality rendered version). In order for the viewer to see the higher quality versions, they will need to "dig" away at the lower quality versions. I'm still working out the details, but this would give me a lot more time to focus on the project, since I'm not spending all my time simply animating.

So anyways, this is what I've gotten completed since my last milestone:

• Storyboards have been scanned to .pdf format, and can be found here.
• Voice acting *finally* recorded.
• Animation is nearly complete.
• Sound effects search has begun.

What I still need to do:

• Finish animation.
• Render (yikes!).
• Sound effects/foley work.
• Editing.
• Acquire an ambient music score.
  

Milestone #1

My first milestone review is tomorrow morning, so I'll post here what progress I've made and what I still have left to do. But first, an updated Gantt Chart again:


So my 3D animation is nearly complete and ready for rendering. That's the good news. The bad news: it's going to end up being about a minute long, instead of the projected 20-30 seconds. Whoops. That's around 1500 frames. Each frame seems to take a solid 20-40 minutes to render (it depends on what computer I'm rendering from, among some other factors), so it doesn't take a math genius to figure out that it would take an entire month's worth of rendering if done from one computer. Yikes! Thankfully, I'm not doing it from only one computer--I plan on hijacking a bunch of computers from the Collaborative Media Lab for this sole purpose (a feat I can probably only get away with solely because I work there). However,the big consequence of all this: a longer animation means less time to make more styles to switch back and forth from. I am still doing the 1920s style one next, but chances are very slim that I'll have any others done before spring break. I only really need two different styles for this project to work anyways, but having more would still be nice. Perhaps if we're to continue working on it after break, I'll get more completed.

So anyways, enough ranting. Here's what I hope to have ready to show tomorrow:

• Storyboards
• Hardware rendering of my 3D animation (or at least parts of it)
• Production-quality rendered still images
  

Gantt Chart Revision

Here is my Gantt chart revision, as requested for Wednesday. It will be re-updated before my milestone review on the 31st, where it will hopefully look like I'm not as far behind as it seems (isn't it sad that I spent almost 120 hours working only on the 3D animation, and I'm still not done with it? This project is going to destroy me).