Studio 3 | Cross Discipline Collaboration | Post-Mortem
- Savannah Edwards
- Aug 23, 2019
- 4 min read
Above: Still a work in progress
Audio (In progress) | Voice Acting and Supervising Recording Session
Alongside my final project group, we've been working with some audio students in the trimester below us and they have been doing a stellar job so far. We met them in Trimester 2 2019's Synergy and got their details as their showcase was rather impressive. After getting in contact with them, we've been having regular meetings about what kind of assets we need in regards to foley, atmosphere and compositions.
As I took a large part in the script writing I wanted to be around for when the voice actors did their lines and ended up recording a few myself (I'm not confident in my abilities but I think I did okay). It was an interesting experience sitting in the recording booth and then on the other side of the glass, seeing how the table worked and how tough voice acting can be. It's really important to be able to communicate between the rooms and this was especially evident when we were having technical difficulty with the communication tech between the rooms and ended up having to call the actor from the other room via mobile or use hand signals.
I think because we've been very communicative with the audio students, they have a good grasp on what we want for the project. We haven't left them to their own devices, we have been getting involved as they send us tracks and we give them feedback on what we like and don't like and I think that open communication has made this collaboration very successful thus far. There haven't been any notable mishaps, most difficulties have been technical.
Above: the draft track I got from the audio student
Audio (unsuccessful) | Track for World Builder Project
The way this project started was when we did the gallery walk to show our world builder projects to get feedback or collaborations. I got a note from an audio student expressing his interest in making a a track for the project and so I contacted him via email and got a reply the next day. I sent him the link to the animatic, my own mashed up audio track and some of the concept art as reference for him. There were weeks between emails and I rarely got updates when I asked how things were going.
Eventually he became quiet in his communication and I asked if he was still interested to which he replied he was and I finally got a draft track just over a month after starting communication with him, whereby I had already finished the project.Although the track was cool, I still had a few things I would have liked changed seeing as it was still only a draft track so I gave some feedback. After that email there were then no replies. I did some follow up emails but I got ghosted and left with a not so done track. I asked if he could just send me the track on it's own too but still nothing.
In future I think I should make a contract between the students or people I'm collaborating with so that I am not left hanging like this. I was keen to get more involved but the lack of communication from the other party left me in the dark about what was happening. I also realise now that if a person goes quiet the way my audio guy did in the middle of a project I should probably cut them from the project and find someone who is keen to work together.
Games (successful) | Play Testing
A minor collaboration where I took part in some play tests for some games students. My main feedback for most of the games was that it was tough for players to find the controls with inconsistencies in the menus. Another piece of feedback I often gave was that the colours and effects that they have utilised make it really difficult to see what you're doing in the game and that they should get some animations students or design students to make the visuals more appealing. They took the feedback very well and noted it down and that was about it for my interaction with the games students.
Above: Small showcase
Final Project (in progress) | Working Together Closely
Final project so far has been a really successful endeavor. We've all been working together from the end of trimester 2 2019 to plan our final project thoroughly. So far it's been rather smooth with only some hiccups which always come with working in a large group but we have thus far been able to move through these. The main mishaps were: lack of communication from individuals, lack of understanding of the roles we all have within the group. The understanding of roles within a large group is especially important when having meetings with outsourced people and collaborators as we don't want them to get confused about who's in charge. The issue was that we had an individual within the group telling our audio students what we want without running it past the project/creative lead which led to some confusion. We resolved this with the project lead having a chat with the individual and there have been not many related problems since.
Another issue was communication between the character artist and myself within the group as it was very important for me to be able to get an accurate reference of the character so I could make an accurate 2D rig for my part of the project. There were some further complications due to this lack of responsiveness such as changes to the design without my knowing and discovering it later. This has now been resolved after a pep talk and her going back to the original design and sticking true to it as well as finally getting her to sign off on the group contract.
These issues aside, the deep collaboration between our group members I think has been rather successful with members constantly uploading things to our communication channels and everyone giving feedback or advice. We have frequent meetings via Discord or face to face and try our best to include our outsourced members so that they know what's going on too. Seeing as each member has different specialties and is researching different things, when we collaborate, we learn about each other's workflows and have developed an appreciation for the capabilities of each member within the group.
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