Innovation and collaboration

Printing the Final

I am so relieved and overjoyed that the printing process is done. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing the virtual book turned into a real book. But I went through a bit of frustrating moments before printing. Illustrator does not seems to export the bleed with the artboard even though I ticked export with bleed. I have yet to find out what I did wrong. I tried many times exporting but it just doesn't seems to work. At the end, I changed the document's sizes :

This is the original A4 size :

Then I added plus 6 mm (the bleed) to the width and height.

And exported the files into PDF and then combined all the scenes into one PDF.

This time, when I got to the printing shop there was nothing wrong with my files except for the file size. The file size was too big that their printer wouldn't print the file. Fortunately, the staff helped me reduced the file size. Note to self, I must try to minimize the file size as much as possible for future printing projects. Moving on, I choosed 100gsm matt paper to be used for the pages inside the book, and a thicker paper for the cover with matt finishing.

Our client also did suggest to us to use matt paper instead of glossy, so it will be easier to scan without the reflections getting in the way. And we agree to that suggestion.

And here are the photos of the printed book :

Finally we have completed this AR book project, and it was an enjoyable experience for me. Throughout this project's process, I've learned to think more critically when coming up with ideas and solving problems I faced. It was really exciting to be able to use the AR technology in our project and I am excited when the video plays after I scanned the QR code. Other than that, I learned more about working together as a team and how we can work better together by knowing each other's strengths and weakness so that we can accommodate to each other's skills. I felt like we have given new "life" to books and I hope I get the chance to do a project like this again.

AR is a new technology and I believe it will soon become a daily usage in the future. I can't wait for that moment to come and I hope I will be part of projects which involve AR sometime in the future.

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Adding the animation video into metaio and Presenting to Clients.

After all the illustrations are done, I proceeded to add the animations into metaio and generate the QR codes. Initially, the first try that I did, I did not set the video to be fullscreen. After viewing the videos for a few times, I find it incredibly difficult to view the video when it's floating above the marker. I cannot move the device away from the marker to view the video. Therefore, after letting my group members know, I changed it to fullscreen view. I think this would be much easier for the children too.

After generating the codes I added the QR codes into the following scenes :

Presenting to clients

I printed out the scenes above and Lai Yenn mounted it onto the mounting board to be presented to our client. The client like our idea and our progress so far. However, he does have a few suggestions and comments.

He suggested that we have a web portal to show more of the book series' selection where customers can purchase more of the series. I like that idea, we could do that sometime in the future as we don't have enough time now to do the web portal.

Other than that, he suggested that we could make the customers love the character more by having the character as soft toys, and merchandising it to become various items. I can already imagine the characters as soft toys, stationeries, and other items that will attract children. It would be great to merchandise the characters, just like how Walt Disney has merchandise of their characters.

Additional comments would be that the file size for the videos are too huge, therefore it will take a long time to load. I managed to reduce the size of the videos, thanks to Komal who found this really good software which reduces the video sizes. The software is known as Handbrake. This is the link to their website : http://handbrake.fr/.

View of Handbrake :

It was really easy to use and it works really well! Then I re uploaded the reduced size videos onto the channels in Metaio. I also just found out that I don't have to regenerate the QR codes as it will use back the same QR code as long as it is using the same channel. This feature really saved up a lot of time.

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Completed Scene 4 and clean ups.

Here is the official completed scene 4! :

Actually Lai Yenn and I officially completed this scene 2 weeks ago.

But when I brought the files for printing, the staff at the printing shop suggested I tweak a little to make sure I get better results from the print. The problem with the files was, the words are too near to the edges and most likely will be cut off during the binding process. And we've forgotten to create outlines for the words, so we had missing fonts. Adding on, for book printing, they print 12 pages each book. Which means the books that are to be printed must be 12, 24, 36, 48 etc. pages. We only have 34 pages, including the covers. So we had to add 2 more pages.

He taught me how to add a border as a guideline and place my words and the graphics within that border. He also suggested I saved it as PDF instead of importing it straight away into indesign. After that, I let Lai Yenn and Komal know about it so we can clean up the files and do the adjustments.

I do feel disappointed when I couldn't get it printed on that day, because we would like to show the clients the printed product. I also did panicked when he told me the words will be cut off and the missing fonts. However, I know it's best not to rush the printing, as our money and effort would be wasted if there are mistakes.

Besides, we still have a few more days to do changes and clean it up to make it better. I felt it is my fault for not researching and getting the printing rules right before finalising the layouts. I will definitely make notes about the printing rules to save time for future projects. Especially the number of pages needed to print a book. I feel at fault for not remembering printing rules from semester one's typography class.

Okay moving on, this is basically how I clean up the layout :

I made the white border, which is 5mm thickness and place the graphics and words within the border. That's about it and I added 6mm bleed to each sides, so during the binding process it won't be cut off.

I did that for scene 3 and 4 while Lai Yenn did it for scene 1 and 2. And here is the official completed scene 3 :

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Adding in sound effects and music

All the animation for the scenes are completed and we proceed to add in sound effects. The sounds that I've used came from www.freesfx.co.uk and freesounds.org. I played the animation in Quicktime and pause the video whenever there are movements that require sounds.

Then, I'll search for the sounds and place it in a folder in google drive so that everyone in the group can have access to the sounds. It is quite hard to find some of the sounds such as the rubbish piling up.

Initially, I searched keywords such as "garbage". There are some plastic rustling sounds but it doesn't suit the scene. Then I searched "tin cans" and most of the tin can sounds are clanging and clinking. The other keywords that I've used are "plastic movement" and "toys", which I did find suitable sounds from that keywords. The sound that I've used for the rubbish piling up are "tin of chocolates" and "plastic toys". Seems to be quite different from rubbish junks, but it works. As for the vending machine's sounds, I use the sound "items moving in fridge". Because to me it seems like a big refrigerator with lots of cans.

After that, I use Adobe After Effects to place the sounds. Personally, I would prefer using Final Cut Pro, but I'm using a PC. That's alright, as I can still adjust the sounds in After Effects under the audio's option.

We have also agreed on which music to use, we've gotten the music from incompetech.com (Royalty Free Music) and these are the choices that I've listed down to be choosen :

Silly Fun

Dance of the Sugar Plum Faeries

Sing Along with Jim

Circus Waltz

I shared the music with Komal and Lai Yenn and we all agreed that "Sing along with Jim" is the best choice among the 4 music due to it's catchy tune.

Here are the animations with sound and music added in for the scenes:

Scene 1 Dog:

Scene 1 Fox:

Scene 2 Dog :

Scene 2 Fox:

Scene 3 Dog:

Scene 3 Fox :

Scene 4 Dog:

Scene 4 Fox :

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Completed Scene 2 and Scene 3

Scene 2 and Scene 3 are done! The QR codes and some of the texts are not placed in yet. I did the illustrating for the backgrounds and the dog, owl, fox and the vending machine except the two pages where the fox is not with the other two musketeers.

I feel like my patience is tested when I'm illustrating because it takes time to pen tool the sketches and making sure it fits right with the surroundings. Most of the time I'm counting down the amount of pages left to do and I feel really happy when I've completed one page. I like how my team work together, we have our own jobs to do and we'll help each other to complete it and give suggestions to improve the illustrations. Lai Yenn and I are working on scene 4 and we are hoping to complete it by this week so that we can give Komal a hand in animating and get started with adding in sound effects and music.

Anyway, here is our current scene 2 without the completed texts and QR code :