Building Vyond Vignettes w/Rubina Halwani & Toddi Norum

Toddi Norum  
Good morning, everybody.

So we are really glad to be back. So on top, you know, I don't think any one of us have been on for for maybe a year. So we're really happy to be here. And I think this is the best way in the world to start up our weekend. So Rubina is an inclusive design consultant. He also works with the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. And she's got about 20 years experience. But today she's going to talk about building vignettes and beyond which I plan to use a lot. So I'm excited to see what she has to share with us. So

Rubina Halwani  
just bear with us. Awesome. Thank you, Ty. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. And please put in the chat if you have or haven't used beyond if you're familiar with the tool. Or if you're not familiar with the tool, I'll just give a quick rundown of it. Beyond is an animation tool that is a pretty easy learning curve for instructional designers to create animated clips. And so I enjoy using it I think I was exposed to it years ago when it was Go Animate. And then they got taken over. And I've used it off and on. And now I use it at the states. We acquired it here. I asked them to have this as a tool for us. On top of Articulate Storyline and I rise, which are other tools that we use for ELearning Development. And I enjoy using it I end up being the go to person in the office to kind of filled out beyond pieces. And I found the best use of development design for me is to make smaller chunk pieces, perhaps micro lessons, anything between zero to about two to 15 minutes, minutes, max, because you'll be surprised how many slides into a two different you sent how many transitions there are everything else that happens within the animation realm of designing this stuff. So for me, those are the best. And so the misuses that I've used for non has been things like cheesier videos, explainer videos, introductory pieces to training, small educational pieces, some marketing pieces, but within the realm of marketing programs and services for DHHS work. So it is in that realm of instructional design, and they're just kind of summer, fun to look at. And comical in nature, depending upon the tone that I'm getting from the folks that I work with and what they're looking for, or suggesting consultant suggest things to I offer them some stuff, design sketches, and then kind of work my way through it to see if they like it if they don't, and then kind of go from there. And then other pieces they really do give me autonomy for so these will come up to me or program managers will come up to me and say, we're trying to do this, you know, we're trying to teach people this, I just filled out this program or initiative that we're doing or want to do. What do you think is going to explain us and then I go well, we can do, you know, we can we can use again. But if tools here we can make a PowerPoint, we can make a or we can use the honor nation, and kind of make it a little bit more interactive and posted up on our website or in any other presentation that you're going to do, you can embed it into your presentation. So it really just kind of teach our folks a little bit about what it is and how to use it. And then usually get some buy in from there. Show them some sketches. And after that they're really comfortable with it. They really like it and stuff like that too. So it's been a positive experience. Let's see here and Tati. Please keep me informed if there's anything in the chat I would love to hear but it's going to be

Toddi Norum  
good questions yet. I was gonna say I worked for the growth engine, a lot of story based interests for they're eating an amazing beyond and they were awesome. Very engaging, really good lead inspection stores that nature understand that we

Rubina Halwani  
were going to talk about security and why. So there's simple stuff. Yeah, it is. It's been really really nice and fun. At my office in the last couple of months, I received them in the work for me I pieces that I've created and for the rest of the other pieces to kind of just like everything that I've done so far they've recognized my work and l&d. And so that's been a character. When I'm doing that I'm going in the right direction, which is, let me start sharing some of these pieces. And then I'll talk through some of the few decision points. And if you have any granular questions, please ask us and we'll and we'll walk through them. And I am, I would say, an intermediate level user.

I've used it for about off and on seven years maybe. And so I've created a lot of different pieces either as all the pieces that I have to add to HHS. And this first one is just a coarse bumper introduction that I created for any of the pieces that we do to help Nish live on to our website or into our training materials. This just kind of comes as an intro into those pieces to just introduce our our logo. So if we were to just play that real quickly, it's about 10 seconds in length, not too long, designed purposefully so that it doesn't interrupt too much of the training that comes in unless I hope you guys enjoyed the piece

so that's just a really quick overview of, of what I created. And then in the nuance I use the characters that they had placed those in there, they have several different types of characters that you can look at what you see if I can get into the development side.

As an increase designer, kind of like self trainers, I am now certified as a dei

Unknown Speaker  
consultant

Rubina Halwani  
for but I so for DHHS, I very deliberately pick out images, graphics characters that are going to be more inclusive, to show eight different pieces to including marginalized groups are underrepresented groups to show things about accessibility and stuff like that. So there's just some light design touches that I have in the in all of the pieces that I touch for training. So this particular piece, I put in characters, like here's a girl wearing a hijab that's supposed to represent and this character here is a person in a wheelchair to show the elderly a flax meal here and we'll just kind of shaking hands, a little girl here playing with the dog, somebody just exercising very light things that we have here. And then this is a new test. So I've got the mountains in our backdrop, and a couple of kids here playing and talking to each other a lot of the things that we do here for our for the entire general public, so I wanted to just kind of sprinkle that in and show what that would make will look like on a random day out and about and I wanted to keep the attendance piece really light kind of friendly. So I picked out music that kind of played with that as well put that in there. When I put in music pieces, I do lower the volume of it just because if I were to put out 100% It is gonna just overshadow everything else that's on the screen, it just ends up being too loud, especially when you have narration on there. For this one I don't have narration helps. Like too much if it if it's at a full speed, or otherwise, here the characters that you are able to look at. They've got three different types, they've got business from the whiteboard, animation and contemporary pieces. And then you can also build and draw your own characters if you'd like to say that takes a little bit of time. I would say for me to draw a character from scratch takes it out maybe five to 10 minutes kind of time. If I know exactly what I'm looking for in designing for. It doesn't take way too long. It just takes a little bit of time. And then so for this one, these are the contemporary pictures, contemporary characters and using a lot of casual pieces in my products just because of the need Show showing the channel topic and witness pieces in sales. That's it for this one. Here are design decisions underneath, like things that are on screen, I've got the cloud here, on the left to the I mean from the rights to the left, in my case and stuff. And so I'm just using enter effects, motion paths for that. Making sure that I'm keeping straight and inline, it takes a bit of time to play around with it. This this little motion piece plus the cloud from me about another five or 10 minutes to do not very long, you put it you put the image that you want in there, you decide a how it's going to start, and then how it's going to continue on which way you're heading for your motion path I, you can use a straight line, you can use a corner, you can use a wave a loop and kind of play with these and learn about them. If you don't know which one you're actually going to use, which is perfectly fine. And then afterwards, you just kind of go with it. So that's it. Are there any questions before?

Toddi Norum  
I actually have a question. I'm just curious how long it takes to put together like an entire piece like the eschaton theosophist. But But it's always nice to know what it takes to actually go from soup to nuts on that. So I'm just thinking, you know, you're layering you're animating? So

Rubina Halwani  
yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna get back into this and show that. It's very good question. So for, for like 10 seconds after I had a design discussion. So the design discussion is going to be about like a half hour in length, or maybe an hour in length, depending upon what your project is and what you're doing with it, making sure that you know the scope of the project that you agreed with your program manager on the terms of the Tony, can you have music in your head? What what are they looking for? For this one, I had a lot of autonomy. And they're like, we just want a course bumper to introduce all of our courses. And then let's see what you come up with. So I'm like, Okay, let's see what Utah looks like. So I started just kind of creating things. So that was just kind of from my head that took about maybe an hour to kind of sketch out basics in my head, in my storyboard. Even before I went into the house to like kind of sketch that out, I looked at the different characters I was like, which kind of character did I want. And then I went with one type, just to keep it a seamless look. And then all of these other pieces that were in here with the sun moving and the clouds moving, and everything, all of this stuff is to about 10 seconds, nothing longer than that. And then all of a 10 seconds. I created all of this in about one day, but honestly in about four hours. So really not that long. And the learning curve for beyond is very, very, I would say low. For me. I think it was fairly easy. And I think that you have to do with this tool is just really play with it. Go in there even if you don't know what stuff is flicker now mess it up. You know, put stuff in delete stuff out, you can always press the undo button here. It's not like rise. Anyway, it's not like rise where you're, you're you've undone something and you have like you've you've gotten rid of something when you can't get it back. You've had definitely. So that's yeah, I have I have some angst with rice.

Toddi Norum  
And that really short timeline for something was, you know, an animation. Yeah. Do have a couple of questions. So Rachel saying and going back a little bit. You mentioned thinking beyond two to three minutes max and she said she loves that. But then she said how would you coach ID her trying to institute the four forces or extended complex scenario? What would you say to them?

Rubina Halwani  
If you could if you're a US who are trying to use the forces? Yeah, or complex scenarios, what would you say? So this specific topic, just what we're doing is a different conversation, but I can definitely touch on that a little bit. I would be using definitely a storyboard. Definitely the way you make any other I have, you're going to sketch out what each slide is going to be like every slide that you add into your piece. And then what is going to be on screen? What is going to be narration? Voiceover which which, which voice are you using. And for complete training, I ended up not actually using beyond if it's a complete training, I use the other tools that we have. And I embed beyond, I think for developing an entire training for us, my office and our, you know, work parameters. And time. feasibility is an issue for us that animating an entire training would be too, too excessive for us. So I have worked on other projects, where were they did do that. But there were actually several developers that were also in that as well. So you may want to do that as a group of other instructional designers just do it in pieces, and then you can add beyond slots. Projects, as you're sharing. I avoid actually making an entire beyond animated training for myself. And my

Toddi Norum  
experience with being on Wednesday, in each section of the training that we've worked on with have an intro and beyond before we would get to like a slide series that would go through things that need to be checked off, or learn or Queenstown, that kind of thing. But there wasn't until it's been behind that as well. The number of folks that were just doing the beyond videos and then exporting them out as standard enforcement so that it will pick this up and bring them into storyline. It helps in all that I mean, you know, again, the storyboarding is key to everything. whiteboarding is

Rubina Halwani  
definitely you get everything you want to have it like probably most of what is going to be said within 30 seconds, because animated pieces just know a lot quicker. And say we want to have a shot list. Anything on the list shot list is the scope of that. So that you can figure out the format of how you shade list of narration, pieces like that, for the second part of your question. For the scenarios, again, kind of like what Tony was saying, I will use perhaps like Articulate Storyline and create the scenarios in there. But then you can jump back and forth from beyond embedded non piece, have the characters do something, say something? Whatever it is that you're teaching, pause it, go to the question and storyline answer the question in storyline to forge your, whatever the user is doing, if it's right or wrong, tell them the feedback if it's right or wrong, and then go back to the beginning on PC, if you want to, at the end to kind of just like piece it together. Now this is what they did. Yeah, how are we going to try to wrap that up and stuff I didn't use smaller pieces for the characters use is like an animated avatar, you know, someone who's kind of close to the learning. You know,

Toddi Norum  
they'll pop in and say, hey, you know, here's, here's a question for you, you know, in that animated way, because they become identified as that average type of person along with that training. So you know, at least that way it's there.

Rubina Halwani  
And it's cool. Yeah, and if anybody else has any ideas, please put those in. For for Rachel IV. I'd be happy to have her get some other experiences. Leader I see your question. I'm going to answer that in a little bit. I definitely want to talk about that. So I'll leave some room for that for the AI stuff that just came out with blonde and I'm sure that we'll do let me show you a couple of other pieces of it kind of just see like a full display of stuff. Here is a another piece that I made as a as a greeting to you and fleas that joined her office. And of course

Speaker 3  
Hello, and welcome aboard. Thanks for joining us at the office of substance use and mental health. We're glad you're here.

Toddi Norum  
This piece

Rubina Halwani  
think it's just taking showing

Yeah. So that piece took about a couple of days to build and design. Most of it was On day one, about six hours, the next day I cleaned it up, it's about 13 seconds in length, again, not very long. You don't want small introductory pieces to be very long and automated in animation, as don't end up getting the same amount of attention span sometimes from your audience versus things so. So I just want to make it tight here. So here in the introduction, all of these were templates that were pre made that were already there in the library. So I used that for this piece, had a quick countdown. And then here's where I drew the screen, this was actually a template that we did have just just something that looks like a zoom. And for our office, we are one where the largest employer in the town. And when COVID hit, a lot of us were sent home as remote employees. And then the state really liked that. And they kept, they kept us in remote positions for most of our admin title. And so I'm like, well, the work environment doesn't look like in person. And so I create this welcome to kind of represent all kinds of home theaters, and then just creating this new person that would come into our office, we wouldn't necessarily be in the office to actually get them to probably be on this computer screen. So made it very realistic for this. And then the background here, I put things that are really specific to an office like this helpful. Health, healing, just on the board using some text, and a little bit of a background. So that they can see a little bit of our value system. Since we're creating them, everybody here is nice. And I use the characters, more, I believe business friendly for this. And in a casual format for most of them, just because we're kind of a little bit more casual, business casual, in our space. I have them all kind of doing a little bit of movement in here. You know, just kind of freeing people to sing. Yeah, saying hello. This was a thought process of mine, where I'm like, What would people do? If they're trying to say hi, when you say welcome, and how do we have everybody not doing the same thing. So in my mind, I was like, Oh, they can just all kind of wave. And I'm like, well, that's just kind of, I'm a little bit, you know, boring at some point. And so I had them kind of doing different things I, I, I observe my co workers when we are on a Zoom meeting, and I noticed what they're all kind of doing. And subtracted the ones that are like typing, and doing other things on zoom that we probably shouldn't be doing. Other than that, I'm looking at the ones that are in there. And, and you know, sometimes we have a drink in our hands, sometimes we're just very, very vocal and things like that. And anything that we're doing, we try to stay positive because the specific office I work in substance use and mental health. So we have our programs and initiatives written back here as well as safety program. 980 is a different initiative that we have. And so I kind of put that in the background, they're not our logo in here. So that we can see that it's not something that appears up on our resume, but I just put that in there just to be creative and stuff. And then all of the little pieces that I've put in characters and stuff like that they're all laid out in here, if there's any element to add in there, and whatnot. And then voice was really cool, because I did use whatever voice that I already had in here went through all of the selection pieces to figure out the right one for me, and trying to get that kind of sounded real lifelike, kind of similar to my current director because I do that character as my director. And so, you know, looks for these, you have to just play with them, you have to listen to them, you have to hear them. And then each time you kind of draw a character that is going to speak, you're gonna want a different voice on that. So you may just have to listen to it again and see which one kind of fits the most. And then if you can't do this, like my first effort is to find something automated if I can, and then it's not going to just go up and reach out to my co workers. I'm like, I need to borrow somebody's voice or I need you to marry this because I can't.

But I was able to do this. And it turned out okay, it's very nice. And that's it. If we have any questions about putting this one together, let me know.

Toddi Norum  
I'm just gonna say this in the comments, you know, it's a cat on material back. I mean, I was just saying, Where are the kids?

Rubina Halwani  
Yeah, some of them have those, you know, those screens that aren't really real. But you're like, beautiful kids.

Toddi Norum  
So yeah, actually, Q is asking if the PowToons is in the same room. So I don't recall talking because the original GoAnimate or not, I just remember if it came about about the same timeframe, and I want to say like, it doesn't fit to 2016, I just don't know if they're the same company.

Rubina Halwani  
I don't think they are the same, I think editors to each other. And I tried using power chains. I did work with that. When we were a couple of years ago, when we put in the proposal to request a review. They want us to look at different competitors just to see when they go for.

Toddi Norum  
suppose they're a different company. I've been UK. So yeah, obviously the real estate on that. So thank you.

Rubina Halwani  
Yeah, I used it, I played with it. I didn't necessarily like it as well. And I wasn't as comfortable with that one. And I just I ended up just defaulting back to beyond I really liked using it. I already knew how to use the tool. And I liked the characters that were in there better than I liked. And I want to say and then and then correct me if I'm wrong in the chat, I want to say beyond might be a little bit more expensive. Right now, I'm not sure which one is q3 Now just go ahead and say, but, but it's it's a robust piece, and they're always updating things. And I knew about this product a lot better. So I just liked using it. So I was like this is the tool that I want. This is why let's just go ahead and approve this one piece here. So these are the two smaller pieces that I've done. This is a longer piece that I did for this await. Actually, let me not do that one is a hot mess. So putting together this one is a little bit better in terms of teaching you guys about this. I'll go to that pot in a bit. But let me show you something that's, let's say, more structured. So this is a piece that I created as an introduction to a toolkit that was being designed so the toolkit isn't actually in here. They were going to present it later, but they just wanted something kind of really huge to introduce it. And then this one definitely has a little bit more proper insurance structure.

Speaker 4  
Hi, Nana. In school, I learned that a kid's health is important to helping us to become big and strong. As we grow, we learn how to take care of ourselves, be a good friend, and deal with big emotions. When we face challenges, it can be hard sometimes to know where to go for help.

Speaker 5  
Hey, I'm Matthew. As kids and teens, we spend a lot of time in school, life can get pretty complicated.

Speaker 6  
We can deal with difficult situations that cause stress, anxiety, sadness, or feelings of isolation. This is why having supportive professionals such as counselors and social workers in our schools is very important. They can help us cope with life's ups and downs so we can focus on learning.

Speaker 5  
I'm glad you've decided to come in. I'm here to help.

Speaker 7  
You. Schools are a great environment to address potential behavioral health needs. Because children spend a great deal of their formative years in this setting. We can help students with early intervention and provide resources for support.

Toddi Norum  
So I just asked

Rubina Halwani  
about this piece that was being created and designed and some of this is still in an earlier format, not the final product or As I do version things out, I make copies of stuff, just because I will have different decision points where I will have discussions with Smith, and then we're going to perhaps want to go one way or the other. But this one deliberately has some earlier design decisions in it, one of those things that you may or may not have noticed is the character that's trying to figure out if I should have used this character, and or this character. So I presented folds, plus, I had a different voice on this character, and then a different voice on that character, to see which one, which one the program managers wanted to build, or they really liked, seeing the differences, and then talking about it, and then making some choices on that as well. And I just like to emphasize that Amanda is liking this kid a lot better and like the voice love better. So this is the one that they selected for the end. There's other things in here too, like the transitions that you find that have to do in between one, Dean and then next, I ended up just adding an extra slide, there's, if you are a beyond user, you can have different scene transitions to entering the scene, I just wanted to have a slide just dedicated to that, and then have some text in there as well. And then transition from here seamlessly to the next slide. So that was just something that I've learned to add in into the way I design things. And here you have the character that is looking on screen. And so this was an earlier development format to see, Hey, so what do I want this presenter to do? There's a lot of lines in here. In this slide, the decision point was to have just the one slide, and that person talking for quite a bit of time. narrative text was long, one of the things that I had to do was to go back to the program managers and say, Hey, there's a lot of conversation, like there's a lot of dialogue in this one. Maybe we should break this out into a couple of more slides. than even can I know you guys have created the narration for this piece, do I have any leeway or agency to change some of the words in it to make it a little bit shorter and succinct to say the exact same message, but just make it a little bit more succinct, very similar, that you would do in a training piece. Also, when they give you stuff and you're putting things into your storyline or rise or any of your other training pieces, they give you content and material, and then you kind of just may have to reformat some things, just to make sure they fit on screen or a4. They're, they're there, they fit the timeline that you're comfortable with. So these were really good discussions for me with them. And they trusted my skills and my decision points. So they let me do both of those things that seem a little bit more and add more peace, I guess, to break apart the language that was in there. So that was a nice thing. Out of all this stuff, I did have some music in there as well. And so I lower the volume again for the music in the background so that in the foreground, you can hear people talking and stuff. Each one of these slides is decorated differently. I start off with templates if I might attempt. If not, I start creating things bespoke like just basically what are the storyboard maybe and then I just start drawing things. Are there any quick questions?

Toddi Norum  
That was asked is the audio in there? Are you are you importing the music files from another source?

Rubina Halwani  
The music Yeah, that's a very good question. I really liked the on because it does actually offer music sources in here. So you can add your own audio file. You can add in background music, you can add in sound effects. And then and then your own uploads if you want to. So audio files are kind of like a narration and stuff like that that you would put in and then any other kind of athletes that you might want to have like your own music. Background music, there's a huge selection and I want to say from where they started to where they where things have progressed. So now, over time, they, they really do add in a lot of musical pieces. I love that because otherwise, before this was out and this was available, I would have to use things like Ben sound or whatnot. And then attributed and I don't have to do any of that attribution done embedded in. Again, you've got to play around with some different pieces, if you like it

see if it fits what you're definitely designed your slides First, your content first. And then you're going to eventually get to a point where you see the differences in the different music pieces. That's definitely not what I want for this piece. And then think about what you want. And present a couple of different things to your, to your project manager for the project if you need to and stuff, you can duplicate slides, and replay the slide with different music, and at the, at the onset of deciding the music just for now. And that's exactly what I did, I had a couple of different lines, and a couple of different slides, when I just repeat the slides, we listen to it together. And then we made a decision together. That kind of works, this one fits this, this one fits, that one really doesn't fit. Let's just try again. So a really good value.

Toddi Norum  
I mean, like, I pay for art last year, and that's like 199 for music and sound effects. You know, so

Rubina Halwani  
I'm in there, if you're willing that and that actually adds to the value of the product. He absolutely does. And so I really, I really love that feature of beyond the best. I haven't really used the sound effects inherent stuff, I probably could I definitely go down the rabbit hole of listening to everything, just because but if I do need something, I probably need to do it. Here. Here's a sample

which is pretty neat. One thing that you can do with Neon is actually add rows of stuff at the same time. So you can have your music in the background, you can have your speaking in the foreground, and then you can have them going on at the same time. So you could add in a sound effect right here. At the same time as you're adding music and then just go into the settings of whatever you have and figure out what you want for in terms of volume and style and whatnot, and fading in or fading out like do you want do you want your sound just kind of blasting from the get go. Or if you're in that kind of phase, kind of like a soft transition in and transition out. For this sound pieces of music pieces. The only the only thing I had a I guess a something to keep in mind is that this this piece is I think two minutes in length almost. Oh, yeah, great, about a minute and 50 then it just got to a little bit longer just because I put the music piece that you do select, you want to make sure you have a long length. And or you're just going to copy it and paste it over again at the end to just repeat. But I tend to like if it's just a couple of minutes, I try to see if I can find a couple of minutes. Because I like to do it again, it's just you have to make sure you match up the sound from before to the sound after so it's kind of seamless, unless you have a transition transition. But for the for the music pieces that are in here, you'll see all the times that are on here as well too. So I tend to start with those. And then if I really can't find the music before, then I'll start going to maybe a smaller and then just seeing what I can duplicate from there.

Toddi Norum  
And repeat it kind of thing still.

Rubina Halwani  
And then you can Yeah, it kind of blends it in there and stuff like that. So there's a lot

Toddi Norum  
of sound effects. It's nice markers too, you know, I mean, like versus an icon that says that the reason was I've actually made the sound effects thing. Somebody else that there was so

Rubina Halwani  
yeah, definitely have that it really does increase the value of the product, that you're able to use these things in there and to have all of these features in there. So you're not going to have different places like even the characters that are just available in here. It's just so exhausted with characters. And I actually I I asked VLANs I talk to them quite frequently, I would say maybe more like frequent means, like once a week. But like, as opposed to like never. I do come converse with them to say, Hey, can I have an image? Or a graphic? That looks like this looks like that? I don't see a break here, can you create one? And they actually do get back to me and talk to me about it and stuff like that. It's kind of it's just an email conversation back and forth. Or for for characters. Also, if I don't see the character that I'm looking for, especially like a perhaps a marginalized character, I'll talk to them as well to be like, Hey, I noticed that you don't have this kind of a character, can you please create this kind of a character, and then they add it into their library. They don't mind doing that and stuff, which is very, very inclusive and nice. And that's the kind of feedback I think you would want from your team that you're using, that they're listening to you that they're hearing you out, they're being responsive. They respond back to me in about 24 to 48 hours, like it really doesn't. And that's really nice for me that kind of do that and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. person talking to you. It's not going abroad, they haven't outsourced it yet. So any other questions tell you that we

Toddi Norum  
have? Yeah. Q Just to run out there is what are the limitations? You found a Theon says I found that many all in ones have something they do really well. And the other add on are not as strong or another tool might be better to use in conjunction with our data experience when finding limitations are strong points?

Rubina Halwani  
That is a very good question. And I probably do when I'm creating things, that's when you remember where you're like, I can't do this. For me, and I'm just looking at one piece, I can think about it. Like think one of the things that I've noticed here is when I'm putting in text, it's a small thing. But it's it's kind of bothersome to me trying to figure out how to fade the background out and stuff like that sometimes the right shape, sometimes I won't, I may have to put something in. And this is just a very small thing. But I don't want the text just kind of on here like that with the background in it. It's just too great. And the things that are interrupted. And I know that for accessibility needs and whatnot, it's just too much going on in there. So I like having something that kind of softens up the background. So that people can can get to the foreground a little bit better, and they need to screen. And sometimes I can find the right shape. And sometimes I can't, they seem to have this rectangle shape that if I wanted to have something kind of like a pyramid or triangle or whatever, I'm just going to have to just play with it myself and stuff because I I didn't find it. So they do have like full shapes that are completely filled in. But not this one that's kind of like transparent transparency, I think is the issue that I found in some of this stuff, too, that if I pick something, then I can't really make it transparent as I would like, if I need to do that. Other than that, I'm still learning a lot. And so I think I'm like, I'm not an expert, beyond developer, I think I'm intermediate. And so I'm learning things. Oh, and then I can transition on to that AI piece. So beyond came out with a new it's in beta it's called it's in a beta format called Beyond go which is funny because we started with go and then we gotta go, it's just ridiculous. But

they have they have it in a beta format. And I and that's where I think there's a lot a lot of limitations to that one because they're still developing it and whatnot. So it's right in here. If you were video and your user you get access to the Beyond go. You go there, you create a video and it's supposed to put in like it'll develop a video for you in real. Go from script to video in an instant. In about like I have played around with this. So if we were going to say hey, we're going to do like a happy birthday or something. For say that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put in this topic. I'm not sure exactly what else to say in here, but I'm just gonna say this and see what happens. The vibe I'm looking for is, let's say casual. The format I'm looking for is an announcement. And I had to click around to figure out which one to do. Because at first I thought and feeling like nope, not that announcement is probably the best thing for Happy Birthday, I'm going to lay out is that a talking head or conversation, these are the selections that you have. And this is very, very limited. I'm like, Well, which one do I use, or Happy Birthday, I'm not going to go into a biotech facility to say how you can I mean, if you want to, if you're working there. So I just get like, you know, these look different, and these look different. And so you kind of play around with the templates that are there. So so far, they have something like this. So if I go here and just say, hey, there's just somebody reading. A bit celebratory. So maybe that's the one that I want to have to create, it comes out in probably like a minute or two, we'll just see if there's a little bit of a lag here, just because it's on Crowdcast. It doesn't take that long. They create it for you. And for you. They put in the character for you, they put in the movement for you, positions for you. So I have seen this in action.

Speaker 7  
Hey, everyone, it's a special day today. Our very own colleagues name is celebrating their birthday today. Let's all take a moment to wish them a happy birthday and make them feel special today. We can send them a personal message, organise a virtual celebration, or even surprise them with a gift. Remember, small gestures can have a big impact on someone's day. Let's show colleagues name how much we appreciate them as a colleague and friend. Happy Birthday colleagues name. We're lucky to have you on our team. And we hope your day is filled with joy and laughter

Toddi Norum  
neither says it's great for your initial template it is can you use your template to work with the chair?

Rubina Halwani  
Yeah, if you've seen attempting to work with a lot of stuff for you, this is definitely going to be a transformational way that we develop videos now in in beyond and reduce the time that it can take to actually develop pieces. So it's pretty revolutionary. I love it. It's kind of like the Chad GBT that just came out and stuff. And so I really do like the concept of this, there are definite limitations, like I still have to go in here and edit stuff out, I'm not going to have like, a greeting, that's a minute long with saying all of the same stuff that's a little bit redundant in the script, if you've noticed that I'm going to take things out, I may or may not like the coloring or the characters, but the basic template, or na actually say more thought that then I would have come up with perhaps. And so this will definitely hopefully cut down design. For a lot of pieces, I would say to a fraction of that a fraction of the time that I've done now. So if it took me about a couple hours to make a 10 second piece like that first month of that. Now, it may be just taking minutes a

Toddi Norum  
couple of questions I have when I'm thinking about that because I played with some of the tools out there, can you suggest a style like if I could say hey, I wanted to style the Simpsons Is that something that could be an option for

Rubina Halwani  
like, like character, like the character and I'm just just curious

Toddi Norum  
as to some of the other things in particular in order you can modify it after it's been created. So you can edit it in here

Rubina Halwani  
so definitely so you can definitely edit in here. And then here's that here's a drawback that that he was talking about. If I want to change the character you can replace the character with another character. However my my take her face was just saying what this lady is going to come in and she may or may not be the exact same stuff like the portion size that you have from the other. So then you've got to work with that a little bit. Sure she's going to be but then it doesn't do it throughout. So you're gonna have to go through each and every line and then if you're replacing And let's just say here, this person has an action that they're doing.

You have to do the action all over again to so here are some limitations. And you know, it's in a beta format. So I'm sure beyond knows about these things. Right now, go ahead and start having this out, they did so much for you, which is great. They figured out the music to have, they figured out what level to put the music on, they figured out what narration to put in here, what the what the person should say, you can adjust all of that in there, you can edit what you're going to say in the narration here, change that into something and then generate that it takes about a few seconds to generate, you know, some some audio there text to speech. So that's kind of in this 430 pieces in certain contexts. Element Type couple of hours. I think I have to play around. But I think just

Toddi Norum  
being temper Clark, as she says he can't go to the other view, and just with baser I cannot sit view, if I don't know what she's referring to myself. And just

Rubina Halwani  
I don't know about that. I'm not sure about that. I've got to play with the tool a little bit more informed for me to kind of be a little bit more comfortable in the data, is that something you get when you're a full member? Okay, yeah, it comes in and stuff like that to see. If somebody else has replaced the entire person, maybe

Toddi Norum  
there's a security level that can use the asset at different levels.

Rubina Halwani  
That's probably, I'll try that. Thank you for it. Thank you for saying that. Try that. You guys. Let me know if you're if you're able to do like, go ahead and put that in.

So that's cool. So I'll do any other questions, comments, thoughts? I hope you liked the pieces. I'm not that big of a graphics designer. I am the Instructional Designer for servers. And I played with graphics. That's, that's my definition

Toddi Norum  
of graphics. And I really don't do them. Well.

Rubina Halwani  
Yeah, yeah. And I focus more on a story and the message that I want to create and design and the animation, you know, if it's light, but it tells a story. That's fine. You know, it is what it is. And I think I'm able to use it satisfactory for the project.

Toddi Norum  
We don't know if we have like a Slack channel. You know, we could use if people want to work together and learn more, but if we don't we think Dateline. That would be cool for us to have. Yeah, yeah.

Rubina Halwani  
Let's have a Slack channel just beyond animation kind of

Toddi Norum  
practices. We have some pretty smart people in here. Yeah, that means like, Yes, please.

Rubina Halwani  
I'm like, I think we do you need to do this. That would be fantastic.

Toddi Norum  
I mean, I've seen it before. But

Rubina Halwani  
yeah, beyond also offers. I mean, this is just for me to showcase some of the work that I've done in the decision points that I've made, the discussions that I've had with project manager, so kind of like a broad overview of how I put things together. So I hope you enjoyed that. Beyond does offer lots of videos to teach you how to use beyond and so I really like those, they also offer training and things like that, too. I think I just got an email like a couple of days ago that they're offering some training, kind of pay to play training, saying, well to become a depth user. That's, that's not a bad deal. I think it's about I just saw it very quickly. So I think it's about 400 a person, you know, so you're investing in it, but you're getting out of it, as well. When I first started and beyond, it was just, you know, learning to go look around, figure it out. And then start using YouTube to learn the rest and so

Toddi Norum  
definitely, my channel has been used is this little video They did a few years ago this Sunday on such effects, I don't know been released and help find that darkness. Or something else. So, but I mean, and I don't expect anybody here to get back into it again now, because it's been a while I wasn't very just blank anyway, like, that's awesome. Excellent. So this is fine. I just I love the fact that we can do this stuff on a Friday. And it gives us time to think about the things we can do to improve our craft. Or do we get not everything you might work in the weekend, but you know, it's still fun between them learn new things. So because I see a lot of names. And I know a lot of people actually know firstly, some the way back in my history. So thanks for joining us. I

Rubina Halwani  
really appreciate you guys being here. I know I've been out for I think, almost a year and toddy as well, too. So it's good to be back. I'm really happy to be here. If you know it, you know it. So I am really just very glad to be back with you guys again.

Toddi Norum  
And I love this format, where you can come in and talk about what you've done and how you are doing it. I mean, like I think it's a good value for all of us. Because, you know, it's that kind of work out loud thing right in our mean, which I love as well. So I guess a big part of what the stream is about is about as we weren't in each other attire. It's been probably the best investment of my time and resources for last. Returning Yes.

Thank you. All right. Take care.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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