A Fond Farewell to Humphrey!

Wow, has it really been 13 weeks?  About 3 months?  A quarter of a year?

It's amazing how time flies when you're spending it in an awesome studio amongst skilled and talented artists.  I haven't had this much excitement and sense of fulfillment since I was in The Animation Workshop (which wasn't too long ago but still).

My Flash skills are superb now.  Not on the level of the pros here but if I were to gauge my level of improvement I'd say my quality has risen by 300%, and that's no hyperbole.  I look forward to using everything I've learned to create my own characters builds and animations using the pipeline introduced here.

If there is one thing that I'm disappointed with is how Smiley Guy Studios has spoiled me for the industry.  I arrived expecting long hours and unpaid overtime, something that I thought was the norm in the industry.  Not so, as I can't recall seeing anyone stay behind after 18:00 or coming in on weekends (to my knowledge).  Having experienced this as my first job, even as an intern, I can only assume future employment will be a bit of a disappointment in comparison.

I'll be leaving the country on Monday, giving me a weekend to check out the Toronto sights and go to Niagara Falls.  Though the best landmark was of course Smiley Guy Studios.

Thank you all who work here and I hope to see you all again, whether as friends or professionals, it will be a delight!

A Humphrey Update

Long time no see internet dwellers!

I'm nearing the end of my internship here with the lovely people of Smiley Guy Studios.  In one more week I'll be leaving the country and be on my way back to Europe, Germany to be precise.  Events that I haven't touched on since October here have been a delightful pumpkin carving contest, a messy but fun ordeal though I opted for a classic look while others went a bit more extravagant (my favorite and I believe the winner was a portrait of Michael Jackson).

I've been to a few lectures, screenings and get togethers while I've been here, all worthwhile.  The creative director from Tinman Studios explained to us in great detail about the hardships of running your own small studio and what to watch out for, I got to see the Dick Figures movie in theaters and take part of the TAAFI holiday party where I met friendly interesting people and handed out my business card to plenty of them.

I'm assuming this will be my second to last blog post so I'll save my sappy goodbyes til the last one.  Either way, having so much fun here!

Lucas' Blog and New Video Game

It seems as though I haven’t put up a blog here in awhile. It may in fact be because Julie hasn’t been on my case about it. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing though. Over the last two or three weeks a lot has happened. So now I can write about all of in a huge blog. How exiting! Well first of all, anyone who reads these would probably know that I’ve been learning Java and Javascript. Well, I’ve been finally putting those skills to work. A few weeks ago I started building a small platformer game with a friend of mine.  I’ve also been doing one on my own but I’ll talk about that later. I’m having a really good time at it. They're not super fancy now but it's a start.

            I’ve been going to some game-related events and been meeting some really cool people.  Some of them have made games that I actually played and so I enjoyed meeting the minds behind them, it was fantastic. I got a twitter account so I could connect with all these people. If I learned anything from these events, it’s than networking is everything. Everyone likes to follow each other’s projects and I need a way to tell people about what I’m working on so I started the “LUCAS TENNEN DOES STUFF” blog. There isn’t much there yet but there is definitely more to come: http://lucastennen.blogspot.ca/

            Over the last week and a half or so I have been working by myself on a small puzzle game called “AM I REAL?” I actually just put it up two days ago (can be found on my blog). A bunch of the work was done at Smiley Guy and I’m happy about how it turned out. It's really short, only takes about 10 minutes to get through but its my first one, so cut me some slack.  I’ve been watching the number of plays go up, refreshing the page every hour or so and I’m exited to see that over 200 people have played it! It’s a pretty big deal considering that the number before was zero. Overall the last few weeks have been busy and amazing and hopefully there will be many more like them. I should also throw out some random co-op related blurb like I usually do... I can do that next blog...

Am I Real

Cavemen Joint Linl