Jasmine Works on Backgrounds

Week twelve has come and gone. I have officially finished two full backgrounds, the sketch of the third and have started on the line art for that one as well. So far I’m just on schedule. I think I may run a week over for backgrounds but cutting a week into concepts shouldn't put me too far behind schedule as I've already done some concept sketches on the side. Hopefully next week I can get the opportunity to speak with someone from backgrounds because I have a few logistical issues I need help with. That's pretty much it so far, wish me luck!

- Jasmine

Jasmine Finishes her Animatic!

November 13th and 15th

Week 8 is over (I forgot to make one of these last week, oops) and with it, I have officially finished my animatic and started on my background concepts/ sketches. Hopefully next week I get the opportunity to speak with someone in the background area so that I have a bit of a better understanding of what’s going on. On other notes, I’m also very tired… probably because I’ve recently been affiliating myself with cringy children’s superhero cartoons into the wee hours of the morning and or re-watching some of my favourite Dreamworks animations (how to train your dragon and rise of the guardians were amazing). As such my sleep schedule has been a little lacking and my eyes like to do this thing where colours mush together when I’m tired. Good thing I have a PD day tomorrow. I will finally be able to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Next week is more backgrounds, let’s hope they go well!

- Jasmine

Molly Wraps Concept Art & Starts Storyboarding.

My art block seems to have resolved itself, so I've been able to finish most of the concept art this week. I decided to start storyboarding on my own so I didn't get too off track, so I surfed google for a solid 20 minutes trying to figure out how to show camera movements on individual shots and how to cut down on unnecessary frames. One thing I realized was that you have to be really efficient when storyboarding, which apparently means short-handing the drawings. I had to simplify my art style a lot for the concept art itself (I usually go towards realism), so the storyboards look nothing like the original designs lol

At the beginning of the placement, I told myself to have everything finished by the end of November so I could have more time to animate, but I doubt that's going to happen at this point, considering that I spent a month working on character design and procrastinating on storyboards. I think I only have backgrounds to work on before I start builds though, so I'm not as far behind as I thought. I'll try to work more efficiently over the next 5 weeks, and maybe I'll be ready to animate by the new year.

- Molly

Molly Needs a Break from Design

This week wasn't as busy as the last few, partially because it was a two-day week, and because I've spent most of my time fixing the concept art from last week. I'm having a bit of art block, which would be fine if it didn't affect how I draw the face (not surprised at this point). I feel like I'm wasting a lot of time on consistency when I should have moved on to backgrounds or something along those lines. I'll probably take a break from the design over the weekend, and hopefully, I'll finish by Thursday so I can move forward with the project.

- Molly

Molly Meets Rossi and Revisions.

This was a pretty eventful week, although I didn't get to speak with anyone in the storyboarding 

department, I met with a concept artist (I think her name is Rossi, she's really talented!) and we talked 

about making a good portfolio and the joys of the art community on Pinterest. She gave feedback on 

the concept art I was working on afterwards, so I spent much of today revising the design.

I got to meet the other intern Jasmine, who is really nice. Great week overall!

- Molly

Molly Starts Storyboards and Concepts!

These past three weeks have gone by really fast, but I feel like I've accomplished a lot; as of Thursday, I have officially started working on the visual aspects of the 30-second film (so concept art and storyboards).

 After finishing the script on Tuesday, I started designing the girl I'm going to animate later on in the year. I wanted a simple enough design to make the animation process easier, but this ended up being more challenging when clothing/hair movement came into the picture.

Even though I never got around to meeting any of the storyboard artists this week, I'm hoping that I'll get the chance to do so soon.

- Molly

Molly Learns the Pipeline and Writes her Outline!

I've finished another week at my coop placement and I already feel like I'm halfway into the production. I didn't expect that I'd accomplish so much in four days. I spent a lot of my time this week talking to people from various stages of production (i.e. builds, scene setup, animating, backgrounds). The animation program I'll be using (Adobe Animate) seems really cool and looks a lot less confusing than I thought it would be, so now I feel somewhat better going into the next part of the project. 

I also got feedback from the writer who looked over the outlines I submitted last week, who said I should go with my slightly less intensive outline. I'll be working on the script and the concept art for the next month and a bit. 

Overall, the placement has been very exciting and I'm looking forward to the next several months to come. 

- Molly

Happy Thanksgiving!

Rae Previews Her Animatic

Hi! This week I completed more of my animatic. I brought it into the studio and previewed it for Rich and some other animators for their thoughts and feedback. Overall they really liked the look and feel to it, but my timing and pacing still isn’t where it needs to be. I’m almost at the end of completely finishing my animatic, and moving on to the next stage of production. Once I figure out the last sequence I am going to go back and re time everything to fix the pacing, as well as to trim it a bit, cause I went a little overboard with the length. I’m getting a bit anxious to move on to the next stage, but I know that if I don’t take the time to fix any of the mistakes now, it will be a problem later on. While finishing my animatic, I've also started to do the final version of the opening shot for my film. It’s helping me develop a workflow for my shots, so I know what to do for each one. Hopefully by my next post the first shot will be done! Here is the updated layout for my opening pan shot, based off of the concept art and layout I posted last week.

-Rae

Rae Gets Perspective.

I’m almost done my animatic! I've been working on it for the past few weeks, and this week I showed it to Rich for him to review it. He gave me some really good ideas, and advice about which shots don't need to be there,  and how to make things clearer. It’s hard to see what doesn't work when you’ve seen it too many times, so it was nice to see it from a fresh perspective. There are a lot of things that need tweaking, and the timing needs to be fixed, but i’m almost ready to move onto the next step! I’ve already done a few backgrounds, and began planning out my layouts for each shot. It's a little overwhelming to think about how much needs to be done to finish it, but i'm having a lot of fun making it, and it's really cool seeing it sort of come together. Here is the concept art for my opening shot, and the layout that I did after, I'll have more to show next week!

-Rae 

Rae Gets Back on Track and Makes Really Cool Concepts!

It's my second week back from my winter break, and it's been great! I'm having a lot of fun working on my short film. It took me a while to get going, and I was stuck for a while, but now I'm back on track, and I know exactly what I want to do. I'm just a little behind schedule, so I have to catch up a bit. I've redone my storyboards, and changed a few things from what I had planned before, based on the concept art and designs I did. On Friday I pitched my boards to some of the guys for their feedback and suggestions. I really enjoyed getting to pitch my idea, and get their feedback, and discuss new ideas. They had some really good suggestions and made me think more about how to convey character and mood through storyboards, and make things easier to read visually. After I took their notes, I started making my animatic. It's cool to see my storyboards come to life by making them move, and adding sound. There's a lot more to think about, and I'm realizing some things may not be as easy as they seemed in my head. Today, I am going to try and finish my animatic, and get some feedback so I can move onto the next stage of production! Here is one of my concept paintings for my film, and the storyboards I did, I'll have more to show next week!

-Rae

Callie Eats Ethiopian Food!

It was Julie's last day on Friday :'( so everyone went out for Ethiopian food. It was so, so good even though it was different from the food I usually eat. I got to talk with Ashly, Lea and Cherry while I ate and that's always good fun. Going out for lunch meant I didn't do anything except go back to the studio and interview Rich for a school project (I also was so full I fell asleep while while working).

On Monday and Wednesday I finished up concept. I am moving on this week to storyboards!! Super excited!! I spent a while last Monday designing the location for my short and drawing a few expressions for the firefly character. Then on Wednesday I looked at the sheet and saw that the expressions were sort of bland so I exaggerated them a lot and then drew expressions for the light bulb character. Cartoons are so cool because they defy anatomy rules and you can stretch and morph them. See you next week!

Callie and the Colour Palette

I forgot to write a post for last week so I'll include what I did in this post as well as the stuff from this week. It's sort of hard to remember and all the days blend into one another because I'm so lost in what I'm doing. Maybe I'm losing track of time (whoops). I know that last week I finally made a work back schedule and coloured in my characters.

Choosing the colours for the schedule was probably the most fun because I made it rainbow and who doesn't love rainbow? Excel was tricky to get a hang of and I had to copy and paste cells to move things around (which completely defeats the purpose of excel 'cause it took forever).

The colouring of my characters was a lot more fun. I've been working in black and white up until now pretty much and this was my first chance to choose a colour palette for my short. It took surprisingly long to colour just a few drawings in Photoshop even more so because I still can't use the pen and tablet particularly well.

This week I've been trying to relearn perspective. I really really should have paid attention in art because I am having the hardest time drawing backgrounds. Whoever knew drawing a window could be so freaking hard.

According to my schedule I have one week left to finish my concept, but seeing as that's only three days and I have to paint three different backgrounds, I have lots of work to do. I'll probably practice out of co op otherwise I'm sunk. Happy weekend!

Callie Meets the Cintiq!

Drawing character rotations is super hard because everything must line up perfectly. It's understandable that things must line up to pass off to the designers, but it doesn't make it easier. I'm so glad I was warned off of animating humans for my short, because I probably would have died. A firefly is about as complicated as I'll get for now.

Aside from drawing the rotations painstakingly slow, I used Photoshop for the second time. Joel was out of the office on Wednesday so I got to use his Cintiq!! It was so freaking cool and much easier to use than the pen and tablet. Basically it helped me learn Photoshop and now I can focus on getting better with the pen and tablet which weirds me out 'cause I usually like to look where I'm drawing.

I didn't get much else done this week other than 3 different angles of Sam the firefly and a Photoshop painting of my friend. 

The painting was completely irrelevant to my animated short but it taught me about Photoshop so I think it's okay. Next week I want to finish the concept stage and go into storyboarding. That'll have to wait till Monday though. 

Adios amigos!

Callie on Concept

I have been working here at Smiley Guy for a month!! It's official! I love it so much. 

This week I went on to the second stage of animation, which is concept. I have already finished my script, and so I spent four hours each on Tuesday and Thursday drawing out my characters. They're pretty cute, if I do say so myself. 

Rich has been helping me through this stage and it is so helpful to have someone give constructive criticism. I know how to draw but I don't know how to stylize something so that it is workable in a cartoon and looks appealing. I think I've drawn about 9 pages of concept art and I'll probably draw lots more. It'll have to be done next week though, because now it's the weekend!! So long!

Goodbye from Miyeon!

This is my last blog post. How time flies! For this week, I have been working on the rotation sheets for the characters from The Curse of Clara. It reminds me of when I was a kid because I did ballet too even though I barely remember what I learned. Anyway, I enjoy drawing them because the characters are all very cute.

Since this is my last blog, I want to talk about working as an intern for Smiley Guy Studios. I feel great about doing my internship at SGS because all the artists from here are very nice and I really learned a lot. Working as an intern helps students learn how real productions works from experience but, working here also helps to decide what to focus more on by trying many different areas, not just focusing on one job. Even though I started doing concept art first, I also had chance to do some backgrounds, building up the puppets and animating in flash. As I worked on concept art, I also could work on many different shows with various different styles. Before I came here to work, I always stayed in my comfort zone and drew only in the style I like and was familiar to draw, so it was very good training for me but it was hard at first. But, I've got a lot of help from Aaron and now I am doing much better than before. I am really happy that I had an opportunity to work from SGS!

Mia Makes Friends with the Computer

On the second and third week of work at Smiley Guy Studios, I worked on concept art but did various different things. First thing I started from week 2 was draw a layout of a boy's bedroom. Even though I have a younger brother, there is nothing much in his room and it is not helpful at all for reference, and I did a lot of research for boys' bedroom from Internet. 

The next thing I did was basically draw and paint over Aaron's layout because it was needed as a high- resolution for printing out in a bigger scale. 

And I got back to work on Todd & The Book of Pure Evil. I drew rough rotation sheets for main characters and also drew  hand model sheets for each male and female character. And now I am creating characters from real people who wanted to be in the animation series which is pretty interesting.

I often work traditionally so I did not spend much time on a computer before. Now, I have been using the computer all the time and at first, I looked too close for a long time (just for me more than usual) and it made me sick. It made me dizzy and had sore eyes. But, human beings are infinitely adaptable. I guess I am well adapted to work with computer for a long time now. I feel great!

Introducting Keith!

It's been an interesting couple of weeks so far at Smiley Guy.

Best surprise of my first day? Working with Thor (well a look-a-like anyway). Still laughing at the coincidence because the previous night I was watching the movie.

I'm learning a lot about lighting, rendering and basically how to become a better painter/ designer. The challenges have been many, but are all very exciting.

So far have completed a cave BG based off  concept art, and a concept for a comic themed episode. Still have a great many revisions to do on those, but  moving onto more layouts for now.

I love the restaurants nearby, especially the wrap place. It felt like I was in Europe on holiday, sitting in an outdoor cafe.

The commute is about 2 hours and is a bit of a pain, but I'm learning to adapt to it.

All in all, definitely an interesting learning experience