Elise Says Toodles Poodles to Smiley Guys!

I guess this is my last post. Hard to believe how quickly the 3 months went! I've had a truly
amazing time here at Smiley Guy. I got to work on some great productions and meet some awesome
people, and I feel like I've learned a lot too. I will look back on this experience very fondly,
and I can't wait to see where things go from here!

There was a goodbye party in the park at lunch today (with pizza! Also wasps). It was a fun way
to end the internship! We played frisbee (I can catch it but I sure can't throw it) and caught
pokemon and drank lemonade. A lot of fun! And there were dogs!

And to Earl: My tall son. The 15-leafed apple of my eye. Our time together was short but
fruitful. Don't forget me.

Well, that's it for me. Thanks for everything, Smiley Guy!

*Edit note: Elise was granted adoption rights for her son Earl. They will live a long fulfilling life together solving crime cases and playing sports. 

Elise is a Trekkie!

My second-last week as an intern is over! I'm excited for the weekend (I'm gonna go watch the new
Trek movie!) but I'm also very sad that my time here is almost over.

I did more work on the background characters for Todd. Not much new to report, it's mostly been
revision work. There was some confusion about whether one background character was supposed to
be wearing clothes or not. After some debate, it was agreed that he would be naked. I had to
re-pose everyone around him to censor him, which was kind of tedious, but also pretty funny.

Earl survived last week's mystery plant massacre and is growing a new leaf to celebrate. He is
tall and wise now.

Elise Waits in Anticipation!

This week was pretty standard stuff. I worked some more on background characters for Todd mostly.
We also had a background painting test, which was fun! They haven't been reviewed yet, but I'm
hoping I did alright.

There was a big meeting yesterday where the animating process for Todd was discussed. They explained a lot of stuff about how to reuse animation effectively and how to hybridize. It was interesting, and there were some very impressive test animations!

On a less fun note, one of our office plants got beat up last night. Earl is fine, but I am concerned for his safety. Erin made him a nice name tag to try and scare off the attacker. Hopefully
he will be okay.

Elise Gets a Free Coffee but Loses a Cintiq

I had to give up my Cintiq this week because a full-time employee needed it. I miss it
already, but I have an Intuos now, which works pretty well. Also, as a consolation prize
I got a voucher for a free coffee, which I haven't redeemed yet.

Today we got to see an extended Todd teaser that's going to air at a festival soon. It was
really exciting, I thought it looked great! I feel very lucky to be a part of this project,
albeit a very small part!

There's less than a month left of interning for me. I'm going to miss Earl. I have so many
life lessons to teach him before I leave.

Elise Is Green but Also Really Nice and Stuff!

It's almost the long weekend!

This week was all Todd stuff at work. I did some more revisions on Demon Guy, he's looking
great. Then there were some prop revisions and some face-melting; overall it's been a
pretty chill week.

We did this super complicated test on Monday to find out our "personality colour". Mine is
green! I almost got blue, and I'm kind of sad I didn't, because blue people are apparently
really nice and stuff.

No big news with Earl this week, he's just up to his usual business (sitting still, being
green, etc.) We are both looking forward to Canada Day.

A Post From the Past, Elise Style.

Today was the busiest day yet!

Each of the interns got assigned a handful of scenes for the Can Can project. We had to finish
them by the end of this week. I totally misjudged my time and only had one and a half
scenes done on Thursday, with 2 more due the next day. So I came in super super early this
morning and worked nonstop all day. I haven't left my chair since 7:30 this morning, but I'm
happy to say that I got it all done! This week was a valuable and stressful lesson in time
management.

Not much else to report, studio-wise. We're going out for dinner tonight, which should be cool.
All I've eaten today is coffee, so I'm pretty stoked to get some actual food.

Earl is looking great. He's taller than his grow-light now. Below is a terribly-photoshopped

picture of him getting his dunk on. It's been a long day.

Elise Makes Ostriches Dance

I did a lot of animating this week. I was assigned to pose out a bunch of different characters for a dance sequence. It was very challenging! I handled 3 pirates that wouldn't dance in sync before being brought to my knees by an ostrich rig. Ostriches aren't really built for dance. I tried so hard to make it look not-weird. I hope it worked.

Someone (Joel possibly?) brought in a really neat character design book yesterday. Looking at
it was super inspiring! I should really do more character stuff in my spare time.

My child Earl is growing a 13th leaf, and I personally feel it's his best work yet. Erin put a
tiny plastic elephant in his pot a few hours ago. The two of them are getting along well so far.

Elise Goes From Creepy to Cute!

Another busy week!

The interns got assigned to a new project this week. It's an animation for young kids, really cute and full of music! Switching between this adorable stuff and the Todd project has been crazy. I'm sure more seasoned animators are used to switching gears like this, but I'm pretty new at this and jumping from dick demons to big-eyed animals playing violins kind of gives me whiplash. The cutesy animals are pretty fun to animate though!

The studio people went out to lunch two days in a row! Yesterday we went to a pub and I ate a poutine as big as my head. We also played Dig Dug there, which I was not great at. I got to chat  a bit with Aaron, the new employee. He's a cool guy!

Earl got his first haircut this week. By which I mean I pulled the dead parts of his leaves off. Also some of his alive parts by mistake, because I am a bad hairdresser. All in all, he's looking pretty spiffy.

Elise and the Joys of Raising a Plant!

This week started pretty busy, but it's kind of slowed down now.

I had a bunch of assignments earlier this week. A new shot involving Demon Guy was added to the animatic, and it required a new build, so I roughed that out. After that there was a bunch of prop stuff, and then I got to do some hand-drawn keyframes of a guy's face melting off, which was awesome. A pretty successful week, all in all. At this point everything on my to-do list is either done or awaiting review, so I've been messing around in Photoshop and listening to 80s music to kill time. (sorry boss!)

A bunch of us in the studio went for ice cream today! Super delicious, and it's fun to hang out with the coworkers! I was gonna order lemon ice cream but I panicked and went for vanilla instead. Still good though!

Aside from studio stuff, I'm almost all moved in to my apartment now! My old roomies came by for a visit. They brought me a horrible toy truck to add to my growing collection of horrible toy trucks.

Earl's new leaf is looking great, and he's hard at work growing another one. This means he has 12 whole leaves now, so he's basically an adult. Erin and I are unsure what to do about his dead bits, we might have to amputate him in the near future. Stay tuned.

Elise Won't Be Defined by Her Bad Aim

Elise here. This week was short but really fun!

We had an animatic screening (with pizza!) this week. I won't give specifics, but I will say that I saw the scene my demon rig is going to be used in, and it was totally wild. We also saw some short films by other people on the team. It was really inspiring stuff, and so cool!

We also got to play an archery game on the Vive this week. VR is super fun! My accuracy in virtual reality is just as bad as my accuracy in regular reality, unfortunately.

Earl survived the long weekend, and he grew a nice new leaf. I'm very proud of him.

Earl Bobete ^

Elise and Earl Forever

Intern Elise again. Can't believe it's already been 3 weeks here!

I had a lot of assignments this week. There were more demon-related revisions to do, and on top of that I did some prop designing and flashifying. It was fun, I really enjoy getting to try a bunch of different things! I'm doing some photoshop painting right now, a super-chill way to cap off the week. I forgot how much I like digital painting, I should do it more often!

The plant on my desk looks much more alive lately, which is pretty cool. Erin called him Earl the other day, it's a better name than anything I've thought up, so I guess that's his name now. When he gets older I'm going to teach him sports.

That's about it!

Elise and the Cool Demon Guy

Hello! Intern Elise here again. I'm very sick right now but I'll try to do a quick update.

So, this was my first full week of work here at Smiley Guy! I'm feeling much more comfortable with the software already. Flash isn't as bad as I remembered it being!

This week I got assigned to building a cool demon guy for the Todd project, and doing some design revisions as I built him. I had 2 different supervisors that needed to approve of the changes I made, so there was a lot of passing the file back and forth. They would give me little changes to implement each time, but by the end of it I figure I must've built and rebuilt each part of that guy at least 3 times. I really enjoyed the challenge of it, and I learned a lot from watching the senior animators tweak different parts of the build. They make it look so easy! Also, I got to trawl through google images looking for reference pictures of weird beefy guys, which was a pretty cool bonus.

All the Todd episodes were given to us recently. I've been powering through them really fast, I'm partway through season 2 right now! It's  pretty fun stuff, and I love the metal dudes. Maybe I'll get to animate them at some point?

I brought in a grow light for the sad plant on my desk. He still looks rough but I'm hoping he'll improve (or at least not die) under my care.

Nothing else to report for now!

Introducing Elise!

Hi, my name is Elise. I'm a Sheridan student and brand-new intern at Smiley Guy Studios!

Today is only my third day on the job, but I'm learning a lot already. Ive been working on background character builds for Todd and the Book of Pure Evil right now. It's definitely a challenge getting readjusted to building in Flash, but I'm having a good time with it. It's great being able to learn from the senior animators (I'm learning so many hotkeys)!

It's also been fun to explore the area around the studio. I've been buying coffees at different places on Bloor each morning, and sometimes the other interns and I go out to lunch together!

At the studio I have a great workspace. There's a big desk and a Cintiq and the other animators are close by, so it's easy to ask for help when I run into problems. Also there's a little plant here, I'm not sure whose it is but I've started watering it because it looked kinda dry.

Aside from work I've been busy setting up my new apartment. I guess that's not really relevant but I like to brag about it. It's a really nice apartment. Yesterday I built a table.

I guess that's about it. I'm really looking forward to the next 3 months here at Smiley Guy!