Rae's Last Week

Hi! It's almost the end of my internship, I only have about a week left here, and to finish my film!

I'm sad for my time here to end, but I'm excited about almost finally finishing my film. So far I have completed about nine shots, I still have a lot to go, and not a lot of time to do it, but I'm having a lot of fun putting it together and I'm determined to finish it somewhat within my deadline. I decided to use a mix of Flash, and Anime Studio Pro to animate my characters. I felt it would be the fastest and easiest way to do the easy and fast shots in flash, and the more complicated shots in Anime. I just started learning how to use Anime Studio Pro, and so far I love it. I rigged my main character for a few shots for the first time, there were a lot of technical difficulties and it took a while, but I finally figured out how to do it, and I'm pretty happy about the way it turned out. I'm trying not to be a perfectionist, and just focus on getting it finished. I have quite a lot more to do, but it's the only thing that I'm doing on my spare time, so hopefully I'll have it done sometime by next week, and I'll be able to show it!

- Rae

Welcome Eila!

Hola, 

my name is Eila and I am a new intern here at Smiley Guy! I am a third year student from Sheridan but I am actually from Texas. Its been three weeks since I have started my internship and it has been nothing but wonderful! Everyone here is incredibly warm and so so nice (and super talented, geez)! I was extremely nervous starting out (partially because I started commuting on my own for the first time) but Erin made sure I was comfortable and I would like to think that I finally got a good handle on things. I have also been reintroduced to flash and I am happy to say that I am finally getting the hang of it (thank goodness for Joel or I would be a lost mess)! So far I have done a walk cycle with flash and built a few rigs as practice and it is a lot of fun! While its not too different from Toon Boom, it definitely took a bit of adjusting to but it is getting there! Having constant feedback definitely helps and I have noticed some improvements in terms of speed with the rig building process and the program. I was invited to go grab a drink with some of the members here in the studio and I am really excited about that since the Mexican in me can never say no to a drink. It has only been three weeks but I feel extremely lucky to have a landed a such a nice studio. I look forward to keeping up the hard work and learning as much as I can.

Juhi Animates

This week had been non-stop animate, animate, animate! and I loved each scene that I was put on. Working with different rigs of varying difficulties kept me focused, and it was a joy to practice character performance and convey emotions through the rigs. To bring life to the characters and seeing the short come along was definitely rewarding. At the end of the week, the whole studio went out for food and to celebrate Rich's birthday. I had a lot of fun and it was a great way to cap off the busy week!

~Juhi out~

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 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 ^

Introducing Vincent!

Hello! This is Vincent Chan. I'm a Sheridan student interning at Smiley guys studios. It's my first week and I'm enjoying my time here!

I've learned a whole lot so far about making functional flash puppets and rigging characters properly. Along with that I'm honing my FOCUS. I feel like if I can only concentrate my focus to a high enough degree speed, skill and efficiency will naturally come. 'FOCUS AND NEVER LOSE FOCUS EVER' is my new personal mantra.

As for the work I've been doing I just finished cleaning and coloring a character from 'Todd and the Book of Pure Evil' (which was surprisingly fun) and I'm currently working on facial expressions for this character. Next up I'll be testing this character in a walk cycle...

lookin' forward to the next week :)