Carol Learns to Clean

Hey guys, this week was very different from the last. I got to do many different projects throughout the week. After a whole week of intense coloring and background inserting for Uberdude, I recieved another long scene to color. After that, I got to do clean up for Uberdude in that style. It was different than regular clean up because everything had to be separated into layers, so it took a lot longer than I expected. While I was cleaning up, I thought of ways to clean up so that it would be easier for whoever had to color the characters.

After I was done cleaning up, I received 2 new shots of Teleporting Fat Guy. This time, it took me a lot less time than the first time I ever animated in Flash. At first I didn't understand why everything looked so choppy and stiff even though it was motion tweened, but after talking to Rich I learned to unselect snapping on flash so that I can move my animation in small increments which made everything look smoother. I also got to animate Rachel tucking her arms in, which also was much more complex than I thought.

So many steps had to be taken, a new layer had to be made to make the animation look realistic. Last but not least, animating the yeti really made me think. I had a feeling that I should pose out the movement first but for some reason I choose not to and animated straight ahead. After screwing up, I learned to be bold with movement when it comes to moving the whole body rather than moving little by little.

Sometimes we just have to make mistakes and learn to trust our gut feelings.

-Carol


Down below is one of the most time consuming colorings I had to do. Every time a finger/arm would move, I had to re-draw/color in that section while erasing whatever was covering the rest of her body because her arm was on top of her body layer. This helped me become a better cleaner-upper so the next person doesn't need to go through all that effort. 

Anna Uber Loves 3DS

Hey guys.
This week was really intense. I coloured Uberdude animations the entire week, and now all I see when I close my eyes when I sleep is Uberdude. Though I dream of meat chasing me sometimes. I wonder what is up with that? Perhaps I eat them too much, and so now they're out for revenge...
Anyway, colouring has been fun, yet tedious, yet easy, yet time consuming and difficult. Does that even make sense? But I like it.

Other than that... I didn't really do anything outside of work. I tried to draw some stuff for contests, but I scrapped most of them. Honestly, I spent most of my free time gaming. I've neglected my 3DS for a while, and one day, I saw it lying there and started playing. That was how the love story between me and my 3DS began...

So yeah, this week, all I did was colour an old man named Gary Whitehead, and spend time with my darling Tobias Sharp, a.k.a. my 3DS. So I squished those two things together to bring you this~

A Heartfelt Goodbye from Lucas and HIS GAME!

So, this is it! This is the end! I regret to inform you that today is my very last day at Smiley Guy Studios. It's a little bittersweet. I'm pretty sad that I'm leaving. I sat on the bus this morning just thinking about the fact that this may be the last time that I ever go this route. (I know its too sentimental but get over it!) But I'm also feeling as though the skills that I have learned here will be with me forever. I finish this year feeling more knowledgable and more confidence than I did when I started. I found fields that interested me and really dug into what makes someone good at that job. I immersed myself in the Toronto video game community and wrote a 50 page sit-com pilot! These are things that wouldn't have even occurred to me to do prior to this year. 

Aside from that, within the studio I met a ton of awesome people. They were always willing to answer my questions or just have a good conversation. Before coming here, I was quite frightened of the "real world." The point where you become an adult and all the fun gets sucked out of you. The people here however, have showed me that that's not the case at all. Most love what they do and have a good time doing it. I have to admit, when I first got here I was not quite sure whether or not Brad was joking most of the time. It's a kind of humour that takes you a little while to catch on to.

And finally... The Game! It's done! I feel really proud of what I have done. To be honest though, as an outsider who doesn't know about me; it would look quite unimpressive. The art isn't amazing and the code is pretty sloppy but I feel it's a real accomplishment. I've really never done something like this and all the skills that I used were acquired earlier this year. I acknowledge that it has flaws, but it's a stepping stone. My next game will be better, then my next will be even better than that! I'm just happy that it works. There were a few points where I wasn't even sure that this would be possible at my skill level. There had to be a few major concept changes to make sure that the game was even possible, but I pulled through. I have something now that although it may glitch out at some points, someone can sit down and play it. If you're wondering where it can be played, I have it hosted on a website which I'll link to below. I'm going to update it one more time before I leave, just fixing a bug that makes the player spawn in the wrong place and a simple mixup with one of the cloud tiles. It's not a big deal, the game works the same without these changes. It's just a matter of aesthetics. 

To end this off, I'd like to tie it back to one of my first blogs. As I walked in today, I noticed the dancing Jewish man figurine. I figure I'll leave it here for two reasons. 1) There are so many objects and trinkets laying around the office. I'm sure everything reminds a few people of a story or an experience, so I want something here that is a reminder I was here (as odd a reminder as that is).  2) I really don't want that thing back. Like, honestly I don't want to lose any more sleep over the thought of that thing on my shelf. Please. Keep it. 

I'd like to thank Julie and Mike for even after having poor prior experiences with co-op students, accepting me to work here. The year had a huge positive impact on me and I'm sure I won't be forgetting it any time soon. 

The Game: http://www.cavemenjointlink.com/

Inna Is Our Best Researcher EVER!

Oliver Looks Nervous

In the beginning of this week I finished fixing my TFG animation shot. I struggled a bit with Oliver’s arms. I had to make him look worried and make him shrink his shoulders and pull his hands towards his chest and for that Oliver’s back arm needed to go on top of his torso. That was a puzzle for me. In the end I learnt the trick from my awesome mentors and now I know how this problem can be solved.  I need to practice more character animation to polish my new skills. 

 

The big wow of the week was the size of the monitor I got for my working place. I am so get used to my laptop monitor size and already forgot how it feels when you are working on a big screen, especially on design projects.Thank you Julie and everyone!

This week I started working on mandala design for First Hand Climate Change Stories, directed by Alex Hawley and which is currently in development. It’s about how native people of Yukon, in particular Gwich'in Nation or Old Crow people, were affected by the environmental change.

Mandala Feather

 My task is to come up with Caribou Mandala design that will be used in the film at least in three scenes and it should match Alex’s initial Wolf bead artwork. I researched Native American Art, symbols and design patterns, studied Gui’chin bead art and read about their culture and history.

It is an amazing experience for me to have a chance to work on this project because I myself have a profound interest in environmental activism and sustainability. Another coincidence is that I love everything about mandala design and sacred geometry and I actually have been planning to come up with Sun Mandala design for my 4th year film that will be called Dance of Life. And now I have a chance to practice my mandala skills and figure out how to animate the rotation as well. ha what were the chances to work on a Mandala  project during my summer internship:)

 

For those who are wondering what mandala is I found some info about various types of Mandala:

• http://www.whats-your-sign.com/mandala.html 
• About Native American Mandala Art Meanings: http://www.whats-your-sign.com/Native-American-mandala.html#myspot

And here are some great sites that I bumped into while doing my research :

• Awesome Native Canadian & Inuit Graphic Art collection on Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/muffy2s/native-canadian-inuit-graphic-art/

On history of Old Crow (Gwich'in Nation):

• http://www.oldcrow.ca/history.htm,
• http://www.yukonmuseums.ca/treasures/olc/02.html, http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ANWR/anwrgwichin.html
• http://www.ourworldlanguage.com/p/old-crow-yukon.html 

Carol Learns the Ropes on Flash

Hey guys,

It's been my third week here and everyone got to work on different projects and learned new things. I got to do some layout designs and animation for the "First Hand" project and am proud to say I did the raven animation all by myself. Although there is still many problems overall, it's definitely a big improvement from the first time I touched flash symbol animation.

I wasn't sure how to do cross dissolve or camera move in flash, so I asked for help from people in the studio, and as usual they were eager to help out.

As for now, I am doing coloring for a show called Uberdude. I came across a few problems but they were no biggie. By the end of the day on my first day working on Uberdude, I've gotten a lot faster at coloring and useing only hot keys to navigate around. Makes me feel like a pro lol :P The more I get to work in Flash the faster I will become.


-Carol

All about Anna, Costumes, and Penguins

Hi guys~ Anna here again~
It is officially the end of week two of my internship, and boy has time flown by. I' have been enjoying myself, and can't believe I'm already two weeks into this intern thing.

This week, I started working on Uberdude, which was super cool. I love the art style, and have had the pleasure of colouring all the animations. It seemed like a large task at first, but now that I am actually putting my pen to the tablet and just popping out scene by scene in colour, I find myself enjoying my music and just having fun with these animations.

Other than that... Well, it's soon to be Anime North Time, and my friend has decided to drag me to it, even though I'm busy with life and freelancing and...sighs... I'd like to say i have a cosplay, but I didn't and don't have the time to make it, and when I tried to find material for the jacket that I planned, Fabricland didn't have that many choices... And all of Toronto's fabric stores close at either 6 or 7. By the time I arrive there after work, they would have all closed... I suppose it must be fate.
I have my freelance side job to occupy my dwindlingly little spare time as well. My dad introduced me to a guy named Brandon Feraras, who is working on an ios game about penguins and environmentalism. It's called Pengix, for anyone who wants to check it out. At this moment, the game is all Brandon's - he created the entire thing on his own time, with the graphics being made in Photoshop.

And yeah, the art isn't great - he is obviously not an art person. But the game is quite fun, and only the graphics need improving. And that's where I come in. I'm still working on it, but I have been redesigning the whole look to the game: the sprites, the backgrounds, and possibly adding in animations...

Ohe day, I'll make a game of my own too....
Until next time,
Anna

Lucas Gets Some Competition

Not a ton has happened this week because of Victoria day and a doctor's appointment on wednesday this has been my only day in this week.  So, I want to express my excitement towards another workplace factor:

MORE INTERNS!

My blogs are going to be less lonely on the Intern Blog! I read all of their posts from last week and I have to say that I have some serious competition. They all draw so well! I don't think firework gifs will be enough to win the blog-battles anymore. 

Also, I only have two more weeks here...  Time really flies. On the subject, I'm going to spend the weekend doing work on the game. It's going to be done by next Friday! It's sort of bittersweet. 

On another side note, Mike intercepted me on my way in today and we had a really good chat about literature. Specifically Catcher in the Rye (Holden's such a phoney). I'm building up a summer reading list so he's going to send me some titles that have had an impact on him. I'm looking foreword to it.