Inna Says Goodbye

Here’s my last four animation shots for First Hand Stories:

Geese

http://youtu.be/VF3KwFP7gOA

Initially this shot was longer but we had to split it in two as it got too heavy and Flash would crash all the time. The cross-dissolve effect will be applied later in After Effects.

The challenge with this shot was creating smooth motion path for the geese, especially Goose close-up. Keith showed me couple of tricks how to improve my animation with Grandpa’s hands and geese. I loved the one with making flat geese flip their wings by adding just two extra keys. That was awesome!

Grandpa

http://youtu.be/DhzqdDmU2XQ

This shot was more about acting and tweaking Grandpa which was done under Craig’s and Keith’s supervision. Figuring out smoke effects took some time. While I was looking for the right type of smoke on the database I found a cool campfire and added it to the shot. Making stars twinkle on the background was the easiest. 

Norma and Caribou

http://youtu.be/zmqn2OVHftE

After I was done with cloning caribou using three different caribou walk cycles; tinting furthest caribou blue with different percentage so that there is a perspective effect on them, I got stuck with the problem of timing caribou plus their feet were sliding on the ground. Animation awesomeness Keith showed me how to solve that as well and also showed to me some cool cinematography tricks on how to give depth to the shot by adding filters, fog, vignette, etc. One of the best learning experiences ever!

Caribou and Mandala

http://youtu.be/0-xBboy0gXE

I rushed this shot as it was my last one as I was trying to finish it and fix all the little flaws that I could see. It was tricky because I had to break the central caribou’s walk cycle and bring it to a nice smooth stop. I had lots of trouble with that. Mandala didn't want to behave neither as it got jumpy and didn't want to sit in one spot. Truck in camera move wasn’t smooth either. Under Keith’s generous supervision I managed to somehow fix some problems but not all of them. I still think it needs a fix.

On my last day on Friday we went to Nirvana restaurant and had a farewell lunch. That was awesome! 

Thank you Keith and Alex and Darien and Craig and Stephan and Julie and Joel and Rich and Peter and Chris and Mike and Jonas and everyone. I have worked with you guys for almost four months and yes it was absolutely amazing priceless experience. Before my summer internship I used to perceive myself more of a character designer but after learning symbol animation and effects and being able effectively work in Flash I did develop confidence as an animator. yeey! I also know better now how to approach my 4th year film. Thanks for the invite to drop by and to ask your advice on my film. It’s very much appreciated! I will!

Thank you so very much! I will miss you awesome Smiley Crew:) See you all on facebook and linkedin!!

 

Inna's Exciting News!

Heyhey everyone, 

I have awesome news! It seems like our Sheridan 3rd year group film “Grounded”was accepted and will be showcased at the Ottawa International Film Festival 2014! Yeey!

https://www.animationfestival.ca/index.php?option=com_oiaf&task=showselections+

"Grounded" https://vimeo.com/95567674

It is an inspiring four minute short about adventures of a bunny and his little brother. The film is hand-drawn in Toon Boom Harmony. It was one awesome experience of the teamwork, dedication and successful short film production. Here’s a vimeo link to our film: https://vimeo.com/95567674 Enjoy!

 

Last few weeks I have been working on several animation shots and learnt more about effects, camera moves and symbol animation in Flash. Alex said it is ok to post the shorts that I worked on and here they are:

Mountains and Sleigh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaJDh8mbv3w

- I designed and flashified Bead Mountains which was the easiest for me except the camera movement. It was my first time dealing with the cinematography in Flash. Rich helped me with a nice smooth truck-in transition using just couple of keys on a comp level and ease-in and ease-out settings.

- Designing and animating stars and sparkles took long to figure out, as I never touched Flash before my internship. Keith helped and explained me a lot and also showed me how to tweak Grandpa and a harness so that they are is in time with the dogs run cycle.

- I enjoyed animating the husky's trot cycle! Last semester in Sheridan I had to animate dog cycle in Maya and it was very interesting to apply same principles in symbol animation.

-Darien and Joel helped me to figure out why the sleigh dogs would start glitching while trucking in, disappearing even when we would export png sequence. As Joel advised I reduced the size of original png images and the problem was yaay fixed. Thank you!

Four Sleighs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZu-TF8DxB8

This animation was the easiest as I already had sleigh cycle done. So it was just the timing, tint and alpha channels.

 

Animal Wall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIa2OkpYIrQ

This shot was mostly about the timing. I also learned how to work with colors and transparency settings in Flash.

 Tundra and objects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0-VKXkWPNs

This shot taught me about the timing, gravity and again about camera moves. Alex and Keith explained to me that all major camera moves are usually done on a comp level. Keith though showed me some tricks on how to attain 3d effect move by animating objects inside the comp and applying the same ease-in ease-out parameters as the tweens on the main level would have. It has totally boggled my mind but I think I finally got it. like 90%..ok 88%..

  

Animation test for Caribou Mandala:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zsx2dAHt0g

Working on mandala rotation was fun. I experimented with the timing of all the layers and transparency settings. I think it worked alright in the end. It’s so rewarding to see your own design animated. yay! This mandala exercise and Flash effects techniques I learnt from Alex, Keith and Darien provided me with all the understanding I needed to start working on my 4th year film as I am going to have my Sun Mandala rotated as well.

 Next week I will post my Geese and Caribou Mandala animations. I hope I will be able to finish them before my internship is over which is for one more week. Anna left a week ago and this week is the last week for Carol. No more Carol on the Oakville train and bus. Awe. I will see my girls only in September. It was great to get to know both of them. Smiley Guy made an official goodbye pizza party for us on the roof of the studio. It was very nice! I will miss this roof and all awesome Smileys people with whom we used to have launches together.

Another update of the month is my husband and my wedding anniversary! We had our wedding a year ago in Blue Mountains and it was amazing and beautiful. This summer we decided to celebrate it by going to the Niagara Falls and it was awesome too. We walked a lot, got the sun and the rain, saw the fireworks, got a chance to feed a friendly seagull that would eat only egg and not the bread and who refused to fly away and spent with us the whole hour, cute bird! The Falls were incredibly powerful and mesmerizing. Beautiful place, here:

My husband Chris is a ETM music producer, he got inspired by Alex’s film and came up with the musical piece which if approved by Alex and other producers might be added to the film soundtrack. That’d be awesome!

That’s all for now. Next week there will be my last week and my last post on the Smiley Guy internship portal:)

Carol Says Goodbye

Hey everyone, this is my last day at smiley guys. I just want to say thank you guys so much for this wonderful opportunity to work at this amazing studio. Along the way, I got to meet the amazing crew of smiley guy and made new friends who brought many joys into my life.

I learned so much valuable skills that I can use to make beautiful films in the future, so thank you for making my dream come true.

Now I feel more confident about my skills in flash and my future in the animation industry. Thank you smiley guy for an awesome summer internship!

-Carol

Quick Update from Carol

Hey guys,
This is almost my final week here. It has been an amazing experience being able to work with Smiley Guys people. Thank you for the pizza and beer, it was awesome!

Aside from that, I colored Uberdude backgrounds and other characters most of the week and designed an airplane and a pilot for defying gravity. After that, I incorporated what I learned from Chirp's fan animation and use the same technique for the propeller on the plane.  

Goodbye from Anna

Hey guys. I'm sad to say this, but today is my last day at Smiley Guy... It was a lot of fun, and I genuinely learned a lot from everyone. I would totally recommend it to anyone wanting an internship at an animation studio. Not only are the people there friendly and helpful, they are all very talented in their field.

Throughout these eleven weeks, I've accumulated a wide variety of experience in flash. Not only did I animate using symbols - which I've never really done - I created the symbols that I used to animate, and created props and backgrounds as well.

In the beginning, I was pretty nervous, since the meager experience I had in Flash was all traditional animation. But as I worked on Teleporting Fat Guy, I started to get the hang of it. Now, when I look back, I can actually see the improvement, from the flow of the animation to the speed in which I animate. After working on Teleporting Fat Guy, we helped out with First Hand, which was something that hit us all emotionally at one point or another. Environmentalism is something I've always had an interest in, so I really wanted to work on First hand, and I can probably say the same thing for the rest of the interns, too. This was when I drew backgrounds based off the animatic, in a style I've never really done much. First hand was a great experience, because it was back to the basics, but at the same time, something totally new.

After a week or two in First Hand, we worked on Uberdude. I was colouring animations, and that needed to be done fast. That improved my speed as well as my skills in Flash, because I have honestly never coloured so much in my life. Haha. Later, Teleporting Fat Guy needed help, and so we helped. I was just doing various things at various times, and it was totally normal at the studio.

Lastly, Interactive. Another environmentalism project, but with a spin. It wasn't a film, but a game. Since games are somewhat an interest of mine (Hah, who am I kidding? I love games), I jumped at the opportunity to work on it. And in the end, I loved every bit. The hard parts, the not so hard parts, the fun and the tedious things that I had to do. Having an internship at Smiley Guy was one of my best spent summers of my life. Meeting new people, who were all so friendly, and working on things that were just so interesting really made this summer worthwhile.

I guess I'll leave it on this note. And well, I've pretty much written all that I've wanted to. Thanks to everyone who've read this, for even giving a little bit of your time to browse through my ramblings. So yeah.
Over and out~
Anna

Anna Draws Some Garbage

This is week 10 of my internship. How fun and fulfilling my summer has become because of it. Although the transit from Markham to Toronto has been a bit of a hassle, it was quite fun - observing people who were either going to work or leaving it, and actually being part of that crowd, with the same purpose. 

This week, I have been working on my animation skills, using the characters that I created. It really made me appreciate the people who designed the Teleporting Fat Guy characters. It took a while for me to get the hang of making the character, placing everything in its proper order and getting them to look right. But not only did the character designers from Teleporting Fat Guy do that, they created them with the animators in mind. Every little bit of change was anticipated, and every little bit had a corresponding symbol to it. Although I had created mine with that in mind, I didn't put as much detail into it, and so when I was animating, I ran into obstacles. None that I couldn't jump over, but it would have made it a lot smoother had it been done with more detail in the first place. Let me just say that I have a lot of appreciation for people who create symbol characters now. Not that I didn't have any before... But now I have the knowledge to back up that claim. 

But that's not all I've done. I've also finished with the garbage that the game needed. Yes, I was drawing garbage for the first half of the week. And everyone complimented me on it. I do need to show you, because I'm quite proud of it myself.

Let me describe the process. I first had no idea what to draw for the garbage, so I researched a bit, and it didn't really tell me a thing. All it showed me were generic garbage, and I had that image in my head already anyway. So I looked around the studio (all I did was turn my head around), looking for possible trash ideas. I classified things into recyclables and trash, and made a list of what could be what. Then I drew a rough version in photoshop and imported it into Flash. And from there, I used the pencil tool and traced over my rough drawings, converted them into symbols and coloured them. I didn't really have a colour scheme in mind, but I wanted the recyclables to stand out, so I used brighter colours for those, and duller colours for the garbage. I also tried to keep in mind that the props needed to fit in with the background and the characters. So I simplified that even more and deleted the inner outlines of the objects. The result is what you see above. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied...

Carol Streamlines the Colouring Process

Hey guys,
This week was intense. I been coloring Uberdude the entire week because I had to color a whole episode myself. In the process I had to find the more effective way of doing it so I can get it done fast and this is what came up with. I learn to use the lasso tool to choose the parts that I can copy and paste onto the next frame. I learn to use ctrl+shift+v so I can paste it in place which
saved me a lot of time. That way I don't have to color it by hand like I did before.

Next thing I had to do was add 2 square shapes onto all the Uberdude's clothing on top of what I already colored.

For that, I just drew the squares on a new layer on top and turn them into symbols and just add a keyframe to adjust the position of it so it matches the rest of the body.

When I was coloring the mouth, I realize they were symbols and I couldn't just paintbucket everything, At first I just drew in the colors myself and find that too time consuming. Then I remember what I learn from making designs for Chirp that there is usually a drawing
inside a symbol. So I went inside the mouth symbol and paint bucketed everything so I know that every lipsync will be colored once I come out of that layer. That also saved me a lot of time.

As for the rest, I memorized all the hot keys to make everything easier to control.

Anna Cleans Up

Blog - Week 09

Hi guys. It's me again. Boy, time passes by so quickly - I can't believe it's already week 9 of this summer's internship. I guess what they say is true. Time passes quickly when you're having fun.

I've been continuing my interactive this week, working on finishing the background for the game. Deadlines are coming up, so I've got to work harder and faster.

This week, I've been animating conveyor belts for the background. These conveyor belts will bring the garbage to the player so that they can hand it over to 'volunteers'. It probably doesn't make any sense at this moment, especially not when I've described it this way. You can tell I'm not that good at explaining things, haha.

Figuring out the background was tricky, because there were so many elements to consider. The volunteers going in and out, where the garbage would end up, and where the recycling would also end up gave us such an obstacle. However, after juggling around several ideas, I'm happy to say that we figured out what to draw, and hopefully, people will like it.

Over and out, see ya next week~

Props To Carol

Hello everyone, this week I finally got to work on some designs for an upcoming CBC Kids' children show. Everything had to be designed in flash, which was new to me. It took me a while to figure things out before I could actually make things work. Not only I am building props, but I have to also design how to make them move which is animating as well. I learned many new things such as making a symbol inside a symbol so I can have different instance inside so I have the option of changing to what I want to show the audience.

I also learned to put textures onto an object I drew by using a mask so that only certain parts of it would show. There were also other little things I learned to make things a lot easier to manage later on. As an result, I made a cannonball, an acorn and a fan with different components and views.

Down below is the fan I made, you can't see it moving but the button can be pushed. The fans are also spinning at different speed. You can also see all the layers inside.

Inna's Inspirations

This week I’ve been working on sparkles/stars for Bead Mountains and Goose animation and learnt more from Darien and Keith about gradients, transparency and radial coloring in flash. Also I’ve been working on Animal Wall design and animation. Alex wanted me to improve silhouettes of three animals (meerkat, beaver, salmon) so that they read better and then color each animal using our beads palette.

Changing colors was a bit tricky because magic wand tool would leave outline and the edges would be jagged and uneven. Peter showed me the cure - Modify/Expand tool and Image/Adjustments/Selective Color for coloring. Learn to change rgb settings in Flash now too, it’s not that hard, even easier then in Photoshop.Learnt about Clipping Masks as well. It’s such a handy tool!

Couple of weeks ago Julie shared an awesome link: www.skillsforsolidarity.ca

This summer Leadnow.ca community (https://www.facebook.com/leadnowcanada) launched Skills for Solidarity program that is a series of five online modules, each include a panel of interesting Canadain Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Peoples who share their personal stories, discuss how to renew and heal the relationship between nations. I was blown away by the life story of Bernice Kamano from Victoria area and who belongs to Kwakwaka’waka Nation. Her story starts around 45:05: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4VaGd4mIhY What an strong woman! She lived through a lot but she managed to keep her beautiful smile and kindness. Bernice is an activist, a Native Employment Counselor assisting with job search and a founding member of M'akola Housing Society,- she created M'akola's first housing project. Amazing woman!

Carol loved Bernice story too, she said she wants to be like her one day, help people and change the world for the better. Carol is awesome! It’s amazing my summer 2014, got to know so many beautiful inspiring people.

I really liked a Haida quote shared by one of the Skills4Solidarity panelists. This message is from Chief Skidegate - Lewis Collinson who said back in 1966:

"People are like trees, and groups of people are like the forests. While the forests are composed of many different kinds of trees, these trees intertwine their roots so strongly that it is impossible for the strongest winds which blow on our islands to uproot the forest, for each tree strengthens its neighbour, and their roots are inextricably intertwined.

In the same way the people of our Islands,composed of members of nations and races from all over the world,are beginning to intertwine their roots so strongly that no troubles will affect them.

Just as one tree standing alone would soon be destroyed by the first strong wind which came along,
so it is impossible for any person, any family, or any community to stand alone against the troubles of this world."

Anna Grows in Interactive

Blog - Week 8

Hello people~
How was your Canada Day? What did I do that day? I watched fireworks at my local park and miraculously did not get bitten by any mosquitoes. Since I am like a bait for mosquitoes, I'm considering that to be quite a feat. Other than that, I've been rereading  The Name of the Wind. It's such a great book. I simply cannot wait for the third book to come out.

This week, I've been continuing to work on my interactive stuff, trying to polish it. My concept art for the characters was lineless, but when I was creating the symbols, I used lines. Today, I decided to stick with the lineless look because it made everything sleeker. By doing so, the characters stand out on the screen even more.

Several technical bits that I didn't know about or was confuzzled by was taught by Joel. He really clarified things up with smoothing out the shapes and other small but really important bits. I mean, you wouldn't think that there was a command for pasting in place, and so I spent so long just trying to shift a circle back into that same position in the previous keyframe... There were numerous shortcuts and stuff that Joel taught me that just simplified the process and simplified my life too.

Other than that, when interactive overwhelms me, I shift back to working on First Hand. At the moment, I am flashifying some props to animate them. I'm working on this scene in a greenhouse, where stalks of tall grass start sprouting up from the ground. Since I haven't really finished it yet, I made a small gif to illustrate what I want the result to look like.... Kinda... Beware. I made this gif in 10 minutes... Quality isn't... well, let's just say it isn't my best work.

 And here's a pic of what the greenhouse actually looks like. Just not animated.

Anyhow, that's it this week. Ciao
- Anna

Carol Pops

Hey guys, this week I got to animate Luigi and many different shots of Teleporting Fat Guy. This episode is very interesting because of where they were and the things they're doing. I learned to push a movement by changing the expression of the character along with the action to emphasize the acting more effectively.

Other than that, I started popping again after a long time of not dancing. Currently focusing on doing the robot/animation part of it,  so I can understand the movement of my animation better once understanding my own body movements.

And finally, I beat Freddy in Foosball one on one today. So over the weeks of working here, different skills I have improved.

Inna 'Meets' Norma and Foosball

Norma Kassi

We finally heard from Norma about Mandala Designs that she liked most -out of six options Norma picked #6, the spacious one! So cool to get feedback from Norma herself!

I was so excited to know that Norma is a real person, so I just Googled her name and found out that she is actually Chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin!! She was elected in 2010 and she has also been vice chair of the International Gwich'in Steering Committee.

Norma Kassi devoted her life to activism and served as an elected tribal spokesperson for the protection of the Porcupine Caribou as well as director of Indigenous Collaboration at Arctic Institute of Community Based Research. Here’s some more information about Norma.

Here Norma Kassi speaking about climate change and presenting the film she was on of the producers on: Our Changing Homelands Our ChangingLives.  Here's the film trailer and film.

I found this article while reading about Porcupine Caribou activism.

The more I work on First Hand Stories, the more I learn about Canadian First Nations. It’s such a beautiful and meaningful project!

So back to Mandala designs, they are here: 

Norma's Choice

Here’s some of my research on Mandalas and some sketchbook drawings for First Hand stories designs:

I will post some animation tests in July when I jump onto Mandala animation. I tried rotation in Flash two weeks ago and it’s so nice, it looks like kaleidoscope if the timing is set right:)

As for our studio’s life, it’s awesome. Every Tuesday we have Cartoon Lunches and Joel brings us cool animated shows to watch. Last time we saw Steven Universe, Adventure time and today it’s gonna be Gravity Falls. Awesome-awesome. It’s great to see different styles of animation and be updated on the industry new shows.

Last week we were invited for celebration of the official Canadian launch of Warren United, funny animated show about about a soccer fan Warren and his family. I enjoyed watching the show on a big screen, it was fun! My Sheridan groupmates David and Jordan who did their internship with Smiley’s last year and got to work on Warren, were also invited, it was great to see them :)

Smiley Guy Studios made super high quality animation for the show. UK partners were happy with the result and it seems like the second season is coming soon into production.

 

We also had to watch FIFA : the England Vs Uruguay game, there was lots of fun. Uruguay guys won, they were crazily intense. Carol introduced me to foosball and now my adrenaline level is pumping every time I see any game:) that’s awesome, now I can help my husband watch his NFL games:)

Anna Moves to Interactive

Hey guys! What's up? This week, yes, what I have been waiting for - INTERACTIVE STUFF! Ta da~ I feel like waving my hands in the air or something.

So anyway, this week, I've been concentrating on an interactive game like I said last week, and it has been pretty fun. Everything is new to me, and majorly daunting and majorly cool. I started on the concept side, giving an image to the idea that was emailed to me. I drew some characters for the game, and a background as well, on photoshop. After that, I imported it into Flash and cleaned it up. This part is really awesome, because I'm actually making the symbols for the character animation. How cool is that?

I've done some Teleporting Fat Guy animation before, so I understand how crucial a good and well done symbol can be. If the pivot point is in the right place, it makes everything smooth sailing. Otherwise, watch out for that tsunami!

I got a great tutorial from a co-worker (thanks Darien!) and I am learning a lot. I've had to backtrack a bit, since my concept doesn't exactly work with what the symbol making needs it to be, so I'm currently drawing a better character design.  But all that drawing will just make me a better artist~

So yeah, this week it really has been overwhelming, with all the new things I'm absorbing. I'm also still working on my freelance stuff as well as helping a friend with some illustration projects she's stuck on. With internship, transit and just life in general, I don't have a lot of free time. It makes me sad when I see my brother, who just finished graduating from high school yesterday, be so carefree that he can sleep until 3 in the afternoon. No, you know what, it makes me mad. It's not healthy to sleep so much.

Sleep? What's sleep?

Well, until next time.

Oh, and here's two cool Molson commercials for the upcoming Canada day~!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t41wNkGvJ9k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gper3YkzMg

(Why am I promoting Molson's beer? I don't even drink alcohol... OTL)

Carol Learns to Walk

Hi guys, This week was intense. I finally reached my goal of animating 10 seconds today, feel so proud. Not only that, I learned how to do a walk and talk cycle. At first I thought I had to animate a fresh walk cycle because the system didn't have Rachel and Oliver walking in suits yet. Turns out all I had to do was drag the symbol of them in suits into the file where they didn't have it and swap
the arms, body, legs with the ones I want. It allow me to explore other tools like the pencil tool, so I can fix and draw over some parts where it's needed.

The most complicated thing I learned this week was changing a certain part of the body parts into a new symbol on its own so that I could do actions while the character is walking. The reason why you must do that is because the walk cycle is already looped, so you have to break that loop in order to make something different happen. Basically you select the parts that you are going to be animating, for example if I want to move the arm when the character is walking, I will select only the arm. After that it must be copied/paste in a certain way into a new layer so that you can animate that layer inside another layer.

It is too complicated to even explain, but I had to write down every step when Rich was showing it to me because I couldn't remember it. So after you animate it's own action, you must match the body part to the beat of the walk so that the arm still looks attached to the rest of the body.

Sorry that I can't explain it properly...there is way too many steps lol.

Inna Moves Mountains

Last couple weeks I have been working on Bead Goose design and Animation(close up) and Bead Mountains design for First Hand stories. For my Goose design I didn't use only Gwich'in design patterns - I have been researching Native American art in general and found lots of Canadian Northwest coast based art which is much more stylized and looks much more in style of Alex’s wolf and Goose(full shot). Here’s what I came up with and some of the research:

My Bead Mountains design I based on Gwich'in floral patterns. At first I took some pieces from my Mandala Design and was trying to make it work but in the end it didn’t look good. It was all messy and chaotic. We liked blue flowers though and Alex suggested to fill the space below with some design elements.

 

When I did more research I managed to come up with a nicer wave-like pattern that worked better, and I also added

a new flower design in the middle of each mountain to improve the overall look.

Here's my ugly version

 

Here's my research

 

And here’s my final version and I already animated the mountains, it took a while but I learned how to apply transparency to the movie clips and how to make camera moves more smoothly: http://youtu.be/cGcys8LvfOk

Excited to start animating Alex’s sleigh but first I need to come up with an alternative sparkle animation, already found a tutorial for it, yey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUKXfoubkEI

Anna's Summer Focus: Environmentalism

This week, I've again, been working on First Hand BGs. However, on Friday, I have finally been assigned to the interactive project I've been waiting for~

It's truly exciting and right up my alley - considering the theme of the project is environmentalism, which, come to think of it, seems to be my theme this summer as well. The freelance project that I'm still slaving away at is about environmentalism, as well as the First Hand project for Smiley Guy...

Although this strikes me as funny, I also think that it is pretty important. I don't think that there is enough awareness and worry about the affect that pollution creates on this planet. I've been reading and watching stuff about recycling lately, and there are so many things I've learned just from a little bit of research. But comparing the amount of views on YouTube about a recycling factory compared to the amount of views of a music video, even one made by an amateur, you can tell that people don't really care. How would the earth change if everyone just stood up and worked together, regardless of profit, regardless of how much hard work it is, and actually tried to save the earth by doing something? When I think of natural disasters that make humans come together to help one another, I can't help but think that if people could do that for the Earth, because that too is a natural disaster just waiting to happen, we could make a difference.

Alas, no one does anything, because procrastination is the key to our existence. We won't believe anything we can't see, and sometimes what we see we try to ignore in fear of upsetting the status quo.
It's funny how we can turn such a beautiful world into such a dirty one...

Just talking about environmentalism tires me out. I always start getting so frustrated, and then start ranting about it... Anyway, this week was simply the tip of the iceberg in terms of my interactive stuff. I'm definitely looking forward to next week~
-Anna

Anna Love Soccer

So it's week five into this summer internship, and everything has been going great. I've learned quite a lot, and everyone has been extremely welcoming and helpful.

I've been working on backgrounds for this small project called "First Hand" this week. It's a piece on the perspective of an Inuit group who feel the effects of the pollution of the environment much faster than people like us who live in the more central parts of the world. I really like the message that this film is conveying, since protecting the environment is something that I truly want to accomplish. Although this probably will not shake the world up with its profound meaning, I think it's a little step of the way towards achieving a worldwide awareness of environmentalism.

Other than that, this week has been all about the World Cup. Woohoo! I'm not an extreme sports fan, but honestly, soccer is my favourite sport. And although I am not glued to the screen whenever it is on, it has been pretty exciting to watch all the players run around in the field chasing that itty bitty soccer ball. And that wasn't sarcasm. Throughout this week, I've been constantly asking people whether or not they watch or have watched the World Cup, and which team they are cheering for. I personally don't have a favourite team - I just love soccer. But it's all fun and games.

So yeah, another week has flown by, and summer will end really soon, and I will have accomplished nothing in my own free time this summer again... Talk about depressing... It's nice that I have this internship, or else my entire summer will have gone to waste again...

Here's a link to a commercial that is really awesome, and I wish I had a part in, regardless of my skills in 3D.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTzMgkwtfiI

Welp, til next week~
Anna

Carol Embraces the Mask

Hey everyone, this week I had a bit of an epiphany. After Rich demonstrated how he animates Teleporting Fat Guy in front of me, suddenly something clicked in my head and I began to understand the meaning behind all the perfectly aligned keyframes. Instead of dragging on one movement by having many uneccessary keyframes, he made literally just 2 poses and did one inbetween for them and it looked so much more polished than all the extra things I have been trying to do. After the big movements you just need 2 frames or so to settle the movement. After watching Rich animate, I learn to be more organized and started to really understand how to animate in groups of frames.







 
Today I learned about using mask to show certain part of the animation that I want the audience to see and hide the parts I don't want them to see. Also played around with the graph editor while animating a bird and a run cycle to adjust the timing of the overall animation rather than just the begining or the end. Overall, I can say I've become a lot better and faster at animating. My goal is to hit 10 second a day, which I'm almost there.

Below is an example of a raven taking off, I've decide to give this raven a fast start by having a deep slop going upwards and finishing off with a more balanced speed.

Below is the mask I use for the girl running across the ground. She had to start by being inside the house so I put the mask there to cover certain areas of her body.

Carol Animates

Hey guys,
It's our intern's one month anniversary at Smiley Guys!

This week has been exciting for me. I received 3 big shots from teleporting fat guy to animate. For the first time, there not just 1-3 second long lol. In the scene I had 5 characters to animate; each acting out their own part, also including camera move and close-up. It was really fun being able to do different character performance for each of them.

What struck me for a bit was flipping the characters on flash. Since they're flat characters with no dimensions, the only way to turn their body was to cheat. At first I just flipped them horizontally to see how that goes, and of course it looked very stiff and boring. So I tried playing around by moving them towards the opposite side to give it some anticipation but it still didn't look right. Eventually
I asked Joel for help and he roughly put the character in place and explained to me the subtle things that makes a huge difference in the movement. Turns out it was all in the legs and many other small movements like the head. After his demonstration I was able to animate the next character turning much better. There are just so many things in flash I learned that made animating so much more fun and interesting.

One thing in particular I recently started doing was selecting the parts I'm trying to move rather than clicking one part at a time. It helped me save so much time and effort trying to move a character. Even animating the dad jar gave me the opportunity to ask Rich to show me by moving the lid (mouth) layer into the body layer I can move the whole thing without affecting individual parts. 
Every time I animate, I get to face new challenges and find new solutions which helps me become a more observant and productive animator over-time.

Inna and Her Mandala's

This week I came up with floral design for Caribou Mandala for our First Hand series based on original Gwich'in design patterns. I got Alex's approval and started the “bead-work” on it.

Photoshop beadwork is fun and feels almost like real embroidery process but is a bit faster of course:) It took me three days but the result was worth it and it looks cool in the end. I did six design variations and Alex and another producer Karen liked them all yay!

 If you have a look at the design you will see that red “lily-hooves” form a cross. This symbol is widely spread all over the world and as we see it is used not only by Catholics/Christians but by Native Indian tribes as well. 

 

For first Nations cross symbolizes Four Great Primary Forces and their interaction with the sun; Medicine wheel; Nature elements -Air, Fire, Water and Earth; the four directions, and the four seasons.

 

Here’s some more information on Native American cross symbol: http://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-symbols/cross-symbol.htm

And here’s interesting book that I am using a lot as a reference for First Hand and for my 4th year film called The Sacred Tree. It was created by a Native American inter-tribal group of the Four Worlds International Institute that is located in BC, Canada.

It helps me to understand the meaning behind Native American symbols and gives a glimpse on Spirituality of indigenous peoples : http://books.google.ca/books?id=yNGrqIaaYvgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

When I finished my beadwork on the Caribou Mandala Alex sent the file to Norma who did the voiceover for the film and who is actually is a real person and “Norma’s story” is Norma Kassi’s real story! That’s so amazing! I feel so proud of the project and lucky to have a chance to work on it. 

 

While working on Caribou mandala I felt the rising responsibility over my design, because for Gwich'in people Porcupine Caribou and anything related to them is sacred.

Here’s an interesting article on caribou that claims that all of Santa’s reindeer are probably cows :) because Porcupine Caribou are the only cervidae (deer species) in which both the male (bull) and female (cow) grow antlers, though the bulls possess much larger, even massive, antlers than females. Cows shed their antlers later in the season than bulls, in theory so they still have them for protecting calves. Only cows still have antlers as late as December. haha cool to know :)

http://thewhiskerchronicles.com/2013/12/19/the-sacred-place-where-life-begins/