Keith Commutes, and Smiley Guy Video!

So I've been working on backgrounds of the actual show and things are getting a lot more intense. Lots more to do, but I've started to see improvements in my work and am getting faster. I believe I'm nearly ready to work from home some of the time. Love working in the studio, but the commute is still exhausting. I also like that every morning at the subway there's a street musician doing his thing, really brightens up the day.

Loved the little "featurette" CBC did on the studio: 

Meghan Makes Mistakes...But That's Okay

The last week and a half at Smiley Guy I’ve continued to do Scene Set up on Chirp. I’ve learned even more about Flash and am now confident enough to work on my own and solve most problems on my own. I still make mistakes however… a lot of mistakes, but my supervisor continues to tell me that mistakes happen and everyone makes them, even people who have been working there for a long time. Although I try my hardest to not make mistakes, I’ve noticed that after I make them I learn something new, or become more aware and am able to catch them after I send them in so I can correct them before the scene planning supervisor sees them… or sometimes I just make incredibly stupid mistakes and can’t believe I did it. I’m improving though and that’s what matters. I’m getting faster, and setting up more difficult scenes, which are both fun and challenging. I’ve come to hate masking and shape tweens more then anything, but at least I actually know how to do them. They are incredibly useful, just a pain. 

Overall, things are going well. I’m happy with everything so far and am looking forward to moving on to prop builds in the near future!

Mary's Weekend Convention was for the Slushie and Iced Cap

Last Weekend I was roaming around Anime North, over at the Toronto Congress Center by the airport. It was jammed pack with people and I walked in heels wearing a black fall jacket under the scorching desert sun in cosplay! 

Aside from the heat, tall boots and burning blazer on top of two layers, I had a lot of fun hanging out with my cosplayin' crew, and that was worth it.

I went for two days trekking the place though the forest of people. I learned a learned how to be thrifty in this kind of con. ;) I barely shopped for anything but slushies and ice cappuccinos in stuffy lineups. Most of my souvenirs were photos and random videos.

No drawing for this week but I'll draw something next week! I was sore all morning and I need ice cream. Ahhh time to head home. I'm gonna draw you a WussyWat character next week ;)

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!

David Learns FX, but mostly Board Games

This week I’m animating special effects on Furry Force and it’s…erm...interesting... I'm enjoying learning how to animate special effects though! So far I’ve animated a rain effect, and cloud effect, and I've composited a scene with fire.

This week I also attended GAME NIGHT! I had the opportunity to meet, Spencer, Kris, Kosta, Nicole, and Sean :) We were playing Betrayal at House on the Hill. 

Basically each character has stats and you roll dice and explore a haunted house! It was super awesome because we were playing some spooky music that was timing perfectly to our game creepily enough! Everything was going great, I had found a spellbook, which gave me a bonus to my character’s knowledge stat and a skull which gave me another upgrade. Then Kosta had to get cursed and become this evil body horror monster like Tetsuo Shima in the anime Akira. And of course he can't take any physical damage because his gross body absorbs the attacks! The only way we could kill him was to run to the basement and try to explode the furnace and burn the house down while Spence attacked with his dog to distract Kosta. Me and Nicole both got to the basement. I fell down a hole in a room, and she took a magic elevator. In the basement I found an awesome ring that gave let me turn my mental stats into damage, turning me into a psychic! Then Nicole successfully blew up the furnace, but unfortunately we lost because we couldn't find a way back out of the basement before burning to death.

This week has been a lot of fun so far and I’m really enjoying both the work and the work environment at Smiley Guy :)

-David

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

Smiley Guy For The Win! - Introducing Meghan

I learned more about flash in the last week and a half here at Smiley Guy then I have in the last three years at school. The first few days were a little rough. I was constantly asking my supervisors questions (sometimes the same one more than once), I did the two tests at a snails pace and even managed to lose most of one of the assignments when my flash crashed. I learned a valuable lesson from that however- Constantly save your work.

After a few days of trying to figure flash out, it started to become easier. By Friday, I was working on actual production stuff! I’m currently doing scene set up for an episode of Chirp and resourcing other episodes in-between. With every scene that I finish, I become more and more confident with the program, and less annoying to my supervisors (although they don’t think I’m annoying… or are too nice to admit it haha). I’ve also finally downloaded Skype so the other artists in the studio don’t have to listen to me calling my supervisors over to my workspace every 5 minutes.

The people at the studio are friendly, helpful and very sociable with each other. In my first week we had two organized lunches and a game night. Apparently game nights are a regular weekly thing too!

I’m very happy to be interning here at Smiley Guy and I’m excited to see what the upcoming weeks bring.

Mary Meets Toronto

Hey there! I'm Mary, one of the summer interns at Smiley Guy Studios, studying Animation at Sheridan. C:

 

Today is my sixth day here, and so far I'm enjoying it. I'm learning a lot of new stuff in and outside the studio, and my first week was filled with learning curves! 

 

Inside the studio I learned new things in Flash CS3, from puppet rigging, to animating with new commands. I've never explored the Ease feature, nor have I ever built a puppet in it.

I'm really grateful for Matt on the ease feature (his tutorials were helpful, and I hope to learn more of his neat tips and tricks in animating), and Joel for teaching and helping me learn more about the program. I learned a lot more about symbol animation, and did you see their library of hands for the characters in their Warren United show? They're so cool!

Joel also introduced me to Rich, a fellow director of Smiley Guy's "Cloud 8" short film a few years ago, which I found impressive. They used After Effects to composite, and I hope to learn more about that program too. Aside from making an animation look professional from it, AE can mask things with a green screen feature, like what they do for Lord of The Rings.

 

Anyway outside the studio was also a learning experience. My first day I had arrived to work early enough to explore College St. for a bit, and I ended up all the way to Spadina. I've barely explored downtown Toronto, so hopefully during my time working here I'd get more familiar with the streets and perhaps find the best little food places.  I am also super glad that Julie toured us around for lunch a couple of times. 

Furthermore I even made it all the way up to Bloor and Yonge St on foot! 

When I get home I'm either hungry or exhausted, but I feel that everyday, traveling to TO and learning from industry professionals are always worth the train rides.

Here's me as a Chirp character, makin' my way downtown!

 

Introducing Mia!

Hello, my name is Miyeon Hyun but I also go by Mia. This is my first week of my internship at Smiley Guy Studio. I was very nervous at first because it was my first work experience in the real animation industry. Now, I am happy because I realize that I actually have a great opportunity to learn from professionals.

 

Mia!

This week I have been working on concept art  creating characters and backgrounds. My first assigned work was creating two extra characters. The designs were supposed to look like an old cartoon movie style that I haven't tried before. So, I looked at the Internet, watched the old cartoon movies to study its style, and also got a lot of help from Aaron. 

The next thing I did was a layout of a science lab. Layout is not my strongest so it was scary to do it but I learned a lot by doing this. Currently I am working on a character rotation sheet for cute animal characters. 

I really like the characters and enjoy doing this!

It's Just, David!

Dear Diary,

    First, let me introduce myself. My name is David Just. I am an artist and animator currently in Sheridan College’s Bachelors of Applied Arts in Animation. I am also one of the new interns at Smiley Guy Studios! :)

Today was my third day at Smiley Guy! I should have written the last two days about everything that's happened so far but let me summarize:

Day 1: Mild Anxiety with a side of HOW ON EARTH DO YOU USE FLASH?

Day 2: Slight Anxiety with a side of HOW ON EARTH DO YOU USE FLASH BETTER?

Day 3: Making stuff move and feelin’ chill.

I am already 300% better at flash than I was May 3rd and I have the wonderful and soft-spoken guidance of Joel to thank for that! Thank you Joel, you’re a great mentor!

As far as the actual work goes, the first two days were spent creating a puppet (headless) in flash. The puppet must have functioning joints and the artwork must have coloured & correctly layered lines. I finished my puppet about half-way through the second day and started on a walk cycle. Last night before I went to bed I knew I’d be spending today creating some new feet to add to the character library so Ingrid (from the show "Warren United") would be able to walk more naturally. I am about 75% of the way done the initial blocking pass on the walk cycle. Her arms still need work along with general fine tuning but that will get done tomorrow. :)

-David