Pippa Prepares to Graduate

May 23*

Monday was Victoria Day, so it was a long weekend! And I did not spend a minute of it resting. It was gorgeous weather and I was happy to be outside. My boyfriend came to visit the city, and we spent it on the waterfront, with me trying to convince him that big cities are not actually hell on earth.

Back on set Tuesday, I’ve started helping the art department more. Well I kind of did last week too, towards the end of the week when we did a ‘cocaine’ scene that involved icing sugar absolutely everywhere. That was a lot of clean-up. Plus, it was the day that there was the fire at the Runnymeade subway station - which is my stop on my way to set!

I also got to help one of the art hands on set with her tiny houses for one of the scenes in the series. The amount of work and detail she put into them - they were so fancy! I learned about different types of paint and glue used to decorate the set and props. And all that hard work on her miniatures just to be dramatically crushed in a matter of minutes!

This week, everything was changing. We had our last days at Trench Studios this week. We started working nights. I did some canvassing this week too, which means I was knocking on the neighbours’ doors to get them to sign off on us using loud special effects late at night. The special effects team used lights and smoke machines to ‘set fire’ to the studio! It looked pretty cool, but was also a super late night.

My sleep schedule is super messed up right now. We were doing early mornings - like 6:30-7:30 am starts, and in the span of a day, now we’re on nights, starting between 3:00-5:00 am and not finishing the night until 3:00-5:00 am. Caffeine is definitely my best friend right now!

I started to feel like I wasn’t really needed on set the latter half of the week because the majority of my time was being spent firewatching. It wasn’t until Saturday night when I got to talking to the Grips and the Gaffers while firewatching their truck that I realized how much it helps out them if they have someone to firewatch. Plus, they’re a big fan of the fact that I usually deliver the candy to the set, and that I made a point of memorizing as many of the crew’s coffee orders as possible.

Next week we wrap up shooting! It’s been a learning curve for me for sure, and it’s been a valuable experience, but I’m really excited to come back to Smiley Guy Studios on Friday!

Except it’ll be my last Friday on internship, because I graduate from college the Friday after that! I’m excited to be graduating college, but I’m really going to miss Smiley Guy Studios after my internship is over! :’(

Free Candy from Pippa

May 16*

This week, I did some work on the deal memos for Todd and the Book of Pure Evil and Vampire Steve. Turns out there are different deal memo templates for employees and contractors.

I’ve also been updating the Vampire Steve database now that the scripts for episodes 4 and 5 have been finalized. I updated the breakdowns for those episodes, and assigned them in the database. I’ve also been working on keeping the weekly meeting notes for Vampire Steve up to date.

Tuesday to Saturday, I was back on set. I did a lot of lock down this week, which means it was my job to make sure nobody walks through the doors and onto set while filming is going on. A lot of crew has to keep working to prep the next scene while the current scene is being shot, so it’s important to make sure they know when they have to hold the work and be quiet so nobody ruins the shots with polluted audio.

I’m no longer in the on-set production office as much. I’ve become more of an on-set PA, which usually gives me the job of distributing substantial snacks ‘subs’ on set in the morning and candy and treats after lunch - so everyone is usually pretty happy to see me!

Pippa on Set!

May 9*

So Epic Studios begins shooting this week, so for the next three weeks, Mondays will be my only day at Smiley Guy Studios. Today was hectic. Script revisions were the highest of high priority, because the assistant directors needed them for finalizing the schedules. I also got to help Karen with setting up ACTRA contracts for the cast of Epic Studios.

Tuesday to Saturday, I was on the set of Epic Studios. It was a huge learning curve for me. I’ve been on the set of student productions before, but in comparison to how things work on an actual set, we were just play-acting. Throughout my time at Loyalist, I always focused on the pre-production side of things: writer, casting director, producer. I haven’t really done as much crew work as most of my classmates - aside from directing, I’ve hardly been on set for anything other than a production manager, so I felt fairly lost.

I do the daily sides on-set, which is kind of a hassle to do without a laptop. A new laptop is pretty close to the top of my list of things to buy that would make my life infinitely easier. I also work on keeping the craft table stocked up, and making sure that people on set are fed and watered. I really like the set food - it’s my favourite part of the day. I also took care of the ACTRA sign-in sheet and contracts for actors.

Vincent and 90's Movies

This week we got to view the animatic for the film and tried out a game with a virtual reality headset! It was really fun! Can't wait to see what the final film looks like.

I also saw the movie Midnight Special which was amazing and it got me thinking how perfect it would be if that movie came out in the 90's and made this sequence of Silence of the Lambs>Nirvana>Evangelion>Midnight Special right before the new millennium began.

Learned about using the MoveRegPoint tool to move rotation points and fast ways to clean up the symbol library. Right now, I'm making adjustments to one of the concepts I had last week.  

Callie on After Effects

Hello! This is going to be an uber short blog post because I have two art projects, my co-op final project, a math test and a practical lab exam for biology all tomorrow! Basically a lot of work that will result in me pulling an all nighter. RIP my health. Oh well. I am only documenting today's work in the studio because on Friday I will be on a school field trip and of course Monday was Victoria Day.

I got to the studio and luckily there was still pizza leftover from the pizza party I missed on Tuesday, so I ate many pieces of cold pizza. So wonderful. Then I went downstairs and watched some of the Todd animatic and it's so funny, I can't wait to see what it looks like finished (although I will not be at Smiley Guy when it is done, I will drop by or something). Then Joel came and he went over some truly mind boggling things on After Effects. We (actually Joel did everything I just observed and absorbed information) composited one of my shots and made it look super funky. Special effects, according to Joel, should not function as a fixer upper for poor animation rather it should just enhance it. All the same though, the gradients and glows that were added to my shot really fixed up my animation. I think it's ok because I am new at Flash and this is all a learning experience.

Next week I will continue with what Joel was doing and hopefully the shots will end up looking nice and polished. Bye!  

Juhi is Hyped

This week I did revisions based on the helpful notes I got back for the props I built. It was great to receive feedback and make the necessary changes to make animating go smoothly. Along with building props, I had my hand at designing them too which I really enjoyed. It was a good break from flashifying props; but with the experience it made designing for the look of Todd and the animation in mind easier.

This week was also full of events including a VR info session and a pizza leica viewing day! It was super cool to fully watch the rough draft of the production we've been working on for weeks, together with the studio. Definitely hyped!

~Juhi out~

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 ^

Mandy Loves VR!

This week we were busy on schedule, like some revised files had to be completed, and the pizza party was held on Tuesday, we watched the story leica and gave feedback.

At the end of the meeting, we watched a graduated student’s film from Seneca. The film is excellent and I like the story as well as the simple animation. Also, it offered me a great reference for my 4th year film, since I have a similar direction, which to develop a deep meaning story with simple animation and visual effect.

On Thursday we had a short meeting of Learning the new industry VR (virtual reality). To be honest, VR became very famous this year, whenever I look through my facebook, people keep posting news about VR, specially from technical people.  I saw some of my classmate play the VR game in their intern companies, and all their responses were VR is awesome and amazing, but just little bit expensive. Personally I like VR even though I haven't tried it yet.

I hope one day the VR company can lower their price and let everyone have chance to own it. My opinion came from a famous Japanese animation called “Sword Art Online”, it is a great animation whose story happens in the future, and focus on the VR worlds. It's the reason why I have a lot of expectations on the VR industry.

^That's me on the far right!

Callie's Path is Distinctly Her Own

Today is Friday! And tomorrow is Saturday, therefore a day on which I can sleep in! Yay! This whole week I've been working downstairs with Joel on the rough cut of my film. Monday I sat with Sam and Joel and they taught me about the program used for editing, called Final Cut Pro and I was able to pick it up relatively quickly actually. Maybe I'm getting better at computers!? Hahahah. I think it's more that there are only few basic functions of Final Cut Pro that I am using currently. Wednesday I went into the basement again and worked quietly on the edit. It's pretty relaxing because its small room with not a lot of noise. Today, I got to co op late (don't worry I emailed ahead of time asking for permission:) because of a music festival type thing at my school. There were freezies and watermelon and I had to wear so much sunscreen, oh lord. So I came into co op all sunburned (despite the sunscreen) and sweaty and went downstairs again, Joel showed up after a few hours and then I finished adding the audio to my film. I'm not yet sure if I want to manipulate the transitions between shots (like add fancy cross dissolves or whatever) but I'll figure that out later. I rendered out my video and watched it with the audio which was cool. I'm a perfectionist to a fault, so it's hard to look at my film and know that there are many areas I could improve. I mean, I came to Smiley Guy knowing nothing so of course my first animated film is going to be rough around the edges, but I am happy because the firefly sort of makes me laugh and I know that the rough parts show I have improved a lot this year.


So in terms of animating, that is all I did this week, but actually I was finishing up my edit and Joel and I started talking and the industry and careers and also a shared admiration of Malcolm Gladwell. I'm pretty scared to leave co op and know that the next time I will re enter an animation studio might possibly be my first job (also scared about managing finances). We just talked about what to expect from this industry, how it works and also how it's ok to not do something super academic like my parents or sister because my path "is distinctly my own". Joel pointed out that with animation or arts/media careers you see an immediate result from your work in front of your eyes and to people like me and I guess everyone here at Smiley Guy, that's what makes the work meaningful. Anyhoo, that 40 minute conversation along with my invitation to a pizza animatic viewing party was the highlight of my week, so thank you Erin and Joel. Next week's highlight will be actually eating the pizza! Yummmmmmyy. Adios until then!

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!

Mandy Stays on Tempo

This week we’re working on the film project, revised the stuff according to the note written by Joel.
“Unholy Grail of Sumatra” is one of the props name, and it was more challenging than I thought, even though it is just in one shot of the film.

This evil grail has some eyes on its surface. My job contains to build the grail, and I also need to make the eyes blink and adjust it in different tempo while eyes are blinking.

To sum up, I learned two new things, which are “Move Regpoint” and “Random frames”. The first one is used to key the reg point, and second one is used for helping the animator to animate the same thing in different timing.

Juhi on Props

On the third week, I moved from posing and building out skeletons to building some props used by the characters in the Todd feature. It ranged from a simple bag to a tape recorder, where I created the different angles for both that were needed according to the animatic. From the practice, using shortcuts and manipulating the software comes much quickly and easier now. I definitely feel accomplished to see the progress come along!

~Juhi out~

Time Flies by for Vincent!

Second week at Smiley Guys and I've been drawing clean lines for Todd concepts. There's something really Zen about untangling flash nodes. It's almost like they untangle themselves. Almost done a charred corpse concept and starting an ash concept.

Thought it would be fun to look through my high school artwork and psychoanalyze myself. The third painting in particular is a lot spookier than how I remembered it.

Been listening to the film-spotting podcast, which I adore. Wow, the second week is almost over. Haha, This can't be happening!

Mandy Works Late!

After doing the exercises last week, we started to work on the project  "Todd And The Book Of Pure Evil", and my job is to built the props using Flash.

The work went quite well, and even there were some temporary changed on the props, I finally completed before the deadline. Also I realized it is extremely helpful for me to get trained last week, and I learned a bunch of new things.

Meanwhile, the thing happened yesterday touched my heart. I thought I was the last person left the studio last night, and I struggled that should I leave directly without locking the gate, or stay to wait for someone back. I walked around everyone’s space to see if there is any business card with phone number on, so I could make a call. But I got nothing. At the end, Juan came back, and he is so nice to teach me how to lock the door. Even it is a kind tiny small story, I did feel a really friendly working environment in Smiley Guy.

Juhi Makes Progress

Second week dunked and I'm starting to get used to the routine here at Smiley Guy's! I did some exploring during lunch and found some great bakeries and shops in the area. There is also a store selling cheap, cute cactus plants and I'm thinking of grabbing some for my desk area. :D After practicing with a character build in Flash, I took on another task revising and posing out a gnarly face-melting skeleton fight sequence for the Todd feature! I adjusted to Flash short cuts and did lots of problem solving in order to learn an efficient workflow. I definitely feel progress and will be looking forward to tackling more tasks on the project.  

~Juhi out~

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!

Callie and Final Cut Pro

Its the end of the week already. Insanity!! Exams are coming up and I'm currently drowning in culminating projects so even though it's the weekend, it is still basically school. Blegh. Someone help. Lots to talk about for this blog post though because I have moved into a new stage. I am reaching the home stretch and the brief romantic tragedy of Sam and Donna will soon be finished. On Tuesday I stared at the computer for hours looking for suitable audio and sound effects for my film. It was very fun at first because the website Erin gave me has a vast stock of sound effects, which are really amusing. Imagine being the person on Audio Blocks belching. After a while I got all cross because you had to properly word what you wanted in the search bar otherwise nothing would come up. However, I am victorious! I, more or less, have all the sounds I need.

Today I was assisted in rendering all my shots and then I ventured into the basement of the studio to have Joel and Sam walk me through literally every step of how to put your shots in to Final Cut Pro (I think that's the name) and a few editing tricks. They are so nice and very patient. I am still quite useless at picking up computer programs quickly. Anyways, they helped me out and I watched all my shots stitched together for the first time. Even though it's a very rough version, it was pretty amazing because all this started as a little pen sketch a BILLION years ago (OK maybe only 7 months) and now it's a mini movie!! Next week I will go back downstairs and just clean it up. Maybe I'll make some dissolve transitions!! And probably learn more on adding audio to animation. Have a good weekend everyone!!!

Pippa the Production Assistant

This weekend, I moved into a new place - a basement apartment that I’m sharing with my bestie from college. The apartment is definitely not as sunny as I’d like by any means, but the shady coolness will be a great asset this summer. And although it’s not especially sunny, it’s a nice apartment, at least.

This week, I did a lot of script stuff, which makes sense because I’m the script supervisor on Epic Studios. I got the chance to sit in on the Epic Studios punch-up room, as well as helping Karen with some funding applications and compiling contracts for Epic. There was another casting call this week that I helped Lisa with. I also did script revisions and more script revisions, as well as some ACTRA contract stuff and cast reports.

For the next three and a half weeks, I’ll only be in at Smiley Guy on Mondays. Instead of being at Smiley Guy, I’ll be working on the set of Epic Studios as a production assistant. I’ll be back at Smiley Guy at the start of June, and then I’ll be graduating from college. Everything is happening so quickly.

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!

Introducing Juhi!

Hi, Juhi here! I'm an animation student from Sheridan. I like dogs, robots, and robot dogs.

Wednesday was officially my first day as a fresh intern, and with everyone's support and easy-going nature, I easily had a good time doing the tasks provided for me. I familiarized myself with Flash and the studio's character rigging procedures. Practicing rigging with one of 'Todd and the Book of Pure Evil' characters, it was interesting to see how the studio deals with builds meant for the ever-evolving nature of Flash animation. I'm excited for the rest of my time here and see where this journey takes me. Nice to meet you! ~Juhi out~

Introducing Mandy!

It is so exciting to work in Smiley Guy studio, thank you for let me work in here. People are so nice and friendly, and willing to help.

Learning Flash is quiet a biggest challenge for me, because I haven't use it since last year, so I have to catch it up.

I have require a lot of knowledge in this three days, such as how the Mask helps when you are animate, and how to create the eyes properly. Also I found that Flash is way interesting than I thought.

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 :)

Callie Conquers Revisions!

I got back from Alberta on Monday but on Tuesday I had the flu, so that was two days of school missed. Fortunately, I only missed one afternoon of co op and I seem to be still on track. On Wednesday I went over my shots with Darien and he made up a document with a bunch of revision notes for me which was very nice of him. He also showed me how to fix the things he pointed out and how to make a shadow for behind the lamp shade.

So I did all the revisions that Darien suggested and then today I sat down and was very confused about what I was doing (like what stage I'm on). I think I'm in limbo or something. Because I'm done revisions but I also haven't strung all my shots together, and I don’t know how to do that slash I think Erin said someone would edit it together for me. So basically I made a word document and went through all my shots and though about what audio I will need to find online to go with the film.

Going through the shots slowly also made me catch a bunch of tiny things that Darien was probably too nice to point out, because he knows I have limited time/skills to fix any problems with my film. But I am very nit picky and so the issues I could see, I tried to fix. Problems like unnatural expressions mostly, or just not enough movement to make a character look alive. Anyhoo, it's time for me to go home. Have a great weekend!

Pippa Wants to Pitch!

Monday didn’t feel like a Monday. Monday felt more like a Wednesday, but that’s probably because I spent the entire weekend in Toronto, volunteering at TAAFI! That was tons of fun, I basically ran the TAAFI instagram for the majority of the weekend, got to meet lots of people, and I pretty much got to eat my weight in free pizza! Plus, I got to sit in on the finals of the women’s pitch competition - and I’m almost definitely participating in that the next time TAAFI and/or Women Drawn Together have a pitching competition.

So Wednesday #1 aka Monday began with another casting call at Farmhouse, and it was one of the busiest days so far in the casting process! Tuesday brought me back to Smiley Guy, where I was predominantly working on callbacks for Epic Studios. I was also working on updating the script notes masterlist, and later I got the chance to sit in on a development meeting, which was really exciting because I’m really interested in content development.

Wednesday #2 aka actually Wednesday was split between a morning at Smiley Guy and an afternoon at Farmhouse for callbacks. I mostly updated things for the callbacks, made the schedule and tried to install Final Draft and Save the Cat! On the mac at my work station. The latter was a chore. The mac seemed entirely determined to be the slowest loading piece of technology I think I’ve ever worked on - and I kept the same android phone from when I was in high school for four years, so I know slow technology and boundless patience.

In the afternoon, I made my way to Farmhouse for the callbacks, and Alex taught me more about my role as a script coordinator for Epic Studios, how to make a memo for script revisions.

Thursday, I searched Youtube for some Toronto-based hiphop artists and worked on another round of auditions. I also got the chance to help Karen by sorting out what completed materials she had already been sent for one of the funding applications.

And Friday, I was back at Farmhouse Productions to do some work as the script coordinator for Epic Studios. I spent the day getting acquainted with Final Draft 9, as well as working with Jeff and Eli, who are the first and second AD on Epic Studios. It took me a little while to get acquainted with the software, but by the end of the day, I managed to get through the first 8 episodes of Epic Studios. I also got to observe as Eli and Jeff worked out the production schedule, and got some direction for shooting sides, which I think they’d like me to be in charge of on set.

Finally, this weekend I moved into my new place! It only takes me half an hour to get to Smiley Guy, which is a definite improvement on the commute I’ve been doing for the past month!