Our New High School Intern Callie

It was my first week at Smiley Guy and I’ve learned so much. In the time I’ve spent there, I have worked out story ideas for my animated short, watched student animations and learned about a few of the many stages of animation. When you watch the telly, all you see is the final product and not a lot of people realize, me included up until a while ago, that there are around 15 stages of animation before anything gets released. That’s crazy!! But is gives me a lot of respect for the people who make these shows.

To learn about the animation process, I interviewed Jeremy, who writes scripts, Aaron, the art director and Kal, a storyboard artist. It’s pretty cool how much goes into just one episode of Chirp. For my short film, I’ll have to do each step myself, so learning from people who have lots of experience is very helpful. Thanks for a great first week!

Goodbye from Miyeon!

This is my last blog post. How time flies! For this week, I have been working on the rotation sheets for the characters from The Curse of Clara. It reminds me of when I was a kid because I did ballet too even though I barely remember what I learned. Anyway, I enjoy drawing them because the characters are all very cute.

Since this is my last blog, I want to talk about working as an intern for Smiley Guy Studios. I feel great about doing my internship at SGS because all the artists from here are very nice and I really learned a lot. Working as an intern helps students learn how real productions works from experience but, working here also helps to decide what to focus more on by trying many different areas, not just focusing on one job. Even though I started doing concept art first, I also had chance to do some backgrounds, building up the puppets and animating in flash. As I worked on concept art, I also could work on many different shows with various different styles. Before I came here to work, I always stayed in my comfort zone and drew only in the style I like and was familiar to draw, so it was very good training for me but it was hard at first. But, I've got a lot of help from Aaron and now I am doing much better than before. I am really happy that I had an opportunity to work from SGS!

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!

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!

Halloween at Smiley Guy Studios!

Here are the pumpkins we carved this year.  Left to Right credit: "Michael Jackson" by Aaron Hong, "Jackolantern" by Humphrey Erm, "Jack" by Julie Otten.  Front Row: "Motley Crew" by Stephanie Ramon

Julie Otten as a Ninja Turtle, Al Jerek Torrijas as Odd Job Jack, and Stephanie Ramon as Robin Thicke