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.  

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.

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."

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:)

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.

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.

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. 

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

Meet Carol Tang, SGS's #1 Fan!

Hi everyone, my name is Carol Tang who was lucky enough to be picked by smiley guys for my internship. I just want to let everyone know how happy and proud I feel to be working for smiley guy.

On my first week here I got to explore different ways to manipulate a puppet in flash thanks to the help of many great people of smiley guy, which led me to finish up two scenes for teleporting fat guy.

After working on teleporting fat guy helped me realize my love for symbol animation and opened up my eyes for the TV industry. Thanks to smiley guy, now I finally know what I enjoy and want to do after I graduate.

This is just an amazing studio with amazing people and I wish smiley guy the best and thank you for this wonderful experience. Hopefully I get to work here after I graduate :)