Chien Ying Yu - A 2017 Sheridan Intern

Hello there!

My name is Chien Ying Yu, but feel free to call me Chien! I’m an upcoming fourth year from Sheridan College, really nervous about starting the school semester but still excited!

I’ve been interning/working at Smiley Guys since mid-May and today was actually my last day. This is my first job within the animation industry and I’m so grateful for them to have hired me. I feel a bit sad that it’s come to an end but overall the experience I had here was great! The people who work here are all amazingly nice and friendly! As proof, they even got me a goodbye dessert!!

Erin has been really great with helping me feel comfortable when I first started interning. Joel and Joe has been so patient with me when they taught me about building flash assets and cleaning up, its helped me become more efficient and understand how rigging a character works. Last but not least, shout out to Brad, Michael, and Darien for helping fix the technical difficulties I’ve encountered. You’re the real MVP.

It’s difficult to express what I feel about my time at Smiley Guys but thank you so much for letting me be a part of this team!

Bendix Works on Her Awkward Hugs

Hello and happy Friday!

Today I brought in a danish version of pierogi (or Pirogger if you wanna try the danish name out. Good luck.) and they're a hit! I made 30 but it seems like I should have made double the amount, hah. I'll definitely have to bring in a batch again next month, and perhaps some mini hotdogs. Credit to both of those recipes go to my mother :)

This week I've had another food adventure and went to have ramen with Cherry and Kris (see I got your name right this time!) and it was so delicious, my god. We finished off with bubble tea and it is the fullest I've been all week.

Work wise I'm getting faster at animating and I finally feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it. I still feel like I'm too slow, but I am confident that I'll finish all the shots I have for this month!

I'm also trying to learn how to communicate better with my co-workers and it's... a work in progress. 

We're going out for drinks today, so maybe I'll have a chance to practice my awkward hugs again.

- Bendix

Bendix Starts to Animate!

This week we had Monday off, so I spent it finishing up my first draft of my bachelor thesis and sleeping. Mostly sleeping.

Tuesday I was introduced to my first animation task, and as I have never animated in flash before (except for a one week course 3 years ago), needless to say I was very confused by the program. After two years of animating in Maya, my brain has been 3D-fied in many ways. Wednesday, Matt gave me a short and very informative lecture on the program, and I feel like I'm a little less scared of diving into it! It's still very hard getting comfortable with all the different buttons and ways of using layers and rigs, but I'm slowly getting there.

I have a quota of 20-30 seconds a week, and I've reached about half of that this week, but I hope that I I will soon enough get up to speed and conquer Flash!

Yesterday, Cherry, Kris, Darien, David, Gia and I, went to a Thai place called Pai (you've probably noticed a theme of food by now in all of my blog-posts). It was extremely good food, but I did manage to get one bad mouthful of spice that nearly sent me on the verge of tears!

Today feels like a chill day, leading into a very chill weekend of thesis writing and getting my hair done (which is about time)!

And to finish off the blog, here is another glorious Cherry moment from this week.

- Bendix