Callie Tackles Backgrounds

I believe that all of last week was spent doing backgrounds (a majority of that time figuring out how to use clipping masks). Typically, I don't really like drawing backgrounds because I'm not very good at it and because I have a obsession with drawing eyes and quite obviously there aren't many eyeballs present in backgrounds. So a lack of skill and no eyeballs to draw made me think that I wouldn't really like doing backgrounds, but oh on the contrary, backgrounds are really fun.


It's a challenge I will willingly accept to try over and over again to make the perspective of a room look proper when usually I can just guess at something and it turns out fine. To help myself out I looked up some background samples from animated movies and there's this one from Lilo and Stitch that is absolutely beautiful. Of course I wouldn't be able to use it as reference because it's not what my film looks like, and I highly doubt that with my limited knowledge of Photoshop I would even be able to recreate it. Clipping masks and remembering to put everything on separate layers is literally the bane of my existence. My first background is basically an amalgamation of rookie Ps mistakes, but I promise I will learn!! At least the next few won't be as terrible (AKA I will make more than one layer). I have a new found respect for background artists because everything is a detail that needs to be attended to and making all the components fit together (and look nice) is very difficult. Kudos to the background artists of the world! Peace out!

Callie Finishes Builds!

I've finished doing both my puppets for my film!!! Sam and Donna are done!! Yay!! Rejoice!! Joel looked them over for me and approved them. He helped me make things neater on the timeline and made it easier to animate the facial features moving, but eventually he said they were good to go. I'm so proud of what I've done so far, but I know there is no way I could've done it alone. I had to ask a billion questions to even understand what puppets were. I've had so much help during this stage and I'm super grateful. I'm very lucky to be at smiley guy.

 Next week I'll be moving on to backgrounds, so maybe it would be a good idea to practice drawing rooms in my house so I can practice perspective. I'll be talking to Aramika when I come back on Monday, and she can help me start out with backgrounds. Another stage closer to animation and I'm so excited!! Have a great weekend everyone!

Callie is Sick but still Awesome!

So the animatic is done but unfortunately, I was sick on Tuesday so I got nothing done (except sleeping at home). Sleeping is fun. I got almost none last night because I was studying for a chem midterm today and now I can barely keep my eyes open.

Joel was very, very patient with me when he was explaining character builds in flash. It took me forever to have even the smallest idea what he was talking about. Granted, it's a confusing topic to begin with (especially for someone who hasn't had a lot of experience with flash), but my brain was functioning at about 1%.

Anyways, he talked to me and showed me a few examples then I went off on my own and looked up YouTube videos about character rigs. There was not a lot accomplished this week but hopefully on Monday I can come in not tired and start poking around with simple symbols and work my way towards the harder stuff.

Callie Works In Flash

This week marked a new part of my schedule. I sort of moved from storyboards to animatic (what I'm doing right now is actually a mix of the two stages). Regardless, it's pretty cool because I am finally working in flash. I only have storyboard thumbnails so I wasn't really finished the boarding stage, but Rich suggested that in order to give myself plenty of time for animating, I should just do my polished boards in flash. So that's what I did! Basically, I just used my thumbnails as references and inserted key frames along a timeline. I'm not anywhere close to being done, but I have a rough animation of the first 10 seconds. Now I don't have to worry about setting up the animatic later because it's already made! 

Everyone has been in long meetings this week so I haven't been able to ask many questions. I hope I am not screwing it up, because it is so much harder than I thought to draw consistently and figure out how to time it all out properly meanwhile still learning flash!! See you next week. 

Callie Colours Canuck

Last day of co op in 2015!!! I am very excited for the break and also excited about coming back to SGS with a clear mind in January (my head is unfortunately, too full of chemistry right now). I was feeling pretty dazed on Monday, god knows why, so, in a spectacular display of my inefficiency I only planned out 10 thumbnails for my story.

Wednesday was awesome though. I didn't work on my story but Ashly and Miranda gave me frames to colour in for Captain Canuck which is an animated show. I didn't draw at all and I was very slow at colour picking, but it was still very cool. I felt official!

Anyways, I am attempting to get as much boarding done today because I wont be back until January 5^th so I will not ramble on any longer. I hope everyone's holiday is wonderful (even if they don't get a two week break) and I'll see you in the new year!

Callie Eats Ethiopian Food!

It was Julie's last day on Friday :'( so everyone went out for Ethiopian food. It was so, so good even though it was different from the food I usually eat. I got to talk with Ashly, Lea and Cherry while I ate and that's always good fun. Going out for lunch meant I didn't do anything except go back to the studio and interview Rich for a school project (I also was so full I fell asleep while while working).

On Monday and Wednesday I finished up concept. I am moving on this week to storyboards!! Super excited!! I spent a while last Monday designing the location for my short and drawing a few expressions for the firefly character. Then on Wednesday I looked at the sheet and saw that the expressions were sort of bland so I exaggerated them a lot and then drew expressions for the light bulb character. Cartoons are so cool because they defy anatomy rules and you can stretch and morph them. See you next week!

Callie and the Colour Palette

I forgot to write a post for last week so I'll include what I did in this post as well as the stuff from this week. It's sort of hard to remember and all the days blend into one another because I'm so lost in what I'm doing. Maybe I'm losing track of time (whoops). I know that last week I finally made a work back schedule and coloured in my characters.

Choosing the colours for the schedule was probably the most fun because I made it rainbow and who doesn't love rainbow? Excel was tricky to get a hang of and I had to copy and paste cells to move things around (which completely defeats the purpose of excel 'cause it took forever).

The colouring of my characters was a lot more fun. I've been working in black and white up until now pretty much and this was my first chance to choose a colour palette for my short. It took surprisingly long to colour just a few drawings in Photoshop even more so because I still can't use the pen and tablet particularly well.

This week I've been trying to relearn perspective. I really really should have paid attention in art because I am having the hardest time drawing backgrounds. Whoever knew drawing a window could be so freaking hard.

According to my schedule I have one week left to finish my concept, but seeing as that's only three days and I have to paint three different backgrounds, I have lots of work to do. I'll probably practice out of co op otherwise I'm sunk. Happy weekend!

Callie Meets the Cintiq!

Drawing character rotations is super hard because everything must line up perfectly. It's understandable that things must line up to pass off to the designers, but it doesn't make it easier. I'm so glad I was warned off of animating humans for my short, because I probably would have died. A firefly is about as complicated as I'll get for now.

Aside from drawing the rotations painstakingly slow, I used Photoshop for the second time. Joel was out of the office on Wednesday so I got to use his Cintiq!! It was so freaking cool and much easier to use than the pen and tablet. Basically it helped me learn Photoshop and now I can focus on getting better with the pen and tablet which weirds me out 'cause I usually like to look where I'm drawing.

I didn't get much else done this week other than 3 different angles of Sam the firefly and a Photoshop painting of my friend. 

The painting was completely irrelevant to my animated short but it taught me about Photoshop so I think it's okay. Next week I want to finish the concept stage and go into storyboarding. That'll have to wait till Monday though. 

Adios amigos!

Callie on Concept

I have been working here at Smiley Guy for a month!! It's official! I love it so much. 

This week I went on to the second stage of animation, which is concept. I have already finished my script, and so I spent four hours each on Tuesday and Thursday drawing out my characters. They're pretty cute, if I do say so myself. 

Rich has been helping me through this stage and it is so helpful to have someone give constructive criticism. I know how to draw but I don't know how to stylize something so that it is workable in a cartoon and looks appealing. I think I've drawn about 9 pages of concept art and I'll probably draw lots more. It'll have to be done next week though, because now it's the weekend!! So long!

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!

Cheeawk! by Mary

This is my last blog post! It seems like I was on a faerie theme from the past posts, so here's the last one for you!

As you can see, I love this little kids show, and it was a pleasure working on it during my internship, and I look forward for more in the next month! Smiley Guy Studios has offered me a job here, so I'll still be animating these birds until my school starts. This means I'll also have more time to ask for some feedback on my thesis film.

I had a really fun experience here with friendly people and a relaxing environment and I think I've already blogged enough about what I've learned from the studio in my past posts, so perhaps here's something funny for my last blog post!

Last week Joel sent us a funny faerie Chirp clip from a future episode, and I had to check out the full animatic - no surprise I loved it! I was also wearing my Tinkerbell t-shirt that morning too. Hehehh.

On the same day, intern buddy David and I had a hilarious skype conversation after watching the episode before work. We really got into the Chirp world...so many deep questions were asked and a future story of Chirp turned into some strange fanfiction...PG-13 rating? David and I don't mind sharing this. I hope our energy entertains you!

The Skype Conversation:We made couple-pairing names?!!!!

David Just: squawk is my spirit animal

MaryT: I KNOW RIGHT???

David Just: ok thats it i offically ship tweet and squawk

MaryT: SAFJDNSAKJDNSAKDSADSA

David Just: i had them holding hands in my shot

MaryT: SQUEET!!!! 5EVERE (squeet = squawk + tweet)

David Just: i kinda changed it though so they aren't rrreeaaalllyy holding hands

MaryT: BUT I WANT CHIRP IN ON THIS. CHIRPAWK. (chirpawk = chirp + squawk)

David Just: cheeawk(cheeawk = chirp + tweet + squawk)

David Just: the ultimate OT3 (ot3 = one true triple pairing)

MaryT:CHEEAWKTHAT IS PERFECt

David Just: so much vowels

David Just: its like a hawk screeching

David Just: wait... aren't they siblings?

David Just: everything is so ambiguous!

MaryT: What colour parents would they have if they were siblings???

David Just: couple of rainbow parents duhhhhh

MaryT: maybe the show ships them as siblings....but NEIGH we shall Cheeawk into the horizon in the sunset

MaryT: PARROTS???

David Just: yellow blue orange purple probably the other colours too ;)

David Just: maybe???

David Just: i feel like tweet is an owl though

David Just: hahahah

MaryT: Tweet would be....Hoot

David Just: yeah!

MaryT: What if Squawk had a crow for a dad because of his beak? He'd be....Caw....Squawk Caw.

David Just: yeah!

David Just: and chirp is like... part canary

David Just: from a pet store

David Just: honestly he reminds me to tweety bird so much

MaryT: His mother was....TWEETY BIRD

David Just: YES! :O

MaryT: THATS IT

MaryT: THIS IS LOONEY TOONS NEXT GENERATION

MaryT: LOONIES

David Just: AAAAAHHHH!!! WB will be so upset :P

MaryT: Maybe the Warner Brothers turned INTO the vole brothers?

MaryT: they are secretly the Warner brothers. watching over Tweety Bird's lost son

David Just: we're in way too deep! write the back story n post it somewhere

MaryT: I'll use it as my next blog post OMG

David Just: who's the dad though?

David Just: Multiple dads?

David Just: :O

MaryT: I dunno but maybe LOL oh Tweety.

David Just: i feel like squawk's dad is the crows from dumbo

MaryT: YEAH

MaryT: omg

David Just: tweets could be owl from winnie the pooh

MaryT: Oh my god

David Just: and chirp is immaculate conception from god

MaryT: WELL THEN TWEETY WHOA THERE

MaryT: he's the precious one born in a cage

David Just: sweet summer child

MaryT: the golden child. who's grandmother will never visit him

MaryT: imagine the angst when he'll never see his grandma in person

David Just: he is his own grandma

MaryT: OMG

MaryT: YOU'RE RIGHT

David Just: come on Mary, it's obviously just chirp in a dress ;)

David Just: she doesn't even have wrinkles

MaryT: FOOLING SQUAWK AND TWEET EVERY DAY HE HIRED THE MAIL SQUIRREL IN THIS DAILY SCHEME.

MaryT: TO PROVE TO THEM THAT AT LEAST HE HAS FAMILY.

MaryT: WHEN TWEET FINDS OUT ABOUT HIS EVIL LIES SHE LEAVES THE BIRDS AND MARRIES THE VOLE BROTHERS. SQUAWK FINDS OUT HE FORSAKEN THE CANARY'S HEART AND SINGS A SAD SONG AND ATTRACTS SPARKY BUT THEIR LOVE CAN NEVER BE. AND THEN CHIRP IS ALL ALONE AGAIN.

MaryT: oh i just had caps on. omg

MaryT: messed up chirp angst

David Just: lmao

David Just: so much angst

David Just: holy moly

MaryT: coming up next "the friendship is broken. the season finale. Will they ever be together again?"

David Just: the answer, YES

MaryT: a loud battle cry was heard because love is a war. love is...CHEEAWK.

David Just: lmao

David Just: i wanna draw like a mega bird with 3 heads called the cheeawk

MaryT: OMHG

The end! Well you can tell we're into the show.

Thanks a bunch Smileys!

Mary's Faeries and Romantic Comedies

I've been animating for Chirp episodes this week and I'm still enjoying it! In fact here's an adorable still from a momentary glitch I got animating one of the scenes:

Isn't he so cute?? Hahaha! I joked to Joel about how I was animating the next Jurassic World with this little guy. Hahhah! Imagine that? JurassicChirp World!

Anyway, I had even checked out the magazine this show was from. I say, this tv show really did a good job redesigning the characters. (Though I still don't know what kind of bird Tweet is...) I told my little sister that if I were to create more bird characters for Chirp, they'd be named, Hoot, Caw, and Quack. You can guess what birds they may be. 

Also here's Meghan as a faerie:

Thanks for introducing me to an awesome romantic comedy novel Meghan! :) If anyone's curious, the novel was "I Got Your Number" by Sophie Kinsella. It was really entertaining and I really hope they make a film out of it one day. I'm reading the "Lunar Chronicles" by Marissa Meyer now. So far the scifi/dystopian world is really interesting, especially with their android female protagonist.

The Birds and the Faeries and Mary

I've been animating scenes for Chirp for the past two weeks and I'm having a blast! I'm learning how to play with timing and secondary actions in my animations, and so far, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable using Flash puppets. The Chirp characters were entertaining to animate, and it was fun to play with their poses. I especially love playing with Chirp's character - I like giving him that smug, sassy look for some reason. Maybe I'll make them do the 'french pose' next for fun. Hahah! I wonder if I can show funny pose screenshots...

The voice acting of the birds were really well done in the show too - the kids were animated and funny to listen to. Kudos to those talented kids~!

Anyway, I'll write more next post, but here's a little faerie me drawing on a leaf! I'm on a faerie hype right now for some reason...

Mia Learns Flash!

It is already fifth week to work from Smiley Guy Studio! This week, I learned a lot about Flash program which I barely knew about before because I usually animated with other programs drawing frame by frame. Building up each part of the character to rig was unfamiliar to me and learning was a big challenge for me. Keyboard shortcuts were different that I used before with other programs and I don't know which tool was where and it was very confusing at first. But, I am really glad to have this opportunity to learn about Flash since most TV animations are made with Flash or Harmony.

I am currently building up a character for other short film from Flash. I think I get better than before for using Flash now. I am looking forward to learn how to animate with Flash later even if it will be another challenge for me.

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!

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!

Goodbye from Anna

Hey guys. I'm sad to say this, but today is my last day at Smiley Guy... It was a lot of fun, and I genuinely learned a lot from everyone. I would totally recommend it to anyone wanting an internship at an animation studio. Not only are the people there friendly and helpful, they are all very talented in their field.

Throughout these eleven weeks, I've accumulated a wide variety of experience in flash. Not only did I animate using symbols - which I've never really done - I created the symbols that I used to animate, and created props and backgrounds as well.

In the beginning, I was pretty nervous, since the meager experience I had in Flash was all traditional animation. But as I worked on Teleporting Fat Guy, I started to get the hang of it. Now, when I look back, I can actually see the improvement, from the flow of the animation to the speed in which I animate. After working on Teleporting Fat Guy, we helped out with First Hand, which was something that hit us all emotionally at one point or another. Environmentalism is something I've always had an interest in, so I really wanted to work on First hand, and I can probably say the same thing for the rest of the interns, too. This was when I drew backgrounds based off the animatic, in a style I've never really done much. First hand was a great experience, because it was back to the basics, but at the same time, something totally new.

After a week or two in First Hand, we worked on Uberdude. I was colouring animations, and that needed to be done fast. That improved my speed as well as my skills in Flash, because I have honestly never coloured so much in my life. Haha. Later, Teleporting Fat Guy needed help, and so we helped. I was just doing various things at various times, and it was totally normal at the studio.

Lastly, Interactive. Another environmentalism project, but with a spin. It wasn't a film, but a game. Since games are somewhat an interest of mine (Hah, who am I kidding? I love games), I jumped at the opportunity to work on it. And in the end, I loved every bit. The hard parts, the not so hard parts, the fun and the tedious things that I had to do. Having an internship at Smiley Guy was one of my best spent summers of my life. Meeting new people, who were all so friendly, and working on things that were just so interesting really made this summer worthwhile.

I guess I'll leave it on this note. And well, I've pretty much written all that I've wanted to. Thanks to everyone who've read this, for even giving a little bit of your time to browse through my ramblings. So yeah.
Over and out~
Anna

Anna Draws Some Garbage

This is week 10 of my internship. How fun and fulfilling my summer has become because of it. Although the transit from Markham to Toronto has been a bit of a hassle, it was quite fun - observing people who were either going to work or leaving it, and actually being part of that crowd, with the same purpose. 

This week, I have been working on my animation skills, using the characters that I created. It really made me appreciate the people who designed the Teleporting Fat Guy characters. It took a while for me to get the hang of making the character, placing everything in its proper order and getting them to look right. But not only did the character designers from Teleporting Fat Guy do that, they created them with the animators in mind. Every little bit of change was anticipated, and every little bit had a corresponding symbol to it. Although I had created mine with that in mind, I didn't put as much detail into it, and so when I was animating, I ran into obstacles. None that I couldn't jump over, but it would have made it a lot smoother had it been done with more detail in the first place. Let me just say that I have a lot of appreciation for people who create symbol characters now. Not that I didn't have any before... But now I have the knowledge to back up that claim. 

But that's not all I've done. I've also finished with the garbage that the game needed. Yes, I was drawing garbage for the first half of the week. And everyone complimented me on it. I do need to show you, because I'm quite proud of it myself.

Let me describe the process. I first had no idea what to draw for the garbage, so I researched a bit, and it didn't really tell me a thing. All it showed me were generic garbage, and I had that image in my head already anyway. So I looked around the studio (all I did was turn my head around), looking for possible trash ideas. I classified things into recyclables and trash, and made a list of what could be what. Then I drew a rough version in photoshop and imported it into Flash. And from there, I used the pencil tool and traced over my rough drawings, converted them into symbols and coloured them. I didn't really have a colour scheme in mind, but I wanted the recyclables to stand out, so I used brighter colours for those, and duller colours for the garbage. I also tried to keep in mind that the props needed to fit in with the background and the characters. So I simplified that even more and deleted the inner outlines of the objects. The result is what you see above. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied...