Erica's Last Day at Smiley

Alas, my time is finally up. I have had so much fun at Smiley Guys and have learned so much.  For a girl who came in here with NO IDEA what flash even was to almost completing her very own animation. I got as far as to do the actual animation, not completed, including lip syncing.  I am very sad that I was not able to finish a complete product but I will keep working on it so that I could at least have something to show, even if it’s just shots, they are still good enough, it’s like the animation but not put together and without effects, still good right?

So this will be my last blog, sadly, I wish I could stay longer.  I had such an interesting co-op opportunity and I am certain that it will help me throughout my future. I am very grateful and happy for the help from everyone.

Thank you and goodbye!

The picture below is one from my shots. In the time line you could see like a blue-ish purple bar. That’s a motion tween (^_^) Keith blew my mind away teaching me all about it, t’was a fun time.

Erica Learns Scene Planning

So this week I worked on my scene planning. It’s basically your storyboarding but with the background and characters all in it. So yea like a final storyboard. At first it was a bit hard to do because with the pictures being one layer and my character needing to go behind certain objects it was hard to do that.

But Darien taught me to mask it so I’ll be able to get what I want to see. So yea I hope to finish soon.

Haha it’s a much longer process than I thought.

Here are some pics of my scene planning first scene:

Erica Needs Her Ogres To Be Ugly

Well I am finally finished my scene planning, which I am currently working on now.  I did my props which were just some doors opening and I did all of those in flash. There was also one more the bed sheets on the girls bed.  They said that we should do it while animating so we can get a better idea of how it is going to look, the way she grabs it and etc…which I totally agree on. 

So I also finally finished my characters YAY! The giant I had to do over because I didn’t like the way she looked, not ugly enough.  So yes now I am currently working on the scene planning.  Darien split it up for me into 4 or 5 parts can’t remember hahaa :P anywayys these are the pictures I got for you today.

My new characters:

Erica's Approaching Animation

I finally started my animatic and finished it quite quickly too. All that was left was the music or the voice over for the characters. I finally finished it for good! I started the backgrounds in photoshop and at first they were really confusing to do because it’s something new to me, I have always done my work in flash, but after a little more review I got the hang of it and managed to finish all of my backgrounds. YAY!! So now that is left to do is the character designs and then I’m onto making the props and finally the ANIMATION!!! IM SO EXCITED!!!

Well here are some/most of my background designs IN COLOR! :

Erica's Animatic...or whatever you call it

This week at smileys I finally started my background designs or building or….whatever you call it (:P)
I am doing it on Photoshop and it is pretty interesting.  I have to start learning how to use the pen tool
though…..so many lines!….Anyways today I am going to give my builds a break and start working
on the animatic.  I thought it was gonna be WAAAAYYY harder than it actually is which is basically just moving frames. Can’t wait to finish and FINALLY get to the animation ^.^ Looking forward to it every day.

Sooo here is the GIANT!, with revisions on it of course!

Erica's Figuring Out Design

This week I continued building my characters the front and side views. They are coming along quite
nicely. The only things that I found hard to do were the eyes and after you do them a couple of times
you get the hang of it :)

The bodies are also pretty difficult to do trying to get them looking the same but I’ve got it figured out, partially…

Anyways here is a pic of my character building:

Erica exercises her acting chops!

This week was AMAZING!  Well this and last week (:D).  Last week I got to do a part in a website about eco friendliness called "Dirt on Green".  I had to ask a question, well 3 questions, about things to do with the environment “Are organic cut flowers better for the environment or a marketing gimmick?”

This week however, I got to do my voice recording for my animation. That was half cool and half awkward…cool part is that I never did anything like this before and I was an amazing experience to go in the room and talk through the microphone and to see how an actual recording room looked. Awkward because I haven’t done anything like this before and well…I just sounded plain weird making those noise mixed in with the sentences (:D). But overall I had fun like I always do!

Erica in the recording studio

Erica - "Board" to Tears

Back to Work I Go!

This past month has been pretty long for me because I have been doing nothing but storyboarding
(o.o”).   I’ve finally finished, and all it needs is some review.  Even though the process is pretty tiring, it’s good to see, and do, and experience the full process of animation. I can’t wait to start coloring and animating my, well, animation!!!(^_^)

But for now, enjoy my storyboard awesomeness! :P :