Bendix Draws Butts and Makes Frikadeller.

It's Friday again! 

This Monday I celebrated thanksgiving with Kris, Jia and two of my friends with drinks and yummy food, except for the poutine we had later in the evening. I promised I would try Canadian food while I was here, which is only fair considering that I constantly throw Danish food at the studio, but it was uh... definitely an acquired taste. A taste I have yet to acquire. A taste I might never acquire. Same goes for the Nanaimo bars we had Wednesday, it's simply too sweet for me! 

I brought in Frikadeller yesterday, 70 of them, and it seems that people liked them as they were gone by lunch!

Tuesday I finished a shot that I've been working on for quite a while. It's probably my favorite shot so far as every single frame was customized drawings with skewed angles and forced perspective, and I am now very familiar with Atticus's butt. Before we head out for drinks, movies and other shenanigans today, I aim to finish up another long shot to add to the pile! 

Tomorrow I'll also try live drawing for the 3^rd time ever. Everyone at the studio is always talking about it, and it's about time that I thoroughly practice my life drawing skills, and in the evening, Kris and I will venture into the realm of swing dancing once more.  

Erin is also out of the studio today, so this weeks comic is dedicated to her! I can't believe that I haven't drawn her before as she is an absolute sweetheart and has so many golden moments that are comic worthy. This one in particular, is from some time ago when we talked about tattoo's. 

That's all for now, until next week! 

- Bendix 

Callie's Path is Distinctly Her Own

Today is Friday! And tomorrow is Saturday, therefore a day on which I can sleep in! Yay! This whole week I've been working downstairs with Joel on the rough cut of my film. Monday I sat with Sam and Joel and they taught me about the program used for editing, called Final Cut Pro and I was able to pick it up relatively quickly actually. Maybe I'm getting better at computers!? Hahahah. I think it's more that there are only few basic functions of Final Cut Pro that I am using currently. Wednesday I went into the basement again and worked quietly on the edit. It's pretty relaxing because its small room with not a lot of noise. Today, I got to co op late (don't worry I emailed ahead of time asking for permission:) because of a music festival type thing at my school. There were freezies and watermelon and I had to wear so much sunscreen, oh lord. So I came into co op all sunburned (despite the sunscreen) and sweaty and went downstairs again, Joel showed up after a few hours and then I finished adding the audio to my film. I'm not yet sure if I want to manipulate the transitions between shots (like add fancy cross dissolves or whatever) but I'll figure that out later. I rendered out my video and watched it with the audio which was cool. I'm a perfectionist to a fault, so it's hard to look at my film and know that there are many areas I could improve. I mean, I came to Smiley Guy knowing nothing so of course my first animated film is going to be rough around the edges, but I am happy because the firefly sort of makes me laugh and I know that the rough parts show I have improved a lot this year.


So in terms of animating, that is all I did this week, but actually I was finishing up my edit and Joel and I started talking and the industry and careers and also a shared admiration of Malcolm Gladwell. I'm pretty scared to leave co op and know that the next time I will re enter an animation studio might possibly be my first job (also scared about managing finances). We just talked about what to expect from this industry, how it works and also how it's ok to not do something super academic like my parents or sister because my path "is distinctly my own". Joel pointed out that with animation or arts/media careers you see an immediate result from your work in front of your eyes and to people like me and I guess everyone here at Smiley Guy, that's what makes the work meaningful. Anyhoo, that 40 minute conversation along with my invitation to a pizza animatic viewing party was the highlight of my week, so thank you Erin and Joel. Next week's highlight will be actually eating the pizza! Yummmmmmyy. Adios until then!

Elise and Earl Forever

Intern Elise again. Can't believe it's already been 3 weeks here!

I had a lot of assignments this week. There were more demon-related revisions to do, and on top of that I did some prop designing and flashifying. It was fun, I really enjoy getting to try a bunch of different things! I'm doing some photoshop painting right now, a super-chill way to cap off the week. I forgot how much I like digital painting, I should do it more often!

The plant on my desk looks much more alive lately, which is pretty cool. Erin called him Earl the other day, it's a better name than anything I've thought up, so I guess that's his name now. When he gets older I'm going to teach him sports.

That's about it!

Callie is Flying Away...Again!

This week is particularly short (AKA 1 day), because on Thursday I have another plane to catch! It seems like I am always traveling so says Erin, but no matter, because I am up to date with my schedule! And she said it's coolio as long as everything gets finished in the end. Of course I'll stay extra time if I can't finish my project within co op hours, but I'm hoping I don't need to have too many long nights. Last week I added that change to my script about the last scene and modified a background to fit with it, and then today I animated it so I think I'm all done animation.

Even being done animation though, I feel as if I want to fix up a few background closeups. When I was painting in Photoshop, I didn't anticipate how every detail would be very pronounced when the camera zoomed in. So basically anywhere I got sloppy you can really tell. Especially because the main character is a bug so there are plenty of shots that are super zoomed in. Also there was the fact that my first background was a very experimental piece (I didn't know Photoshop at all) and I didn't know all the tricks to make it look clean.

So I'll fix those background issues that are bothering me and review my shots with Darien after. Darien would have reviewed my shots on Thursday but he happens to be on a cruise (lucky guy) and I will also be away visiting grandparents! So we will have to look over everything next week. Adios!

Pippa is a Busy Bee

Alright, I've had a little time to process everything now. So, to recap, last week was my first week. Depending on the size of the screen you're reading this on, you may be able to see my previous post as well and know that already. And to that I say . . . well played.

So last week I dove headfirst into the world of animation, although my experience in production leans more on the live action side. But, despite diving into the deep end of the pool instead of the where I could at least see the bottom, I managed to tread water long enough to survive my first week. I'll admit, I almost lost it in a sea of casting emails on Friday, but I pushed through and made it back to the surface.

I suppose it's probably not advisable to use so many metaphors involving water in a place with so many electronics, so I'll try to stop the flood of bad jokes here.

Besides helping as a casting assistant for an upcoming web series that Smiley Guy's sister company iThentic is working on (which involves receiving more emails than you do when you subscribe to email updates from your favourite chain stores, except you actually have to answer all of them), I've also been learning about the online database system that Smiley Guy uses for their productions, and I've been working on setting up the database that we'll be using for an upcoming animated web series that Smiley Guy is working on for Teletoon. Since the auditions took up such a large chunk of last week, my work on the Vampire Steve continues this week as well.

Erin taught me how to organize a workback schedule in spreadsheet format. We learned how to make workback schedules on a spreadsheet in my college program, but I could never fully wrap my head around how the spreadsheet thing worked until I saw how Erin made the one for Vampire Steve.

Also, on Friday, I got a moment to try a Virtual Reality gaming system – which was super cool. I accidentally punched Joel in the process, which I still feel bad about, but other than that, only a few virtual characters perished during that particular adventure.

This week, I've done more casting. I've become better acquainted with the Casting Workbook system (finally!) and I finally feel like I'm riding the accompanying wave of emails instead of getting bowled over by it. Which is good, because Lisa's warned me that when we send out the prospective audition times, everyone is going to want to change their time.

Okay, so timeskip and now it's Friday again. The bulk of my week consisted of casting emails. Audition schedules, audition re-schedules and chasing agents to confirm their clients' scheduled audition. I've also been working on cast reports, which was the first time I'd ever used Final Draft, but it was user-friendly enough. I believe next week I'll be back using Final Draft to work on some script note compilations that Lisa wants me to make.

In the time that I haven't been working on the casting call, I've either been in meetings or adding concept links to the Vampire Steve database. I think I've pretty much got the latter just about finished for the first three episodes – I just have to go over them one last time and then I'll be ready to start parenting builds (which I think is the next step?).

And I'm at a full page so I should call it for this entry. Tune in next week for chapter 3!