Rae's Last Week

Hi! It's almost the end of my internship, I only have about a week left here, and to finish my film!

I'm sad for my time here to end, but I'm excited about almost finally finishing my film. So far I have completed about nine shots, I still have a lot to go, and not a lot of time to do it, but I'm having a lot of fun putting it together and I'm determined to finish it somewhat within my deadline. I decided to use a mix of Flash, and Anime Studio Pro to animate my characters. I felt it would be the fastest and easiest way to do the easy and fast shots in flash, and the more complicated shots in Anime. I just started learning how to use Anime Studio Pro, and so far I love it. I rigged my main character for a few shots for the first time, there were a lot of technical difficulties and it took a while, but I finally figured out how to do it, and I'm pretty happy about the way it turned out. I'm trying not to be a perfectionist, and just focus on getting it finished. I have quite a lot more to do, but it's the only thing that I'm doing on my spare time, so hopefully I'll have it done sometime by next week, and I'll be able to show it!

- Rae

Welcome Eila!

Hola, 

my name is Eila and I am a new intern here at Smiley Guy! I am a third year student from Sheridan but I am actually from Texas. Its been three weeks since I have started my internship and it has been nothing but wonderful! Everyone here is incredibly warm and so so nice (and super talented, geez)! I was extremely nervous starting out (partially because I started commuting on my own for the first time) but Erin made sure I was comfortable and I would like to think that I finally got a good handle on things. I have also been reintroduced to flash and I am happy to say that I am finally getting the hang of it (thank goodness for Joel or I would be a lost mess)! So far I have done a walk cycle with flash and built a few rigs as practice and it is a lot of fun! While its not too different from Toon Boom, it definitely took a bit of adjusting to but it is getting there! Having constant feedback definitely helps and I have noticed some improvements in terms of speed with the rig building process and the program. I was invited to go grab a drink with some of the members here in the studio and I am really excited about that since the Mexican in me can never say no to a drink. It has only been three weeks but I feel extremely lucky to have a landed a such a nice studio. I look forward to keeping up the hard work and learning as much as I can.

Rae Works on a Walk Cycle

Hello!

It’s only been a week or 2 since my last blog post, and a lot has happened already! I continued working on my walk cycle, and then showed it to Mat one of the animators, for some feedback. There was a lot of that needed improvement, and he started a new one and walked me through each step, showing me how he goes about blocking a shot. It was really cool getting to observe how he works, and learning about his approach and technique to animation. He showed me how he breaks stuff down and works with one part at a time, starting with the main movement of the torso, and letting the rest follow. It gave me a new perspective on how to approach animating, and made things a lot simpler. With what I had learned I started my walk cycle over again, which turned out a lot better than my first try. I’m starting to understand flash a little better, and how to work in it.

I was also just told that I will be making my own short film during my time here, and I’m very excited! I’m about to start on my first stage of pre production, by brainstorming ideas, Hopefully by my next blog post I’ll have a story down, I can’t wait to get started!

See you on Thursday!

Say Hello to Rae, Our New High School Intern!

Hi i'm Rae, the new high school intern at Smiley Guy Studios!

My first few weeks here have been great! I’ve already learned a lot and met a lot of great people. Everyone is really nice and encouraging, and I’ve really enjoyed being able to talk to people about animation and art. It’s really cool to be surrounded by people who all share the same passion. I was given my first assignment, to do a walk cycle in Flash using one of the walk cycle tutorials. It’s my first time using Flash, and it’s a bit foreign to me, but I feel like I am starting to get the hang of it. I’m still settling in, but I’m really looking forward to getting to know everyone better and learning more! I think it’s going to be a great year!

Bendix Makes Comparisons and Conquers Flash!

Plenty of things have happened this week. I got a package full of Danish (and some Swedish) candy from my parents, we went out dining at a Danish-ish place to test just how Danish it was, we've been playing around with helium balloons, covering our ears because of a fire alarm testing and Cherry left for HK and Japan and won't be back for two weeks ( :( ).

The differences between Canada and Denmark are becoming more and more clear every day. I feel that it's the subtle differences that set us apart, besides the obvious things like architecture, our history and language, it's also our different taste in food and humor that I find deeply interesting. Thus I was pleasantly surprised when three people from the studio actually liked the licorice with salmiakki that I brought in. When we went to the danish restaurant, it seemed that most people liked the food! I won't go into detail about what was wrong and what was right about the food, but all in all it was a fun experience and I was really excited to get to share something danish with the rest of the studio. Ever since I got here, I've become more aware of how much I actually appreciate my own country, and I think I've talked more about Denmark in these two months, than I have in my entire lifetime. It's not because I'm homesick, on the contrary I LOVE being here, and I love how being here has made me more aware of how my own country is put together.

Another thing that I think the entire studio knows by now, is that Sweden and Denmark have a love hate relationship for each other. It's our duty to hate each other and it's deeply rooted in our history, but if I meet a Swedish person outside of Scandinavia, we will greet each other like family! You love the people you hate....yeah?

But more importantly, we don't like to get mixed up, hence why when I showed Darien our Danish beers, Darien and I are no longer friends. It was nice as long as it lasted. Only kidding, Darien is great.

 

 

And I'm finally conquering Flash! The program is less scary than when I first started out and I'm getting up to speed. I feel like the style of Todd is more natural for me to both draw and animate in, and for the first time in a long time – weekends are becoming a bore, and I genuinely look forward to Mondays so I can come back to work, see people and get cracking with my scenes! I'm so happy that everyone always has time to help and give me advice, as it has really helped making the experience of learning a new program, a lot less scary than it could have been.

 

The scenes are also really fun and challenging and a good mix of having different characters with various traits to keep in mind while portraying them, and a mix of both puppet-animated scenes, and full on skewed hardcore perspective and classically 2D animated scenes. It feels good to try both out and be trusted to do both :)

- 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