Inna Says Goodbye

Here’s my last four animation shots for First Hand Stories:

Geese

http://youtu.be/VF3KwFP7gOA

Initially this shot was longer but we had to split it in two as it got too heavy and Flash would crash all the time. The cross-dissolve effect will be applied later in After Effects.

The challenge with this shot was creating smooth motion path for the geese, especially Goose close-up. Keith showed me couple of tricks how to improve my animation with Grandpa’s hands and geese. I loved the one with making flat geese flip their wings by adding just two extra keys. That was awesome!

Grandpa

http://youtu.be/DhzqdDmU2XQ

This shot was more about acting and tweaking Grandpa which was done under Craig’s and Keith’s supervision. Figuring out smoke effects took some time. While I was looking for the right type of smoke on the database I found a cool campfire and added it to the shot. Making stars twinkle on the background was the easiest. 

Norma and Caribou

http://youtu.be/zmqn2OVHftE

After I was done with cloning caribou using three different caribou walk cycles; tinting furthest caribou blue with different percentage so that there is a perspective effect on them, I got stuck with the problem of timing caribou plus their feet were sliding on the ground. Animation awesomeness Keith showed me how to solve that as well and also showed to me some cool cinematography tricks on how to give depth to the shot by adding filters, fog, vignette, etc. One of the best learning experiences ever!

Caribou and Mandala

http://youtu.be/0-xBboy0gXE

I rushed this shot as it was my last one as I was trying to finish it and fix all the little flaws that I could see. It was tricky because I had to break the central caribou’s walk cycle and bring it to a nice smooth stop. I had lots of trouble with that. Mandala didn't want to behave neither as it got jumpy and didn't want to sit in one spot. Truck in camera move wasn’t smooth either. Under Keith’s generous supervision I managed to somehow fix some problems but not all of them. I still think it needs a fix.

On my last day on Friday we went to Nirvana restaurant and had a farewell lunch. That was awesome! 

Thank you Keith and Alex and Darien and Craig and Stephan and Julie and Joel and Rich and Peter and Chris and Mike and Jonas and everyone. I have worked with you guys for almost four months and yes it was absolutely amazing priceless experience. Before my summer internship I used to perceive myself more of a character designer but after learning symbol animation and effects and being able effectively work in Flash I did develop confidence as an animator. yeey! I also know better now how to approach my 4th year film. Thanks for the invite to drop by and to ask your advice on my film. It’s very much appreciated! I will!

Thank you so very much! I will miss you awesome Smiley Crew:) See you all on facebook and linkedin!!

 

Inna's Exciting News!

Heyhey everyone, 

I have awesome news! It seems like our Sheridan 3rd year group film “Grounded”was accepted and will be showcased at the Ottawa International Film Festival 2014! Yeey!

https://www.animationfestival.ca/index.php?option=com_oiaf&task=showselections+

"Grounded" https://vimeo.com/95567674

It is an inspiring four minute short about adventures of a bunny and his little brother. The film is hand-drawn in Toon Boom Harmony. It was one awesome experience of the teamwork, dedication and successful short film production. Here’s a vimeo link to our film: https://vimeo.com/95567674 Enjoy!

 

Last few weeks I have been working on several animation shots and learnt more about effects, camera moves and symbol animation in Flash. Alex said it is ok to post the shorts that I worked on and here they are:

Mountains and Sleigh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaJDh8mbv3w

- I designed and flashified Bead Mountains which was the easiest for me except the camera movement. It was my first time dealing with the cinematography in Flash. Rich helped me with a nice smooth truck-in transition using just couple of keys on a comp level and ease-in and ease-out settings.

- Designing and animating stars and sparkles took long to figure out, as I never touched Flash before my internship. Keith helped and explained me a lot and also showed me how to tweak Grandpa and a harness so that they are is in time with the dogs run cycle.

- I enjoyed animating the husky's trot cycle! Last semester in Sheridan I had to animate dog cycle in Maya and it was very interesting to apply same principles in symbol animation.

-Darien and Joel helped me to figure out why the sleigh dogs would start glitching while trucking in, disappearing even when we would export png sequence. As Joel advised I reduced the size of original png images and the problem was yaay fixed. Thank you!

Four Sleighs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZu-TF8DxB8

This animation was the easiest as I already had sleigh cycle done. So it was just the timing, tint and alpha channels.

 

Animal Wall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIa2OkpYIrQ

This shot was mostly about the timing. I also learned how to work with colors and transparency settings in Flash.

 Tundra and objects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0-VKXkWPNs

This shot taught me about the timing, gravity and again about camera moves. Alex and Keith explained to me that all major camera moves are usually done on a comp level. Keith though showed me some tricks on how to attain 3d effect move by animating objects inside the comp and applying the same ease-in ease-out parameters as the tweens on the main level would have. It has totally boggled my mind but I think I finally got it. like 90%..ok 88%..

  

Animation test for Caribou Mandala:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zsx2dAHt0g

Working on mandala rotation was fun. I experimented with the timing of all the layers and transparency settings. I think it worked alright in the end. It’s so rewarding to see your own design animated. yay! This mandala exercise and Flash effects techniques I learnt from Alex, Keith and Darien provided me with all the understanding I needed to start working on my 4th year film as I am going to have my Sun Mandala rotated as well.

 Next week I will post my Geese and Caribou Mandala animations. I hope I will be able to finish them before my internship is over which is for one more week. Anna left a week ago and this week is the last week for Carol. No more Carol on the Oakville train and bus. Awe. I will see my girls only in September. It was great to get to know both of them. Smiley Guy made an official goodbye pizza party for us on the roof of the studio. It was very nice! I will miss this roof and all awesome Smileys people with whom we used to have launches together.

Another update of the month is my husband and my wedding anniversary! We had our wedding a year ago in Blue Mountains and it was amazing and beautiful. This summer we decided to celebrate it by going to the Niagara Falls and it was awesome too. We walked a lot, got the sun and the rain, saw the fireworks, got a chance to feed a friendly seagull that would eat only egg and not the bread and who refused to fly away and spent with us the whole hour, cute bird! The Falls were incredibly powerful and mesmerizing. Beautiful place, here:

My husband Chris is a ETM music producer, he got inspired by Alex’s film and came up with the musical piece which if approved by Alex and other producers might be added to the film soundtrack. That’d be awesome!

That’s all for now. Next week there will be my last week and my last post on the Smiley Guy internship portal:)

Inna's Inspirations

This week I’ve been working on sparkles/stars for Bead Mountains and Goose animation and learnt more from Darien and Keith about gradients, transparency and radial coloring in flash. Also I’ve been working on Animal Wall design and animation. Alex wanted me to improve silhouettes of three animals (meerkat, beaver, salmon) so that they read better and then color each animal using our beads palette.

Changing colors was a bit tricky because magic wand tool would leave outline and the edges would be jagged and uneven. Peter showed me the cure - Modify/Expand tool and Image/Adjustments/Selective Color for coloring. Learn to change rgb settings in Flash now too, it’s not that hard, even easier then in Photoshop.Learnt about Clipping Masks as well. It’s such a handy tool!

Couple of weeks ago Julie shared an awesome link: www.skillsforsolidarity.ca

This summer Leadnow.ca community (https://www.facebook.com/leadnowcanada) launched Skills for Solidarity program that is a series of five online modules, each include a panel of interesting Canadain Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Peoples who share their personal stories, discuss how to renew and heal the relationship between nations. I was blown away by the life story of Bernice Kamano from Victoria area and who belongs to Kwakwaka’waka Nation. Her story starts around 45:05: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4VaGd4mIhY What an strong woman! She lived through a lot but she managed to keep her beautiful smile and kindness. Bernice is an activist, a Native Employment Counselor assisting with job search and a founding member of M'akola Housing Society,- she created M'akola's first housing project. Amazing woman!

Carol loved Bernice story too, she said she wants to be like her one day, help people and change the world for the better. Carol is awesome! It’s amazing my summer 2014, got to know so many beautiful inspiring people.

I really liked a Haida quote shared by one of the Skills4Solidarity panelists. This message is from Chief Skidegate - Lewis Collinson who said back in 1966:

"People are like trees, and groups of people are like the forests. While the forests are composed of many different kinds of trees, these trees intertwine their roots so strongly that it is impossible for the strongest winds which blow on our islands to uproot the forest, for each tree strengthens its neighbour, and their roots are inextricably intertwined.

In the same way the people of our Islands,composed of members of nations and races from all over the world,are beginning to intertwine their roots so strongly that no troubles will affect them.

Just as one tree standing alone would soon be destroyed by the first strong wind which came along,
so it is impossible for any person, any family, or any community to stand alone against the troubles of this world."

Inna 'Meets' Norma and Foosball

Norma Kassi

We finally heard from Norma about Mandala Designs that she liked most -out of six options Norma picked #6, the spacious one! So cool to get feedback from Norma herself!

I was so excited to know that Norma is a real person, so I just Googled her name and found out that she is actually Chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin!! She was elected in 2010 and she has also been vice chair of the International Gwich'in Steering Committee.

Norma Kassi devoted her life to activism and served as an elected tribal spokesperson for the protection of the Porcupine Caribou as well as director of Indigenous Collaboration at Arctic Institute of Community Based Research. Here’s some more information about Norma.

Here Norma Kassi speaking about climate change and presenting the film she was on of the producers on: Our Changing Homelands Our ChangingLives.  Here's the film trailer and film.

I found this article while reading about Porcupine Caribou activism.

The more I work on First Hand Stories, the more I learn about Canadian First Nations. It’s such a beautiful and meaningful project!

So back to Mandala designs, they are here: 

Norma's Choice

Here’s some of my research on Mandalas and some sketchbook drawings for First Hand stories designs:

I will post some animation tests in July when I jump onto Mandala animation. I tried rotation in Flash two weeks ago and it’s so nice, it looks like kaleidoscope if the timing is set right:)

As for our studio’s life, it’s awesome. Every Tuesday we have Cartoon Lunches and Joel brings us cool animated shows to watch. Last time we saw Steven Universe, Adventure time and today it’s gonna be Gravity Falls. Awesome-awesome. It’s great to see different styles of animation and be updated on the industry new shows.

Last week we were invited for celebration of the official Canadian launch of Warren United, funny animated show about about a soccer fan Warren and his family. I enjoyed watching the show on a big screen, it was fun! My Sheridan groupmates David and Jordan who did their internship with Smiley’s last year and got to work on Warren, were also invited, it was great to see them :)

Smiley Guy Studios made super high quality animation for the show. UK partners were happy with the result and it seems like the second season is coming soon into production.

 

We also had to watch FIFA : the England Vs Uruguay game, there was lots of fun. Uruguay guys won, they were crazily intense. Carol introduced me to foosball and now my adrenaline level is pumping every time I see any game:) that’s awesome, now I can help my husband watch his NFL games:)

Inna Moves Mountains

Last couple weeks I have been working on Bead Goose design and Animation(close up) and Bead Mountains design for First Hand stories. For my Goose design I didn't use only Gwich'in design patterns - I have been researching Native American art in general and found lots of Canadian Northwest coast based art which is much more stylized and looks much more in style of Alex’s wolf and Goose(full shot). Here’s what I came up with and some of the research:

My Bead Mountains design I based on Gwich'in floral patterns. At first I took some pieces from my Mandala Design and was trying to make it work but in the end it didn’t look good. It was all messy and chaotic. We liked blue flowers though and Alex suggested to fill the space below with some design elements.

 

When I did more research I managed to come up with a nicer wave-like pattern that worked better, and I also added

a new flower design in the middle of each mountain to improve the overall look.

Here's my ugly version

 

Here's my research

 

And here’s my final version and I already animated the mountains, it took a while but I learned how to apply transparency to the movie clips and how to make camera moves more smoothly: http://youtu.be/cGcys8LvfOk

Excited to start animating Alex’s sleigh but first I need to come up with an alternative sparkle animation, already found a tutorial for it, yey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUKXfoubkEI

Inna and Her Mandala's

This week I came up with floral design for Caribou Mandala for our First Hand series based on original Gwich'in design patterns. I got Alex's approval and started the “bead-work” on it.

Photoshop beadwork is fun and feels almost like real embroidery process but is a bit faster of course:) It took me three days but the result was worth it and it looks cool in the end. I did six design variations and Alex and another producer Karen liked them all yay!

 If you have a look at the design you will see that red “lily-hooves” form a cross. This symbol is widely spread all over the world and as we see it is used not only by Catholics/Christians but by Native Indian tribes as well. 

 

For first Nations cross symbolizes Four Great Primary Forces and their interaction with the sun; Medicine wheel; Nature elements -Air, Fire, Water and Earth; the four directions, and the four seasons.

 

Here’s some more information on Native American cross symbol: http://www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/native-american-symbols/cross-symbol.htm

And here’s interesting book that I am using a lot as a reference for First Hand and for my 4th year film called The Sacred Tree. It was created by a Native American inter-tribal group of the Four Worlds International Institute that is located in BC, Canada.

It helps me to understand the meaning behind Native American symbols and gives a glimpse on Spirituality of indigenous peoples : http://books.google.ca/books?id=yNGrqIaaYvgC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

When I finished my beadwork on the Caribou Mandala Alex sent the file to Norma who did the voiceover for the film and who is actually is a real person and “Norma’s story” is Norma Kassi’s real story! That’s so amazing! I feel so proud of the project and lucky to have a chance to work on it. 

 

While working on Caribou mandala I felt the rising responsibility over my design, because for Gwich'in people Porcupine Caribou and anything related to them is sacred.

Here’s an interesting article on caribou that claims that all of Santa’s reindeer are probably cows :) because Porcupine Caribou are the only cervidae (deer species) in which both the male (bull) and female (cow) grow antlers, though the bulls possess much larger, even massive, antlers than females. Cows shed their antlers later in the season than bulls, in theory so they still have them for protecting calves. Only cows still have antlers as late as December. haha cool to know :)

http://thewhiskerchronicles.com/2013/12/19/the-sacred-place-where-life-begins/

Inna Is Our Best Researcher EVER!

Oliver Looks Nervous

In the beginning of this week I finished fixing my TFG animation shot. I struggled a bit with Oliver’s arms. I had to make him look worried and make him shrink his shoulders and pull his hands towards his chest and for that Oliver’s back arm needed to go on top of his torso. That was a puzzle for me. In the end I learnt the trick from my awesome mentors and now I know how this problem can be solved.  I need to practice more character animation to polish my new skills. 

 

The big wow of the week was the size of the monitor I got for my working place. I am so get used to my laptop monitor size and already forgot how it feels when you are working on a big screen, especially on design projects.Thank you Julie and everyone!

This week I started working on mandala design for First Hand Climate Change Stories, directed by Alex Hawley and which is currently in development. It’s about how native people of Yukon, in particular Gwich'in Nation or Old Crow people, were affected by the environmental change.

Mandala Feather

 My task is to come up with Caribou Mandala design that will be used in the film at least in three scenes and it should match Alex’s initial Wolf bead artwork. I researched Native American Art, symbols and design patterns, studied Gui’chin bead art and read about their culture and history.

It is an amazing experience for me to have a chance to work on this project because I myself have a profound interest in environmental activism and sustainability. Another coincidence is that I love everything about mandala design and sacred geometry and I actually have been planning to come up with Sun Mandala design for my 4th year film that will be called Dance of Life. And now I have a chance to practice my mandala skills and figure out how to animate the rotation as well. ha what were the chances to work on a Mandala  project during my summer internship:)

 

For those who are wondering what mandala is I found some info about various types of Mandala:

• http://www.whats-your-sign.com/mandala.html 
• About Native American Mandala Art Meanings: http://www.whats-your-sign.com/Native-American-mandala.html#myspot

And here are some great sites that I bumped into while doing my research :

• Awesome Native Canadian & Inuit Graphic Art collection on Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/muffy2s/native-canadian-inuit-graphic-art/

On history of Old Crow (Gwich'in Nation):

• http://www.oldcrow.ca/history.htm,
• http://www.yukonmuseums.ca/treasures/olc/02.html, http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ANWR/anwrgwichin.html
• http://www.ourworldlanguage.com/p/old-crow-yukon.html 

Welcome to Inna!

My name is Inna Testolini and I am one of three lucky Sheridan interns that joined SmileyGuy Studios for the summer of 2014. I am excited to work and learn from such an awesome studio crew. Everybody is so helpful and friendly here. Despite the fact that they are having interns all year around, they have all patience in the world to answer our newbie questions. Thank you guys so much for taking your time to help us learn and feel at home. 

I haven't had a chance to work in Flash before, we used Toonboom hand drawn animation for our 3rd year group film production. Watching all week tutorials and our awesome mentors' lectures and tips I finally started getting used to the program and I am much more comfortable with all the hot buttons/commands and that Flash "inception" idea of animating symbols within symbols within symbols:) also play once /frame by frame/sync buttons finally make more sense to me. Yeey, I am getting there!

While doing my research I bumped onto a cool Flash extension called Keyframe Caddy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKIhJlWidbM.

I installed it for both of my Flash versions(CS3,CS6) and I am very very happy about it, as it helps me with my lip sync animation a lot.  It's always cool to see the visuals!

In order to see how the main characters move and their expressions, I watched lots of episodes of Teleporting Fat Guy, the first show that we got to animate our first scene. So far my favorite episode is CHINESE MONSTER ATTACKS!(TFG#3) it was so cute:)

That would be it for now! have a great day everyone!

PS Some people were asking about my motherland:) it’s Siberia, the city of Irkutsk that is near Mongolia and famous Baikal lake. Here are some photos of it:

http://iliketowastemytime.com/2012/04/16/breathtaking-photos-of-frozen-lake-baikal-in-siberia-russia-23-pics

http://www.fotopedia.com/wiki/Lake_Baikal#!/items/picasaweb-5521382785969969938

Lake Baikal - the "Pearl of Siberia"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd4PpVNyfRU

Baikal live ice drumming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en0p1Y35p3w

lol it's slightly colder then in Canada but all in all it's same, same bears, mooses and squirrels :))