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 Love Halloween and Samosas

Halloween is upon us!! I love costumes and I was very happy when I was allowed to wear mine to work on Friday, even though the high heeled boots made me late. My boots are quite irrelevant to what work I got done this week however, so I'll move on. Monday and Wednesday I worked on my script, using Jeremy's notes and I watched more animated shorts to look at what elements made a short funny or memorable. Death Buy Lemonade by Kyu-bum Lee is definitely my favourite (probably because of the pun in the title).

Friday was my most productive day, by far. I sat in on a meeting and listened to Julie talk about a top secret toy (shhhh) being released just in time for Valentine's Day. It was actually a good thing to listen to because it offered an inside look at the back and forth between the client and the studio. Julie also printed out a script of Chirp and used that to teach me how to format my own script. I didn't do much after that except eat a samosa and write this before it was time to go. People are always giving me food here and I love it. Yum. Anyways, Happy Halloween!! See you next week.

Callie = Claire Standish

David Just Enjoys FX

This week I have been animating Barf, Bubbles, Waves, Ripples, Splashes, Smoke, Electricity, Slime, and Sparkles. I’ve learned that shape tweens are pretty challenging to control, and that tracking objects to paths makes animation a lot easier and faster. Using shape tweens to animate colours on objects is also really awesome. I also learned about how different temperature objects fall into a certain spectrum of colour depending on how hot or cold the object is.

I liked working this week on the scene where Leon time travels back in time like in the Terminator movies. The scene was so gross and sexy. I animated so many sparkles on Leon the Cyborg Lion’s arm. It’s so hilariously disgusting. I never expected to hear to words “wolf-cum” used in a professional environment. Julie even asked me today if I “feel uncomfortable animating this kinda stuff”. It’s pretty gross, and a lot of it won’t be on my demo-reel but at least I'm learning a lot.

This is more PC than what David is animating

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!

 

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!!

 

A Fond Fairwell to Elizabeth

One last hello!

So my time has ended at Smiley Guy/iThentic and at Humber College. I finished my internship last week and this week was my last week of school. So now onto the next phase!

My last day at Smiley Guy/iThentic was spent continuing to test out an upcoming online game. Even within a few days, there were some big changes in the game that I noticed. I don’t know how they happened exactly…but it was interesting to see the game go through different phases.  

Julie, Mike and Lisa took me out for lunch at Aunties & Uncles, which was just around the corner. I hadn’t really had a chance to go out and check out the neighborhood, so it was nice to see what was out there! All three had helpful tips on what I should be looking into next as well, so it was a great lunch. Plus the food was good too!

My last week at school was fairly busy! I was the producer on a short film that we somehow managed to film over the weekend, and have ready for our last day of class, which was Friday. We were pretty lucky to get it all done and it was definitely a great learning experience!

Thanks for listening and keeping up with my updates! And a big thanks to Smiley Guy Studios and iThentic for letting me come in and experience everything! It was a really great learning experience!

Lucas' Blog and New Video Game

It seems as though I haven’t put up a blog here in awhile. It may in fact be because Julie hasn’t been on my case about it. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing though. Over the last two or three weeks a lot has happened. So now I can write about all of in a huge blog. How exiting! Well first of all, anyone who reads these would probably know that I’ve been learning Java and Javascript. Well, I’ve been finally putting those skills to work. A few weeks ago I started building a small platformer game with a friend of mine.  I’ve also been doing one on my own but I’ll talk about that later. I’m having a really good time at it. They're not super fancy now but it's a start.

            I’ve been going to some game-related events and been meeting some really cool people.  Some of them have made games that I actually played and so I enjoyed meeting the minds behind them, it was fantastic. I got a twitter account so I could connect with all these people. If I learned anything from these events, it’s than networking is everything. Everyone likes to follow each other’s projects and I need a way to tell people about what I’m working on so I started the “LUCAS TENNEN DOES STUFF” blog. There isn’t much there yet but there is definitely more to come: http://lucastennen.blogspot.ca/

            Over the last week and a half or so I have been working by myself on a small puzzle game called “AM I REAL?” I actually just put it up two days ago (can be found on my blog). A bunch of the work was done at Smiley Guy and I’m happy about how it turned out. It's really short, only takes about 10 minutes to get through but its my first one, so cut me some slack.  I’ve been watching the number of plays go up, refreshing the page every hour or so and I’m exited to see that over 200 people have played it! It’s a pretty big deal considering that the number before was zero. Overall the last few weeks have been busy and amazing and hopefully there will be many more like them. I should also throw out some random co-op related blurb like I usually do... I can do that next blog...

Am I Real

Cavemen Joint Linl

Halloween at Smiley Guy Studios!

Here are the pumpkins we carved this year.  Left to Right credit: "Michael Jackson" by Aaron Hong, "Jackolantern" by Humphrey Erm, "Jack" by Julie Otten.  Front Row: "Motley Crew" by Stephanie Ramon

Julie Otten as a Ninja Turtle, Al Jerek Torrijas as Odd Job Jack, and Stephanie Ramon as Robin Thicke

Lea Admires Smiley Guy Meetings

I just noticed I never introduce myself in my blog posts. Good thing Julie covers that in the titles. Titles are important. How else would you know what To Kill a Mockingbird was about?


Anyway, what I'm going to talk about today: Meetings. I've had the privilege of attending a few meetings regarding Warren. Not only do these allow me see how the show has been progressing, they give me hope.

Yes, that is right. Hope. Let me explain:

Over the past school year I worked with a number of other students to create a film. My group was amazing - we managed to complete a good piece of work on time with little drama between members. However there were still bouts if indecision, squabbling and chaos that irked me. Sometimes things would go offtrack and issues wouldn't get resolved, or there would be arguments over details that no one could agree on. I was vaguely worried that this is what it would be like in an actual work environment.

Meetings for Warren have been different. Julie comes in with notes and a list of all the assets that have been completed written down. Just with that these meetings have structure. Everyone sees the score, and what needs to be addressed gets addressed.  People still discuss things amongst themselves and give suggestions and input, but the ones in charge are the ones who make the calls. I feel these things give meetings at Smiley Guy a different dynamic than the meetings I had at school. In a lot of ways my experience with both has been similar, but in these ways they are not.

This makes me glad. Overall the group film meetings were great, but for awhile I was fearful that actual studios had those problems. I'm sure they do. I've only actually been to three meetings at SGS - for all I know everyone is just behaving in front of the interns. Maybe it's different at various stages of production. Maybe they do crop up, but so far so good. I'm sure I will see for myself someday!

Lea Loves Exclaimations

Hello!  I'm Lea. I don't usually talk much but I will try to muster up some excitement and enthusiasm for this blog post. I think this calls for a liberal application of exclamation marks!!!!!!

Over the first couple of weeks I have become acquainted with some of the staff at Smiley Guy. Julie is the one who gives us direction overall. If Smiley Guy Studios were a secret organization and us interns were special agents, Julie would be the mysterious person who shows up in a black car and takes us to a parking garage, where she then hands us manila envelopes with all the details we need to complete our mission. But instead of leaving the building and completing our assignment with finesse like competent special agents, we interns just start walking into walls and getting caught in the furniture. This is where the supervisors come in - Darien, Matt and Chris have picked us up, dusted us off, and pointed us towards the door with a pat on the head. We then proceed to run into traffic and board street cars going in the wrong direction.

Yes, animating puppets in flash has been quite the adventure with many a wacky shenanigan. I honestly thought there would be some kind of rigging to those badboys, but nope! Just pose and tween and hope limbs don't go flying across the screen. I am proud to say I know how to prevent that from happening now! Progress!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!