Mandy Says Farewell to The Smiley Guys!

It was my last week in Smiley Guys Studio, and I was working on the background characters
and modified details of Shadows in the dark. I really hope that I can complete everything
before I leave. On Friday, we had a small pizza party in the park which near the studio, and we also playing the frisbee and POKEMON GO!! Cherry and Juhi were so excited when they found a Lapras near the park, so we quickly made a small pokemon group, and went to catched the Lapras. At the end, Jia and Cherry got the highest Lapras, and Juhi got the lowest, which makes everyone laugh. In general, I was pretty enjoy it. On Wednesday, I had a short meeting with my three superiors to review all my work and performances during the co-op. According to the review, I realized that I got a serious problem when I was working on the animation, which is my characters could not be matched between continued scenes. I was shocked at that moment, and I will take more time on this point in the future.

Mandy and the Shadow's in the Dark

This week, I completed a layout test on Monday, so mostly this week I was working on the
background characters and the Indiegogo Winners. Shadows in the Dark is the one of the scene’s
 name in Todd project. This scene is an important one which I spent a lot of time on. Each
character has to be rebuilt, since the angle in the scene is ¾ front, but the characters were
already built as front views, so they have to be rebuilt and fixed. As I mentioned before,
I like designing characters and posing them out, therefore, I am quite enjoying working on the
Shadow's in the Dark.

Mandy Creates The Mood!

This week we were working on the revised files, fixing some parts of drawings, and modeling the characters according to the rough drawing. On Wednesday, we had a short meeting on animation on how to do the animation, how to make the animation perfect, and also some tips on how to fix the symbols in Flash. The meeting took an hour long, and I gained a lot of knowledge and experience.

On Thursday, I started working on the layout test for the Todd project. The layout style is based on Hellboy, specifically focusing on creating the mood within the background. Because there are a lot of actions and emotions in the Todd project, so we are looking for more mood creations.

Mandy Likes to Design!

After a long weekend, we got back to work. Instead of working on the main props and main characters, this week we were working on the background stuff, like background characters. There are a lot of passersby in the film, some of them have only one shot, and some have two to three shots or different angles. Compared with the main characters in the film, working on the passersby characters has more creative latitude. Since most of those passersby characters doesn’t have their own designed poses, I can design them based on the style of the main characters or by myself. It is really fun to work on, because I feel like I am playing a Role-playing game, and I can decide what stuff should put on my characters, and pick up the color I prefer. Moreover, I will get notes of how to modify those characters’ poses and designs to make them better, which is really helpful to improve my skills and I enjoy it. 

Mandy and the 12 Principles of Animation

The last few weeks we focused more on working on the Cancan Dance project, such as animating the characters and building up the props, which is a nice experience.

I’ve learned a saying after finishing the project, which is The more you’ve worked, the more you learn.

This project, helped me improve on the 12 principles of animation, specially squash and stretch, and anticipation, especially when I was working on the leg up and down pose.

The first time I worked on this project, I felt I was unfamiliar on working animation, but after all I felt it was easy and fun, and I was proficient in it.

Mandy Animates the Opening!

Obviously, this week we were focusing on the cancan dance animation, and my job was animating the shot in the first scene, which is the opening shot.

When I got this mission, I was a little bit embarrassed and under pressure, since I known a good opening is very important for the film to attract audiences. However, during the process, I can feel the feeling I had before was gone, and my skills have being improved day by day.

Mandy Learns Flash

Time flies so fast. It is halfway of the internship. This week I was focusing on the Can Can Dance project, which is the same stuff as last week.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, I got to start animating the Can Can Dance. I think it is a great opportunity to improve my animation skills, especially like how to make the sound match the movement of the characters, and how to use Flash to create the Motion Tween.  It is important for me to learn Flash and acquire more knowledge of Flash, not only drawing animation on Flash, but also learning how to animate quickly and professionally. I remember the first time I got an animation test for a Co-op opportunity, and I failed. The reason is I don't know how to animate using Flash. Therefore, I realized I need to learn more about it to be a professional animator, so thanks Smiley Guys Studio for giving me this chance to learn and work.

Mandy Loves to Lunch!

We got a new project this week, which is about the Can Can song. I think this project is pretty easy, because all models have already been built in Flash, so we just need to set up character's poses and figure out the perspective of their legs and feet.

This week, we had two group lunches, one at a sushi bar, and the other one at a sports bar.  Both had delicious food, and a nice environment. I really like having lunch with others, because it helps people get to know each other, and makes me feel like we're in a family.

Mandy is Developing her Skills!

This week we did not have as many meetings as last week.

Mostly, what we have done this week was revised the props which we did before.  Compared with the second week, I think my jobs are getting heavier, which makes me feel challenged and excited.

Joel gave me two empty flash file this week, one is working on the character called Coty Hetler, and another one is “Shadows in the Dark”. For these missions, I need to draw a rough of the characters, and build it up. It is sort of more different than last week. Before what I worked on was half finished stuff, while now I am building all of the angle of character, including their emotions and poses.

In the coming weeks, I hope I could try other work positions, such as post production and pre- production. I like working on more challenging work, because it can help me develop my skills and improve my knowledge.

Mandy Loves VR!

This week we were busy on schedule, like some revised files had to be completed, and the pizza party was held on Tuesday, we watched the story leica and gave feedback.

At the end of the meeting, we watched a graduated student’s film from Seneca. The film is excellent and I like the story as well as the simple animation. Also, it offered me a great reference for my 4th year film, since I have a similar direction, which to develop a deep meaning story with simple animation and visual effect.

On Thursday we had a short meeting of Learning the new industry VR (virtual reality). To be honest, VR became very famous this year, whenever I look through my facebook, people keep posting news about VR, specially from technical people.  I saw some of my classmate play the VR game in their intern companies, and all their responses were VR is awesome and amazing, but just little bit expensive. Personally I like VR even though I haven't tried it yet.

I hope one day the VR company can lower their price and let everyone have chance to own it. My opinion came from a famous Japanese animation called “Sword Art Online”, it is a great animation whose story happens in the future, and focus on the VR worlds. It's the reason why I have a lot of expectations on the VR industry.

^That's me on the far right!

Mandy Stays on Tempo

This week we’re working on the film project, revised the stuff according to the note written by Joel.
“Unholy Grail of Sumatra” is one of the props name, and it was more challenging than I thought, even though it is just in one shot of the film.

This evil grail has some eyes on its surface. My job contains to build the grail, and I also need to make the eyes blink and adjust it in different tempo while eyes are blinking.

To sum up, I learned two new things, which are “Move Regpoint” and “Random frames”. The first one is used to key the reg point, and second one is used for helping the animator to animate the same thing in different timing.

Mandy Works Late!

After doing the exercises last week, we started to work on the project  "Todd And The Book Of Pure Evil", and my job is to built the props using Flash.

The work went quite well, and even there were some temporary changed on the props, I finally completed before the deadline. Also I realized it is extremely helpful for me to get trained last week, and I learned a bunch of new things.

Meanwhile, the thing happened yesterday touched my heart. I thought I was the last person left the studio last night, and I struggled that should I leave directly without locking the gate, or stay to wait for someone back. I walked around everyone’s space to see if there is any business card with phone number on, so I could make a call. But I got nothing. At the end, Juan came back, and he is so nice to teach me how to lock the door. Even it is a kind tiny small story, I did feel a really friendly working environment in Smiley Guy.

Introducing Mandy!

It is so exciting to work in Smiley Guy studio, thank you for let me work in here. People are so nice and friendly, and willing to help.

Learning Flash is quiet a biggest challenge for me, because I haven't use it since last year, so I have to catch it up.

I have require a lot of knowledge in this three days, such as how the Mask helps when you are animate, and how to create the eyes properly. Also I found that Flash is way interesting than I thought.