Meghan's Last Blog Post

Throughout my stay here at Smiley Guy, I learned a lot about flash, how to build props, scene plan and even a bit of painting. I met a bunch of really nice people who were helpful and always willing to give advice about my upcoming year at Sheridan. My supervisors are awesome! They never minded when I asked a million questions and they were so welcoming when I first started. They never made you feel like you couldn’t do something. If you struggled, that was okay, they reassured you that everyone struggles at the beginning and everyone still makes mistakes. One of my supervisors even helped me with my film idea.

After getting a taste of what the industry is like, I’m now more prepared for graduation and I’ve decided what my focus is going to be. I’m lucky enough to have supervisors who would be more than willing to critique my work for the rest of the summer and throughout the year. I will definitely be taking advantage of that.

Over all, I’m very happy with my experience here at Smiley Guy and I would recommend it to any student!

Audio Book Reviews by Meghan

The last couple weeks at Smiley Guy I have been doing more prop building. I enjoy the challenge and like that I'm able to listen to audiobooks while I work. Last week Mary and I decided to listen to a book called "I've got your number" by Sophie Kinsella and we absolutely loved it!! I would recommend it to anyone who likes romantic comedies. She's also the author of the book "Confessions of a shopaholic" which is a movie. Another good book of hers that I read a while back is "remember me?". So if anyone who's reading this needs a light-hearted entertaining book to read, choose one of these or another of Sophie Kinsella's books. 

 

I'll be moving back onto Scene set-up this week and will be moving to Wussywat next week! Looking froward to the challenge!

Mary's Faeries and Romantic Comedies

I've been animating for Chirp episodes this week and I'm still enjoying it! In fact here's an adorable still from a momentary glitch I got animating one of the scenes:

Isn't he so cute?? Hahaha! I joked to Joel about how I was animating the next Jurassic World with this little guy. Hahhah! Imagine that? JurassicChirp World!

Anyway, I had even checked out the magazine this show was from. I say, this tv show really did a good job redesigning the characters. (Though I still don't know what kind of bird Tweet is...) I told my little sister that if I were to create more bird characters for Chirp, they'd be named, Hoot, Caw, and Quack. You can guess what birds they may be. 

Also here's Meghan as a faerie:

Thanks for introducing me to an awesome romantic comedy novel Meghan! :) If anyone's curious, the novel was "I Got Your Number" by Sophie Kinsella. It was really entertaining and I really hope they make a film out of it one day. I'm reading the "Lunar Chronicles" by Marissa Meyer now. So far the scifi/dystopian world is really interesting, especially with their android female protagonist.

Meghan Paints Toronto

Last week I was still working on prop building and built the most challenging prop I’ve done so far. I had fun doing it because I was able to learn a lot and problem solve, so I’m glad I had that opportunity. 

I’ll be transitioning into Background painting in the near future and hope to learn a lot from that. I have been watching different videos and tutorials to help improve my painting with colour and light, and working with artists at the studio will only assist me in improving quicker, so I’m very excited about that. I want my fourth year film to have nice layouts so I’m doing what I can to improve. 

Since I’ve been at Smiley guy, I’ve been taking the streetcar from the train to the studio and have really been noticing the vibrancy of Toronto. I’ve never paid any attention to it before, but while I’m riding the streetcar I love watching the people. It’s helped me with my film idea actually… I plan on going to liberty village soon to draw the people and their dogs, I want to have some of Toronto’s vibrancy in my film.

Meghan's Dogs Love the Birds!

The last couple of weeks I was finishing up scene planning and starting on prop building. So far so good, I’m really enjoying it. The designs for chirp are pretty adorable and I like how textures are applied to them to give them something extra. There have been a couple challenges but only because I’ve just started doing it and thankfully I have a really patient teacher who’s pretty awesome.


The other day as I was getting ready to leave for the train, I turned the TV on so my dogs would have some noise while I was gone. I usually just turn on whatever, but I managed to find Chirp on TV! It was pretty cool seeing an actual episode on TV so now everyday before I leave I turn Chirp on for my dogs to watch. I’m excited for the day I get to see a couple of the things I worked on, on TV!

Meghan Makes Mistakes...But That's Okay

The last week and a half at Smiley Guy I’ve continued to do Scene Set up on Chirp. I’ve learned even more about Flash and am now confident enough to work on my own and solve most problems on my own. I still make mistakes however… a lot of mistakes, but my supervisor continues to tell me that mistakes happen and everyone makes them, even people who have been working there for a long time. Although I try my hardest to not make mistakes, I’ve noticed that after I make them I learn something new, or become more aware and am able to catch them after I send them in so I can correct them before the scene planning supervisor sees them… or sometimes I just make incredibly stupid mistakes and can’t believe I did it. I’m improving though and that’s what matters. I’m getting faster, and setting up more difficult scenes, which are both fun and challenging. I’ve come to hate masking and shape tweens more then anything, but at least I actually know how to do them. They are incredibly useful, just a pain. 

Overall, things are going well. I’m happy with everything so far and am looking forward to moving on to prop builds in the near future!

Smiley Guy For The Win! - Introducing Meghan

I learned more about flash in the last week and a half here at Smiley Guy then I have in the last three years at school. The first few days were a little rough. I was constantly asking my supervisors questions (sometimes the same one more than once), I did the two tests at a snails pace and even managed to lose most of one of the assignments when my flash crashed. I learned a valuable lesson from that however- Constantly save your work.

After a few days of trying to figure flash out, it started to become easier. By Friday, I was working on actual production stuff! I’m currently doing scene set up for an episode of Chirp and resourcing other episodes in-between. With every scene that I finish, I become more and more confident with the program, and less annoying to my supervisors (although they don’t think I’m annoying… or are too nice to admit it haha). I’ve also finally downloaded Skype so the other artists in the studio don’t have to listen to me calling my supervisors over to my workspace every 5 minutes.

The people at the studio are friendly, helpful and very sociable with each other. In my first week we had two organized lunches and a game night. Apparently game nights are a regular weekly thing too!

I’m very happy to be interning here at Smiley Guy and I’m excited to see what the upcoming weeks bring.