Juhi Loves to learn!

Continuing on with Todd, I've got to tweaking and revising props, as well as going through the latest animatic and making additional angles. It's quite exciting to see the animatic as it update with early music and sound effects. I especially liked the match cuts supported by musical cues, as it brings the animatic that much closer to the final.

Currently, I'm on the task of designing background characters to populate the school. It's a fun challenge designing based on the established Todd style, gain feedback and designing with possible reuses in mind. And then, taking it straight to flashifying after approval. It's incredibly exciting to imagine the assets I create debut on the final!

I'm also constantly absorbing and learning new tips and tricks from the software. No matter how much you'd think you're used to working, it's always a joy finding out more faster, efficient tools that function the same. I will always be exploring and hoping to develop that level of workflow.

~Juhi out~

Vincent Is Back on Builds

I worked on two more resources this week after finishing the Jock character from the previous week. Both are resources that I already worked on that need further revisions. One of them is a Mug in a sock that needs to have the tips of the sock changed and the other is blow up sex doll that needs to be tweaked in a bunch of places. I started with the blow up sex doll just because out of the two it needed more revisions and I wanted to give myself a challenge. The notes Joel gave were very helpful. So far I'm getting through them all without any problems! By the time the day is over they should both be finished.

We also filled out a personality survey a few day back for a Lunch n Learn meeting. It was a short survey with 4 possible personality types based around colors. I expected there to be a description for my personality type by the end of it but the point of the survey was only to match me to a colour so that I could find other people who had the same personalty trait as me. I ended up not going to the lunch and learn though so I never got to find any other greens, haha.

-Vincent Chan

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.

Callie, the Human Popsicle

It is shorts season which is fabulous but the air conditioning in the studio is infinitely better than in my school, meaning that I turn into a Callie Popsicle after an hour. Next time I will bring a sweater. Slash I will only need to bring a sweater twice because oh my god, next week is my last week at Smiley Guy. That’s insanity, I cant believe it. On Tuesday of this week Joel was busy so I couldn’t go downstairs to work on special effects with him and instead I worked on prop builds again for Vampire Steve. That was pretty cool because it was like a memory test on all the stuff I learned earlier in the year about Flash. Turns out I actually remember how to use it. Yay!! So I built a cellphone, a clip board and a pen.

Today, Thursday, Joel was busy again (some looming deadline), so I sat at my desk and drew a lot. That was a nice treat actually. I am just not sure if I will end up adding special effects because I do not have Joel to help and also the computer I was working on was removed because it was needed for a new project. If I don’t get to add special effects, I will be a little disappointed because I saw how cool they could make something, but I will also be okay. See you next week! :)

Juhi is Hyped

This week I did revisions based on the helpful notes I got back for the props I built. It was great to receive feedback and make the necessary changes to make animating go smoothly. Along with building props, I had my hand at designing them too which I really enjoyed. It was a good break from flashifying props; but with the experience it made designing for the look of Todd and the animation in mind easier.

This week was also full of events including a VR info session and a pizza leica viewing day! It was super cool to fully watch the rough draft of the production we've been working on for weeks, together with the studio. Definitely hyped!

~Juhi out~

Juhi on Props

On the third week, I moved from posing and building out skeletons to building some props used by the characters in the Todd feature. It ranged from a simple bag to a tape recorder, where I created the different angles for both that were needed according to the animatic. From the practice, using shortcuts and manipulating the software comes much quickly and easier now. I definitely feel accomplished to see the progress come along!

~Juhi out~

Time Flies by for Vincent!

Second week at Smiley Guys and I've been drawing clean lines for Todd concepts. There's something really Zen about untangling flash nodes. It's almost like they untangle themselves. Almost done a charred corpse concept and starting an ash concept.

Thought it would be fun to look through my high school artwork and psychoanalyze myself. The third painting in particular is a lot spookier than how I remembered it.

Been listening to the film-spotting podcast, which I adore. Wow, the second week is almost over. Haha, This can't be happening!

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.

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!

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!

Smileys, Dracula and Biiirds!

I had just finished my last prop/FX today for Smiley Guy Studios' tv show Chirp! It involved snow and icebergs and what I'd call...snowbergs! I'll miss doing props. It was so fun and relaxing! I've learned so much, from masking to animation techniques. I've made a collection of bananas, flowerpots, toilet papers, dog dishes, pickaxes, sandcastles, megaphones, nuts, leaves, playsets, snowballs and now snowbergs! 

There were times when I was just frustrated with my slow pace, but there were also times when I get so caught up making a prop that it actually turns out "Good!" according to Joel. I'm surprised by how much I know a lot more about Flash at this point. Thank you so much Joel! 

Aside from my Flashy adventures, I also acquainted with more Smiley faces like Tom, who had apparently worked at Elliot Animation (I've heard that studio did the show 6teen and Stoked, which are shows that I was a big fan of) and Cherry, Ashley and Kosta among others who talk about comics and superhero movies. It's really cool to get to know people in the studio with similar likes. We even have awesome lunch adventures, like last week, Julie took us to Kensington Market, and ugh oh...I think I found a new knick-knack store to lose all my money to...

There's so much more to talk about, like how I'm starting scene-planning and animating in Chirp this week, but because my ice-cappuccino beside me is crying out to be emptied...that's all folks! :)

P.S.

The Dracula part in this week's title was because of two things. 1) I had just finished Bram Stoker's novel Dracula and it was awesome, and 2) I had just got a part of a Romanian character - with fangs of course, because Transylvanian vampires, yoo - for an upcoming Q&A panel in a comic convention in Hamilton! (I can't believe I still have time for these things. pfffft oh well it's my summer) Anyway that means, it's time to practice being a vampire while animating.

  Here's a sneaky birdie for ya! Inspired by WussyWat's bird design.  Birds, birds, birds!

 

Anna Draws Some Garbage

This is week 10 of my internship. How fun and fulfilling my summer has become because of it. Although the transit from Markham to Toronto has been a bit of a hassle, it was quite fun - observing people who were either going to work or leaving it, and actually being part of that crowd, with the same purpose. 

This week, I have been working on my animation skills, using the characters that I created. It really made me appreciate the people who designed the Teleporting Fat Guy characters. It took a while for me to get the hang of making the character, placing everything in its proper order and getting them to look right. But not only did the character designers from Teleporting Fat Guy do that, they created them with the animators in mind. Every little bit of change was anticipated, and every little bit had a corresponding symbol to it. Although I had created mine with that in mind, I didn't put as much detail into it, and so when I was animating, I ran into obstacles. None that I couldn't jump over, but it would have made it a lot smoother had it been done with more detail in the first place. Let me just say that I have a lot of appreciation for people who create symbol characters now. Not that I didn't have any before... But now I have the knowledge to back up that claim. 

But that's not all I've done. I've also finished with the garbage that the game needed. Yes, I was drawing garbage for the first half of the week. And everyone complimented me on it. I do need to show you, because I'm quite proud of it myself.

Let me describe the process. I first had no idea what to draw for the garbage, so I researched a bit, and it didn't really tell me a thing. All it showed me were generic garbage, and I had that image in my head already anyway. So I looked around the studio (all I did was turn my head around), looking for possible trash ideas. I classified things into recyclables and trash, and made a list of what could be what. Then I drew a rough version in photoshop and imported it into Flash. And from there, I used the pencil tool and traced over my rough drawings, converted them into symbols and coloured them. I didn't really have a colour scheme in mind, but I wanted the recyclables to stand out, so I used brighter colours for those, and duller colours for the garbage. I also tried to keep in mind that the props needed to fit in with the background and the characters. So I simplified that even more and deleted the inner outlines of the objects. The result is what you see above. Overall, I'm pretty satisfied...

Props To Carol

Hello everyone, this week I finally got to work on some designs for an upcoming CBC Kids' children show. Everything had to be designed in flash, which was new to me. It took me a while to figure things out before I could actually make things work. Not only I am building props, but I have to also design how to make them move which is animating as well. I learned many new things such as making a symbol inside a symbol so I can have different instance inside so I have the option of changing to what I want to show the audience.

I also learned to put textures onto an object I drew by using a mask so that only certain parts of it would show. There were also other little things I learned to make things a lot easier to manage later on. As an result, I made a cannonball, an acorn and a fan with different components and views.

Down below is the fan I made, you can't see it moving but the button can be pushed. The fans are also spinning at different speed. You can also see all the layers inside.