Mia Makes Friends with the Computer

On the second and third week of work at Smiley Guy Studios, I worked on concept art but did various different things. First thing I started from week 2 was draw a layout of a boy's bedroom. Even though I have a younger brother, there is nothing much in his room and it is not helpful at all for reference, and I did a lot of research for boys' bedroom from Internet. 

The next thing I did was basically draw and paint over Aaron's layout because it was needed as a high- resolution for printing out in a bigger scale. 

And I got back to work on Todd & The Book of Pure Evil. I drew rough rotation sheets for main characters and also drew  hand model sheets for each male and female character. And now I am creating characters from real people who wanted to be in the animation series which is pretty interesting.

I often work traditionally so I did not spend much time on a computer before. Now, I have been using the computer all the time and at first, I looked too close for a long time (just for me more than usual) and it made me sick. It made me dizzy and had sore eyes. But, human beings are infinitely adaptable. I guess I am well adapted to work with computer for a long time now. I feel great!

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/