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!!

 

Inna's Exciting News!

Heyhey everyone, 

I have awesome news! It seems like our Sheridan 3rd year group film “Grounded”was accepted and will be showcased at the Ottawa International Film Festival 2014! Yeey!

https://www.animationfestival.ca/index.php?option=com_oiaf&task=showselections+

"Grounded" https://vimeo.com/95567674

It is an inspiring four minute short about adventures of a bunny and his little brother. The film is hand-drawn in Toon Boom Harmony. It was one awesome experience of the teamwork, dedication and successful short film production. Here’s a vimeo link to our film: https://vimeo.com/95567674 Enjoy!

 

Last few weeks I have been working on several animation shots and learnt more about effects, camera moves and symbol animation in Flash. Alex said it is ok to post the shorts that I worked on and here they are:

Mountains and Sleigh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaJDh8mbv3w

- I designed and flashified Bead Mountains which was the easiest for me except the camera movement. It was my first time dealing with the cinematography in Flash. Rich helped me with a nice smooth truck-in transition using just couple of keys on a comp level and ease-in and ease-out settings.

- Designing and animating stars and sparkles took long to figure out, as I never touched Flash before my internship. Keith helped and explained me a lot and also showed me how to tweak Grandpa and a harness so that they are is in time with the dogs run cycle.

- I enjoyed animating the husky's trot cycle! Last semester in Sheridan I had to animate dog cycle in Maya and it was very interesting to apply same principles in symbol animation.

-Darien and Joel helped me to figure out why the sleigh dogs would start glitching while trucking in, disappearing even when we would export png sequence. As Joel advised I reduced the size of original png images and the problem was yaay fixed. Thank you!

Four Sleighs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZu-TF8DxB8

This animation was the easiest as I already had sleigh cycle done. So it was just the timing, tint and alpha channels.

 

Animal Wall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIa2OkpYIrQ

This shot was mostly about the timing. I also learned how to work with colors and transparency settings in Flash.

 Tundra and objects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0-VKXkWPNs

This shot taught me about the timing, gravity and again about camera moves. Alex and Keith explained to me that all major camera moves are usually done on a comp level. Keith though showed me some tricks on how to attain 3d effect move by animating objects inside the comp and applying the same ease-in ease-out parameters as the tweens on the main level would have. It has totally boggled my mind but I think I finally got it. like 90%..ok 88%..

  

Animation test for Caribou Mandala:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zsx2dAHt0g

Working on mandala rotation was fun. I experimented with the timing of all the layers and transparency settings. I think it worked alright in the end. It’s so rewarding to see your own design animated. yay! This mandala exercise and Flash effects techniques I learnt from Alex, Keith and Darien provided me with all the understanding I needed to start working on my 4th year film as I am going to have my Sun Mandala rotated as well.

 Next week I will post my Geese and Caribou Mandala animations. I hope I will be able to finish them before my internship is over which is for one more week. Anna left a week ago and this week is the last week for Carol. No more Carol on the Oakville train and bus. Awe. I will see my girls only in September. It was great to get to know both of them. Smiley Guy made an official goodbye pizza party for us on the roof of the studio. It was very nice! I will miss this roof and all awesome Smileys people with whom we used to have launches together.

Another update of the month is my husband and my wedding anniversary! We had our wedding a year ago in Blue Mountains and it was amazing and beautiful. This summer we decided to celebrate it by going to the Niagara Falls and it was awesome too. We walked a lot, got the sun and the rain, saw the fireworks, got a chance to feed a friendly seagull that would eat only egg and not the bread and who refused to fly away and spent with us the whole hour, cute bird! The Falls were incredibly powerful and mesmerizing. Beautiful place, here:

My husband Chris is a ETM music producer, he got inspired by Alex’s film and came up with the musical piece which if approved by Alex and other producers might be added to the film soundtrack. That’d be awesome!

That’s all for now. Next week there will be my last week and my last post on the Smiley Guy internship portal:)

Carol Says Goodbye

Hey everyone, this is my last day at smiley guys. I just want to say thank you guys so much for this wonderful opportunity to work at this amazing studio. Along the way, I got to meet the amazing crew of smiley guy and made new friends who brought many joys into my life.

I learned so much valuable skills that I can use to make beautiful films in the future, so thank you for making my dream come true.

Now I feel more confident about my skills in flash and my future in the animation industry. Thank you smiley guy for an awesome summer internship!

-Carol

Quick Update from Carol

Hey guys,
This is almost my final week here. It has been an amazing experience being able to work with Smiley Guys people. Thank you for the pizza and beer, it was awesome!

Aside from that, I colored Uberdude backgrounds and other characters most of the week and designed an airplane and a pilot for defying gravity. After that, I incorporated what I learned from Chirp's fan animation and use the same technique for the propeller on the plane.  

Goodbye from Anna

Hey guys. I'm sad to say this, but today is my last day at Smiley Guy... It was a lot of fun, and I genuinely learned a lot from everyone. I would totally recommend it to anyone wanting an internship at an animation studio. Not only are the people there friendly and helpful, they are all very talented in their field.

Throughout these eleven weeks, I've accumulated a wide variety of experience in flash. Not only did I animate using symbols - which I've never really done - I created the symbols that I used to animate, and created props and backgrounds as well.

In the beginning, I was pretty nervous, since the meager experience I had in Flash was all traditional animation. But as I worked on Teleporting Fat Guy, I started to get the hang of it. Now, when I look back, I can actually see the improvement, from the flow of the animation to the speed in which I animate. After working on Teleporting Fat Guy, we helped out with First Hand, which was something that hit us all emotionally at one point or another. Environmentalism is something I've always had an interest in, so I really wanted to work on First hand, and I can probably say the same thing for the rest of the interns, too. This was when I drew backgrounds based off the animatic, in a style I've never really done much. First hand was a great experience, because it was back to the basics, but at the same time, something totally new.

After a week or two in First Hand, we worked on Uberdude. I was colouring animations, and that needed to be done fast. That improved my speed as well as my skills in Flash, because I have honestly never coloured so much in my life. Haha. Later, Teleporting Fat Guy needed help, and so we helped. I was just doing various things at various times, and it was totally normal at the studio.

Lastly, Interactive. Another environmentalism project, but with a spin. It wasn't a film, but a game. Since games are somewhat an interest of mine (Hah, who am I kidding? I love games), I jumped at the opportunity to work on it. And in the end, I loved every bit. The hard parts, the not so hard parts, the fun and the tedious things that I had to do. Having an internship at Smiley Guy was one of my best spent summers of my life. Meeting new people, who were all so friendly, and working on things that were just so interesting really made this summer worthwhile.

I guess I'll leave it on this note. And well, I've pretty much written all that I've wanted to. Thanks to everyone who've read this, for even giving a little bit of your time to browse through my ramblings. So yeah.
Over and out~
Anna

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...

Carol Streamlines the Colouring Process

Hey guys,
This week was intense. I been coloring Uberdude the entire week because I had to color a whole episode myself. In the process I had to find the more effective way of doing it so I can get it done fast and this is what came up with. I learn to use the lasso tool to choose the parts that I can copy and paste onto the next frame. I learn to use ctrl+shift+v so I can paste it in place which
saved me a lot of time. That way I don't have to color it by hand like I did before.

Next thing I had to do was add 2 square shapes onto all the Uberdude's clothing on top of what I already colored.

For that, I just drew the squares on a new layer on top and turn them into symbols and just add a keyframe to adjust the position of it so it matches the rest of the body.

When I was coloring the mouth, I realize they were symbols and I couldn't just paintbucket everything, At first I just drew in the colors myself and find that too time consuming. Then I remember what I learn from making designs for Chirp that there is usually a drawing
inside a symbol. So I went inside the mouth symbol and paint bucketed everything so I know that every lipsync will be colored once I come out of that layer. That also saved me a lot of time.

As for the rest, I memorized all the hot keys to make everything easier to control.