Eden Negotiates Curtains, Meetings, and Explosions

Never a dull day at SGS!

Another fulfilling week at SGS and some interesting events to report. But before I get into that, an update on my third week here. We are continuing work on Beethoven's Wig and got to experience a group meeting with the whole team. It was awesome to see the animatic for Warren. It reminds me of a UK version of the “King of the Hill”. Some really funny stuff! Sharing my thoughts with everyone was also a great experience. I love group meetings!

Da na na naaaaa! Beethoven's Wiiiiiiig! Is very biiiiiiiiig!
I can't stop singing it! It's everywhere!!

I was having some troubles with my scene, as much as I hate to admit. Those gosh darn curtains! Of course I made it more complicated than it really should be. Thankfully, Chris and Mat were super helpful and patient enough to understand what nonsense I was trying to explain.

Bomb threat!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well not a bomb, but it potentially could have been! The Beer Store next to the studio had a gas leak! Firemen and police officers blocked off the sector and evacuated everyone out of the buildings that were inside the perimeter. Lea and I were actually coming back from lunch. We asked a couple questions to one of the Police officers in the area and told us they couldn't let us go back to work.

 

Every week a new adventure is out there! Stay tuned for my next episode! 

David Takes Out the Internet Then Saves the Office

Hey its David again.

This past week while short because of the long weekend was still full of interesting events. For starters we really got into animating on some scenes for a Beethoven short. With the help of Chris shepherding us from chaos on daily basis, its been a really fun experience. Also on Wednesday while trying to fix my internet, the internet for the whole studio went out. I probably made a few enemies In that moment.... I'll have to try my best to smooth things over the next few days. 

Then while on my lunch break the Beer Store next to us had a gas leak. I really don't think the two are co-related, well...at least I hope not. We then had to evacuate the building and the whole street was closed off for more than an hour while the fire department dealt with the gas leak. After that it was business as usual.

The lesson of the week is working at Smiley Guy definitely keeps you on your toes.

Lalo's Audio Mix Project

All Co-op students at Northern had to do a presentation to explain what we have learned at our placements. I decided to do a clip from The Empire Strikes Back with new sound to show what I've learned working with sound designer, Paul O'Brien. I had fun designing, recording and editing my soundtrack. The best part of the process was experimenting with different sound effects. Thanks to Paul for mentoring me, and to Jeremy Diamond for being Darth Father.

Cody's Final Animation Project

After months of slaving at Smiley Guy Studios, here is what Cody has to show for it - a really great short!

Jordan Gets Thrown in the Deep End

Hello hello hello. So my name is Jordan Shereck and I am Sheridan Animation Intern Number 3 at Smiley Guy studios this summer.

So I've been here for two weeks this far and it's been a lot of learning and funtimes. Getting put on productions right off the bat was a tad daunting for someone who hasn't had any experience with puppet animation before, but I guess if you sit in front of something long enough it slowly starts making sense. Slowly.

It's super nice having other fellow interns to pester, and the folks who work here are just incredibly helpful. I find that it's so much better to have a specific question to talk about, so actually having things to work on that actually need to get done have proven themselves an excellent gateway to questions and learnimation.  I've always been more of a "drawing type" than an animator, but working on flash animation has given me this very sudden hyper-awareness of the concept of timing and spacing, as evidenced in these panels detailing my recent late night breakthrough:

 

 

At this rate I might actually get my walk cycle done some time this century.

Jordan's creative file names

Adam Wraps it Up

With my Co-op year coming to a close, it was a good idea to begin doing these animation and design tests created by the company. After constantly putting small tweaks into my main "Metal-Head" animation, it was a good end-of-the-year change that has been teaching me and helping me learn advanced animation.

The first test I did was to re-create a character with Joel's tutorial. The tutorial was definitely not the easiest task as it taught me not only how to design a character, but it showed me how to create a character that is actually formatted to be animated properly. The next tutorial focused on animating certain elements from a scene from the show 'Warren". This was much more difficult as it forced me to animate a whole body composition opposed to one figure. 

The final animation tests (which are my favorite) are the simple object animation. From a flower-sack to a bouncy ball, Kurt asked me to animate them how ever I wanted to. This really tested how much I knew and I was forced to ask Kurt for some aid as it was deceivingly difficult. Learning the "eases" and "ease-outs" was also great because that little extra amount of animation makes the biggest difference.

With the Co-op year almost complete, its great to realize how much I've learned.

Lea Loves Exclaimations

Hello!  I'm Lea. I don't usually talk much but I will try to muster up some excitement and enthusiasm for this blog post. I think this calls for a liberal application of exclamation marks!!!!!!

Over the first couple of weeks I have become acquainted with some of the staff at Smiley Guy. Julie is the one who gives us direction overall. If Smiley Guy Studios were a secret organization and us interns were special agents, Julie would be the mysterious person who shows up in a black car and takes us to a parking garage, where she then hands us manila envelopes with all the details we need to complete our mission. But instead of leaving the building and completing our assignment with finesse like competent special agents, we interns just start walking into walls and getting caught in the furniture. This is where the supervisors come in - Darien, Matt and Chris have picked us up, dusted us off, and pointed us towards the door with a pat on the head. We then proceed to run into traffic and board street cars going in the wrong direction.

Yes, animating puppets in flash has been quite the adventure with many a wacky shenanigan. I honestly thought there would be some kind of rigging to those badboys, but nope! Just pose and tween and hope limbs don't go flying across the screen. I am proud to say I know how to prevent that from happening now! Progress!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Erica Learns Scene Planning

So this week I worked on my scene planning. It’s basically your storyboarding but with the background and characters all in it. So yea like a final storyboard. At first it was a bit hard to do because with the pictures being one layer and my character needing to go behind certain objects it was hard to do that.

But Darien taught me to mask it so I’ll be able to get what I want to see. So yea I hope to finish soon.

Haha it’s a much longer process than I thought.

Here are some pics of my scene planning first scene:

We Had David at the Door Buzzer

Hi my name's David Schut, I'll be writing on this blog on a bi-weekly basis.  Let's start off with I have no idea how to write a blog, so bare with me and I'll try my best to make this entertaining for everyone.

Okay lets do a quick recap of my first week of being an intern at Smiley Guy Studios:  The first day was fun getting shown around the place (I enjoy the door buzzer, it makes me feel like I'm part of a secret organization) and meeting everyone was really fun.  The next few days is when the learning curve came....We were give a chance to do a walk cycle test. My first crack at the walk cycle was spectacular mess of a thing. If anyone ever said puppet animation is easy, they lied. Lied through their teeth. It is hard stuff. Though luckily everyone at Smiley Guy has been really kind and helpful throughout the week, because of their patience, I'm starting to figure it out the subtle trickery that is flash.

At the end of the week we started to do small animation scenes on Beethoven's Kids. I'm excited to see what I can learn from the scenes I get.

Well that's one week down.

Eden Checks out the Garden of Kensington

    Hey everyone!

Just a little about myself... My name is Eden and I have just completed 3 years of the BAA-Animation degree program at Sheridan College. Currently, I am completing my co-op here at SGS!  I have a tendency to ramble, so hopefully I can make this not so “texty” (but more importantly: entertaining)

So far it has already been a great learning experience. I'm learning a lot about Flash that I never knew you could do before. Learning these new techniques has been opening up new possibilities for my fourth year thesis film.

Everyone at SGS have been super friendly and very helpful. I'm really grateful that they encourage us to ask questions; definitely makes the learning experience that much easier.

We've been familiarizing ourselves with Flash through scene planning and attempted a walk cycle with SGS character Warren. Turned out to be a bit more tedious than I had anticipated. But it was a nice crash course to experiment with the software.


SGS area... Where are we?
I commute from Hamilton, so I'm not very familiar with the Toronto area. My fellow interns and I have been have been going on little adventures on our lunch break to get an idea what's around here. There are lots of interesting and very unique shops around the College and Bathurst area.

Coffee is accessible every where!!! Starbucks, Coffee Culture, McDees, Tim Horton's, you name it! But the best are probably the local cafes that they have around Little Italy and the Kensington Market.

Down in the Kensington Market, I feel has the most interesting little shops. Plus, lots of variety of culture and food!! Oh the delicious food!!

We have been favouring this particular burger joint called “Burgernator”. All the food is from local produce and their meat never sees a freezer! They get it fresh and cook it right away for their hungry fans. Prices are affordable, meals are a good size, AND they don't make you feel like you're dying after! (Like gross McDees hamburgers would)

I think I'll end it there... Hopefully I can get some moving pictures into my entries as well!

That's all folks!