David Does Design

Hey everyone David again,

I can't believe that its almost been 2 months since my first day interning at Smiley Guy. Time definitely flies by! So this past week I've still been designing props, but have also been given the chance to design some characters as well! I was super excited about getting a chance to do this ever since I got to spend time here. A week into do this I'm still excited! Even despite another learning curve I'm going through with it. There's a lot of little things you need to keep track of while doing character design for flash animation that my brain was just not looking for when I started out.  Luckily Joel and Joe (who are the design crew here at Smiley Guy) have been kindly setting me straight at each pass on a character I take. So thanks to their patience I'm getting better....slowly. 

Also at this moment the the National is interviewing people about Captain Canuck behind me. Maybe if I'm luck the back of my head will get on camera and I can finally do my mom proud!

I mustache you a question...

Eden Finds her Patriotism

Here comes the final stretch for Captain Canuck! The team has been working vigorously to meet the deadline this Friday. I saw the composites of some of the shots post After Effects that Peter and Keith have been working on. The result is fantastic! The quality that AE puts on animation is incredible, it really goes to show how much of the subtle details can really bring out the best in each shot.
Every day I'm learning something new and I can't wait till the episode is complete!

(Note to self: Learn more AE!)

I think its really great that we finally have a super hero to call our own. I feel that Canada isn't respected enough by our Canadian citizens. Canada Day is already next Monday, and I've been having a hard time finding any Canadian spirit items for the long weekend. Captain Canuck! Come save our Canadian Spirit!

Happy Canada Day Everyone!!

Jordan's Take on Captain Canuck

Hello folks. Jordan here!

So these days I've been on colouring animation for Captain Canuck, the upcoming new web series. Honestly, I was super excited when I heard that I was going to get to do some work for it. Ever since I saw that teaser trailer it was stuck in my mind, and it's been a real treat getting to stare at all of these beautiful scenes. Everything is just solid, it looks like a proper superhero cartoon and I hope I can absorb some of it via osmosis.

When colouring a character with so many details you come to realize the importance of flipping your animation. Even though I'm only filling in gaps and colouring, there are so many little gaps that I wouldn't have caught had I just focused on each frame. So I've just been spending time trying to make it as neat as possible.

When I first heard the words 'CAPTAIN CANUCK', I didn't expect to see someone as cool as that. I pictured some toque-wearing, hapless doofus, apologizing to everyone in sight.

And then I started wondering, why is that? Why was my initial reaction to laugh and mock? Isn't Canada as deserving of a proper superhero as any other country?

 

According to "Flump787234,"  the answer is no.

 

 

Also here is a drawing of what I pictured. Drawn in Flash to demonstrate my newfound comfort with this program. I am not afraid of it anymore (I actually have no idea how people draw in this)

 

"Some toque-wearing, hapless doofus, apologizing to everyone in sight"

 

Lea Prefers the Bling

We finally did it!

We finally started design!

... Only to be immediately taken off that and put onto more pressing projects - but we're back at it again!

Here are a couple of props I've designed so far:

A weed whacker and a rich person's remote. When I heard "rich person remote" I imagined jewel encrusted, but apparently Joe meant technologically fancy. I'm thinking I made it a little too cellphone-y but we shall see what the supervisors think! Maaaaaybe lining it with diamond studs would be an improvement...???

Eden Pulls Up her Socks

It's Darien's birthday today! Some birthday cake and a little bit of early beer drinking to kick off the Father's day weekend.

It's been busy, busy, busy at SGS. The pressure is on to get my productivity up.  Designing characters for Warren was a bit of a learning curve, but after I got the hang of it (and some motivation to get my work done on time) they got completed. I've caught up with my work and have moved on to Captain Canuck. I am super excited to be working on backgrounds and help out the team to get this project done.

Watch out guys, Captain Canuck is coming for you!

Oh and happy father's day!!!

A Fairwell from Adam Roberts

Hello fellow future interns and the staff of Smiley Guy Studios,

I would like to let everyone know that my time at the studio was a memorable experience that not only developed my skills in animation and design, but it helped me meet awesome and talented people that were able to share a bit of their knowledge with me over the past year. The team also took me out for breakfast at the local restaurant named KOS (I believe). We sat, ate food and had a good time. Unfortunately, my contacts were irritated during the subway ride, so I had to consequently take them out. I was almost blind for the entire meal, but I still managed to interact and have fun at the table. 

Kurt Scott was an unbelievable mentor for myself as he guided me through every important stage of creating a short animation and our friendship also became quite strong near the end of the year. I'm happy that my Co-op teacher found such a talented studio to help me understand so many things.

I had a wonderful year, and I'd love to keep in touch with the people from the studio.

STAY AWESOME AND I HOPE THE STUDIO'S FUTURE ENDEAVORS ARE BRIGHT! 

Sincerely, 

Adam Roberts

David Updates His Bucket List

Hey it's David again,

Well the past week or so have been fun. I recently did some graphic design work on a new I.P being develop by Smiley Guy Studios, while I just did work on a pitch book; the I.P itself looks really cool. I'm excited to see how the project develops. It was really cool to be able to work on something like that.

I've also started on prop design! This stuff is really fun, I like the researching and then designing random objects that will some how make it on to a T.V show. I have on my list of props to do a pot and spoon, a bicycle and a picture of a cock fight. Yeah! I have to draw a picture of a cock fight. I'm going to add that to the list things I never thought I'd do in my life.

Also, to appease the picture gods here is a picture the a pot and spoon I'm currently working on. Look at it in all its majestic glory:

An offering to the picture gods

An Important PSA Video from Lalo

Well, I'm sad to say this but my time here at Smiley Guy Studios is up. When I first started out here, I was just some guy who was going to learn how to do sound design. Then as the weeks went by, I started to learn how to do dialogue editing and recording.

It seems it was just yesterday where on my first day I was being introduced and would do some work on "Teleporting Fat Guy", and then I would do some work on other shows such as "Hair and Mole", "Beethoven's Wig", "Warren" and more. I even got a chance to make some videos of my own.

One of my favourite things I did at work was record guitar parts for "Warren". Now that my time is up, I can say that not only did I learn about Sound-Design editing, I learned how to get along and interact with other people in the studio. And I like to thank everyone for being cool and fun to talk to. I had a great time here and I was happy to be apart of Smiley Guy. I'm hoping to learn more about audio recording in the future.

My final video: here is a PSA I made, Enjoy!

Jordan's on the Case!

HELLO AGAIN. It is I, Jordan, and I am delivering the going on's here at Smiley Guy.

So I've been spending my time colouring a leica reel for DETECTIVE DOCTOR ATTORNEY AT LAW. I love colour and it was pretty fun once I grew used to the idea that Flash's "fill bucket" and "close-large-gaps" tool does not work.

I actually really love the fact that I was able to work on a leica reel of any sort! I'd love to be able to do more stuff like that, like board cleanup or something.

Just getting to poke around the file in general and see how it was done really showed me how useful flash is for animatics.

PICTURED IS what a typical day looked like for me. Lots of linetooling going on to get the shapes to close.

Also word of advice: do not engage the fake monks that walk around Toronto. I was too nice to say no and now he has my subway fare. 

Lea's Observations: SGS vs Sheridan, and Joel's Plant

Flash seems to be crashing on me, so this is as good a time as any to write a blog post!

It's been an exciting two weeks - David killed the internet, the beer store leaked gas. I'm sure the others have covered these events in their own posts so I'm going to talk about something new. Something fresh! Something even more exciting!

School.

Haha, fooled you. That isn't exciting. I am going to talk about it though. See, I have noted some similarities and differences between my experiences at Sheridan and my experiences here at SGS.  Take lip sync for example. In school it was drilled into our heads to do lip sync last. Do the poses, animate the body, and only - ONLY - when you have that down do you draw in the mouth.

But at Smiley Guy it's backwards! For the past couple of weeks I have been mostly animating one character, and like I was taught in school I started out with animating the body. Then Chris advised to start with lip sync. I was skeptical at first, but I took his advise. Much to my surprise, once you get the mouth and jaw moving the character pretty much animates itself! Well no, not really, but it does add some preemptive life that makes it easier to visualize poses and such. I realize now that symbol animation allows you to do that. Unlike when you are drawing, if you want to change a pose or timing you end up moving/scrapping a lot of frames, but even when you do that with symbols the lip sync animation will still be there. Neat!

Before I sign off I feel I need to pay tribute to a lost member of the studio. I am of course talking about Joel's plant. From my vantage point it appears to be very dead. In its memory I will share with the world a quick painting I did my first week here when I was too shy and uncomfortable to leave my seat during breaks.

Rest In Peace little guy. You will be missed.

(Also Rest In Peace my crashing flash file, which does not seem to be recovering)