Elise Says Toodles Poodles to Smiley Guys!

I guess this is my last post. Hard to believe how quickly the 3 months went! I've had a truly
amazing time here at Smiley Guy. I got to work on some great productions and meet some awesome
people, and I feel like I've learned a lot too. I will look back on this experience very fondly,
and I can't wait to see where things go from here!

There was a goodbye party in the park at lunch today (with pizza! Also wasps). It was a fun way
to end the internship! We played frisbee (I can catch it but I sure can't throw it) and caught
pokemon and drank lemonade. A lot of fun! And there were dogs!

And to Earl: My tall son. The 15-leafed apple of my eye. Our time together was short but
fruitful. Don't forget me.

Well, that's it for me. Thanks for everything, Smiley Guy!

*Edit note: Elise was granted adoption rights for her son Earl. They will live a long fulfilling life together solving crime cases and playing sports. 

Mandy Says Farewell to The Smiley Guys!

It was my last week in Smiley Guys Studio, and I was working on the background characters
and modified details of Shadows in the dark. I really hope that I can complete everything
before I leave. On Friday, we had a small pizza party in the park which near the studio, and we also playing the frisbee and POKEMON GO!! Cherry and Juhi were so excited when they found a Lapras near the park, so we quickly made a small pokemon group, and went to catched the Lapras. At the end, Jia and Cherry got the highest Lapras, and Juhi got the lowest, which makes everyone laugh. In general, I was pretty enjoy it. On Wednesday, I had a short meeting with my three superiors to review all my work and performances during the co-op. According to the review, I realized that I got a serious problem when I was working on the animation, which is my characters could not be matched between continued scenes. I was shocked at that moment, and I will take more time on this point in the future.

Juhi Has a Heartfelt Goodbye!

From the first time I stepped foot into the studio, to the last step out at the end of the term, I have enjoyed my time here and learned so much along the way. I cannot thank everyone enough for this opportunity; from the lessons, to the laughs, it had me feeling proud and grateful to be part of Smiley Guy's at the end of each day. It's true when they say if you truly enjoy what you're doing as a job, it doesn't feel like work. Now that I've had this experience, I have a solid confirmation that the studio environment is perfect for me. Once again, thank you for everything you've done for me Smiley Guy fam!

~Juhi Out~

Juhi Works and Plays Pokemon Go!

This week zipped by so quickly! With the launch of Pokemon GO, everyone has been catching the craze left and right. In the midst of it all, I've been working on revising background characters and designing new ones to populate Todd's school. It's fun making up characters in the style and reusing assets wherever I can. Efficiency!

I can't believe it's nearing the end of the internship...the whole period has been a wild ride and I've enjoyed every minute of it. It feels much, much too soon. I hope the next week feels at a normal pace. I feel like pokemon is to blame.

~Juhi Out~

Elise is a Trekkie!

My second-last week as an intern is over! I'm excited for the weekend (I'm gonna go watch the new
Trek movie!) but I'm also very sad that my time here is almost over.

I did more work on the background characters for Todd. Not much new to report, it's mostly been
revision work. There was some confusion about whether one background character was supposed to
be wearing clothes or not. After some debate, it was agreed that he would be naked. I had to
re-pose everyone around him to censor him, which was kind of tedious, but also pretty funny.

Earl survived last week's mystery plant massacre and is growing a new leaf to celebrate. He is
tall and wise now.

Mandy and the Shadow's in the Dark

This week, I completed a layout test on Monday, so mostly this week I was working on the
background characters and the Indiegogo Winners. Shadows in the Dark is the one of the scene’s
 name in Todd project. This scene is an important one which I spent a lot of time on. Each
character has to be rebuilt, since the angle in the scene is ¾ front, but the characters were
already built as front views, so they have to be rebuilt and fixed. As I mentioned before,
I like designing characters and posing them out, therefore, I am quite enjoying working on the
Shadow's in the Dark.

Mandy Creates The Mood!

This week we were working on the revised files, fixing some parts of drawings, and modeling the characters according to the rough drawing. On Wednesday, we had a short meeting on animation on how to do the animation, how to make the animation perfect, and also some tips on how to fix the symbols in Flash. The meeting took an hour long, and I gained a lot of knowledge and experience.

On Thursday, I started working on the layout test for the Todd project. The layout style is based on Hellboy, specifically focusing on creating the mood within the background. Because there are a lot of actions and emotions in the Todd project, so we are looking for more mood creations.

Elise Waits in Anticipation!

This week was pretty standard stuff. I worked some more on background characters for Todd mostly.
We also had a background painting test, which was fun! They haven't been reviewed yet, but I'm
hoping I did alright.

There was a big meeting yesterday where the animating process for Todd was discussed. They explained a lot of stuff about how to reuse animation effectively and how to hybridize. It was interesting, and there were some very impressive test animations!

On a less fun note, one of our office plants got beat up last night. Earl is fine, but I am concerned for his safety. Erin made him a nice name tag to try and scare off the attacker. Hopefully
he will be okay.

Juhi and the Background Test

This week we were assigned a background test so I've been working on creating a layout for the Todd feature. The style we're going for is Mike Mignola's use of harsh black shadows and bold colors for dramatic effect. I personally love the look and it's an inspiration for my style development. I think it fits the comic book style of Todd really well, and I am further excited to see the film in color!

I have also continued to work on designing and flashifying background characters, paying special attention to the Indie GoGo Funders. It was fun adapting to less exaggerated styles and getting the likeliness of the actual people.

~Juhi out~

Vincent Starts Posing

This week was a good week. I watched High Plains Drifter on the weekend and then decided to watch the entire Man with No Name trilogy afterwards. All I can say is that I made the right decision.

As of now, I'm putting the finishing touches on a foreground character for Todd. The character is a highschooler who's supposed to be walking from left to right on the screen. It's my job to rough out a pose and then go in to line and color it. It's essential that the acting comes across in the initial sketch.

-Vincent

Elise Gets a Free Coffee but Loses a Cintiq

I had to give up my Cintiq this week because a full-time employee needed it. I miss it
already, but I have an Intuos now, which works pretty well. Also, as a consolation prize
I got a voucher for a free coffee, which I haven't redeemed yet.

Today we got to see an extended Todd teaser that's going to air at a festival soon. It was
really exciting, I thought it looked great! I feel very lucky to be a part of this project,
albeit a very small part!

There's less than a month left of interning for me. I'm going to miss Earl. I have so many
life lessons to teach him before I leave.

Mandy Likes to Design!

After a long weekend, we got back to work. Instead of working on the main props and main characters, this week we were working on the background stuff, like background characters. There are a lot of passersby in the film, some of them have only one shot, and some have two to three shots or different angles. Compared with the main characters in the film, working on the passersby characters has more creative latitude. Since most of those passersby characters doesn’t have their own designed poses, I can design them based on the style of the main characters or by myself. It is really fun to work on, because I feel like I am playing a Role-playing game, and I can decide what stuff should put on my characters, and pick up the color I prefer. Moreover, I will get notes of how to modify those characters’ poses and designs to make them better, which is really helpful to improve my skills and I enjoy it. 

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