INTERNS AT ANIMASAI STUDIOS
Here are the testimonials of a couple of our video game designer and developer students from Trios College in London, Ontario.
May 01, 2014
Chris Levette
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On January 6, 2014 I had started my 4 month journey at Animasai studios. In the previous months I had been taking a videogame programing course at TriOS College in London, ON and in order to complete the course
I needed to go through a 16 week internship. I had a friend of mine who knew the founder of the studio and was able to help me set something up. Now this studio was using programs that I had absolutely no background in,
so I had quite a bit of learning ahead of me. This internship was going to teach me a lot of the things I wanted to learn about but never really covered in the classes at the college. I enjoyed the coding part, but what I really
wanted to get into was the artistic side of things, and Animasai was going to be able to help me do just that.
The first month of the internship I was greeted by the man I would be learning from and working with, Animasai. By the end of the first two weeks, between him and my good friend Esteban, who was also in his last month
of his internship at Animasai Studios, I had already learned a whole lot of new material such as how to rig characters in Blender, and how to create vector images in GIMP. By the third week Animasai had given me work to do on
my first big project. He had me working on a music video for a band named Cayleah. For the next moth to month and a half I was working on the many characters that would go into this music video. Creating each of their individual
parts in GIMP and then importing them into Blender to create these puppet like characters. Each one of these characters, between Esteban and myself, had been created and rigged. Once all of those were finished, about 2 months
into the 4 month internship, all the characters had been ready to begin animating. But before I could start that there were a few other things that needed to be done. Aniasai had given me a list of a bunch of different props that needed
to be created for the video, ranging from spears all the way to fruit baskets and fans. When all of those were finished and appended with their respected character I was back to learning again. He had given me some videos that
needed to be edited in Adobe After Effects. I worked on this for about 2-3 weeks until finally all of the videos were ready to go.
In the final month I was finally starting to animate the characters that Esteban and I had created. This is where Animasai sat down with me and taught me some of most important things I needed to know about animation. He taught
me about the 12 Principles, but in his case there were 13. He had one that I believe really influences the work of many animators, and that is to love what you are doing. This is one thing that I was starting to realize. I was starting
to love the work I was doing. With some of the animations, yes I'll admit, they looked like I had just did it quickly and roughly just to get it out of the way and get away from my work for the day. But once I actually sat down at the job
site and worked side by side with Animasai, I realized I had made a big mistake rushing through those animations. When I sat with him I was able to finally realize that I love what I'm doing. I began to enjoy the work rather than just get
in the mind set of "if I just get through this I can go find something else to do".
It is now my last day as an intern at Animasai Studios and it's really frustrating because it hasn't felt like I've been here for 4 months. I have learned a lot since I started in January between learning how to use GIMP, how to animate
using Blender, and even learning how to rotoscope using After Effects. I had days where I didn't want to put my work down and others where I just got frustrated and didn't want to work anymore. But as I moved on through the months
my attitude towards the work began to change. One of the very first quotes I was given when I first started here was "Fake it till you make it", this quote kind of describes how I felt at the beginning of my internship. I just wanted to finish
my work so I could get away from it, and like the quote, I played along as if I was enjoying it, but I was really bored with it. But now, in the past month, I've realized that I'm really starting to love this work. I'm really thankful for everything
that Animasai has taught me through the course of the internship and I am also thankful for all the guidance he has given me throughout. He opened my eyes to see what I can really do in animation. Yes, I realize I have a long ways to
go, and I have a lot of things I need to learn, but he has taught me so much. I am looking forward to continuing to work with Animasai at Animasai and continue to learn from what he has yet teach me.
Background music by
Animasai,
founder of Animasai Studios.
Oct 31, 2014
Neilson Leslie
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When I was asked to write a testimonial of my internship at Anima Sai, it made me stop to recollect my thoughts and experiences for the past four months. It was a challenging period as I work fulltime outside of the internship along with my personal life of being a husband and father. As animation is not my strong suit, I embraced this opportunity to learn more about a skill that is out of my element. My life belief to learning is too be an empty vessel, for one cannot gain the full benefit of knowledge if vessel is full. I came into the internship with no knowledge or expectations as to what I know or will learn. This made my mind empty to learn the many lessons taught by Animasai. As part of my internship training, much of the significant work done was to be part of a music video project that has been ongoing.
Within the first month, it was an introduction to blender and the features. Animasai taught and provided guidance during this period on how to create 3D character models of all kinds; humanoid, snake, trees, pyramid, bowls, tools, etc; I found it to be fun and enjoyed the challenge of creating props, male and female characters and pose them as models for scenes that we later render for sketches. These sketches became part of the storyboard for the music video project. My initial sketches were bland in that they were just outlined sketches of the scene capturing the various elements from the render. After getting critique on what I am missing, there became a notable change to the sketches and there are a few that I quietly am proud of.
By the second month, the storyboard was completed and all the sketches were compiled into a single video file with the music to reflect how the timing of the music will coincide with the stills and eventually the animation. My next personal major achievement was tasked to build the market scene within the Mayan city. I took a collection of 3d props that created for this scene by other previous interns and myself and made an elaborate market. For the sketch-scenes created, I had to setup up camera positions and angles for where the actual animations will be recorded for the music video.
In the third and fourth month, Animasai introduced me to animation and his technique of animating characters, animals, clothing and weapons. Animasai taught me about the 13 principles of animation in which should guide me to make my animations have a soul and emotion. My first several animations were very rigid and mechanical in their actions. I initially didn’t grasp the principles. Many times, I would rely on Animasai to critique and point out my flaws and I then made the necessary changes. I made many mistakes and had to be corrected to achieve the right “feel” of the animation. Eventually, it seem I started to understand the concepts of the principles and put more thought of them into my animations. Some days I get the animation spot on and then other days requires a bit more work to get it just right.
In conclusion, I am eternally grateful to Animasai for the experience he has given me and the knowledge and instructions he gave during my internship. I hope to continue personally to improve on what foundation he has instilled in me and use it towards accomplishing my future goals.