Clyde Henry Productions

In 2010 I had the amazing opportunity of working with an awesome group of artists on a short film called Higglety Pigglety Pop!, which was co-produced by the National Film Board and Warner Home Video.

Higglety was directed by Chris and Maciek, the talented creators of the Academy Award nominated Madame Tutli-Putli. It was an incredible honor to be able to work with them and their equally amazing team of puppeteers, set builders,  animators and VFX artists. At the time I had started as an intern and was later hired as a miniature prop and set builder, my first real job in the filmmaking industry.

I am extremely excited to say I am now reuniting with the Clyde Henry crew on their new short film Cochemare, again a mix of live-action and stop-motion, this time shot in stereoscopic 3D. I will be working with them part-time as a VFX compositor on Nuke when my freelance job at Woozworld allows it. It promises to be a very instructive and interesting project to work on, as I'll be expanding my knowledge of Nuke as well as learning to work in a stereo workflow.

If you'd like to know more about Clyde Henry's work, you can visit their website at www.clydehenry.com

First day at Woozworld!

Technically this was my second day at my new job, but I didn't have time to write last night so bear with me.

So first day at Woozworld was AWESOME! We're located on St-Laurent near Mont-Royal. The studio is fairly big I guess, with about 40-50 employees. (This is the awkward part were you can't remember anyone's name even though you were just introduced to them an hour before...but hey, I'll give myself a few weeks for that.)

I'm lucky to have my formation done by one of my friends from Concordia, Mike, which is super cool. I was also lucky to be able to jump right into production from day 1, which is really motivating. I'm already drawing clothes and hairstyles for some of Woozworld's characters, and sort of figuring out how to do things more efficiently as I go. I'm not super comfortable with Flash yet, but I've already learned a lot just in the past two days, so hopefully by the end of the month I'll be a pro (sort of)!

I'll be working from home for the rest of the week because my new office computer hasn't arrived yet. I'm already looking forward to starting work in my pj's tomorrow! I still can't believe I'm getting paid to draw cartoons. My 10 year-old self would be so excited right now (probably almost as much as my 23 year-old self)!

Here's a little snapshot from the Woozworld universe (none of it created by me). I'll be designing and illustrating a bunch of the clothes, accessories, furnitures, etc. available in the game (there are sooo many already, it's crazy!).

Also I figured I'd show the little clothing and hair design test I had done after my interview (after all, it won't ever be used in the game), which allowed them to evaluate whether or not I'd be good illustrator material or not. Looking back on it and having a learned a bit more on the job, there's a lot more I could have done with it, but hey, it still got me hired so I guess it was good enough!

If you want to learn more about Woozworld, check out their corporate site HERE.

Summer Craze

Hey guys!

So I've been a little inactive around here lately, but with good reasons (of course!). School ended for summer break about a month ago, and I've been suuuuper busy since. To tell you the truth, I can't quite believe it's only been a few weeks. It feels like I've crammed so much awesome stuff into the month of May it really feels like much longer.

So what awesome stuff you say?

Well I started off my break by putting together a simple yet pretty useful little portfolio website to showcase my work and support my many job applications for the summer.

fannyberthiaume.com

Thanks to the awesome people at Centre NAD, I was given the opportunity to participate in a really cool focus group at SAVA Transmedia, a young emerging gaming studio here in Montreal, playtesting one of their upcoming games and discussing it with members of their team.

I was also extremely lucky to land a part-time job with Ubisoft Montreal, hosting their exclusive Interactive Experience Container (basically a kickass 3D presentation to celebrate their 15th anniversary). The said Experience is being presented at several events throughout the summer, namely C2MTL, Chromatic, Mutek & Fantasia.

Not only was this a great experience altogether, allowing me to participate in some of the most exciting creative events in town, but it was also an amazing opportunity to create valuable contacts within the industry. I have met so many cool people, it's been a little dizzying. From these meetings a couple of potential projects may arise, so hopefully there'll be more news about that later on in the summer!

What else is new then? Well I am very excited to say that tomorrow I am starting a new job as a Flash Illustrator at Woozworld Inc.! Woozworld is a gaming/social online platform for tweens, and I will be designing a bunch of visual material for that. I am also proud to say I barely knew anything about Adobe Flash about 4 days before my interview, so it's been a good kick in the butt to finally get familiar with it.

Speaking of learning software, I also had a great opportunity to dust off my old After Effects knowledge with a nifty contract with Campagna Motors, who creates the T-Rex vehicles. I was hired to redesign their opening logo animation for the T-Rex brand, to be used on their instructional consumer videos. Below is the original T-Rex logo, which I did NOT design. I was only given the task to set it in a cool environment and animate it.

You can see the final result HERE.

So I am now getting ready to start a new job which promises to be super fun, gathering some more potential graphic design contracts, and working on securing a few more exciting opportunities for after this contract with Woozworld is done! Life has been so good to me for the past few weeks, hopefully the hard work will keep paying off!

Cheers!

Fanny