I moved out to Vancouver at the end of August 2013 to chase my dream of working as a professional animator. I didn't really know many people in the Vancouver, and I didn't actually have a job lined up, but I knew that coming out to Vancouver would probably give me my best shot at getting into the industry. So with the help of my fabulous parents, I packed up a (very full) van, and headed out on my way.
This is where I sat for 2.5 days.
And spending a lot of time with one of my new roommates, Owen.
Around the end of October/beginning of November 2013, after applying to many different studios I finally got an interview at a studio called Nerd Corps Entertainment. They offered me a position as an Animation PA (or basically a junior animator) working on one of their animated tv shows, and I was incredibly excited to actually get the opportunity to animate for a living. The switch to a tv production schedule, after having a decent amount of time to work on shots in school was a bit of a shock to my system in the beginning, and I had to put in a lot of work and extra hours to stay on top of everything. Having to do such a high quantity of animation in a short period of time really pushed me to be better and more efficient, and I got the chance to animate many different things in different shots. Nerd Corps also used Softimage XSI as their animation software, so I had the added challenge of learning a whole new program while trying to figure out how to work on an actual production. I luckily had an incredibly talented and helpful team of people to work with and get help from, and I learned so much from them in my time there. Over the course of the 2 years that I was at Nerd Corps (and later DHX Media after the company was acquired) I worked on 3 shows; Endangered Species, Slugterra and Kate and Mim Mim (with a very brief 2 weeks on one of the Monster High Movies). I'll save the details about them for another post though!