Bendix Loves Beef Tongue and Hair Animation.

Halløj alle sammen!

My weekend at Cherry's place was incredible! She showed me a bunch of new food and I can now say that I have a deep craving for beef tongue, preserved egg and matcha ice-cream. It's right up my ally, it's savory and full of flavor! She also has the most adorable dog. 

 

Monday I was assigned a laughing shot – laughing is incredibly hard to get right without making it look like the character is shaking like a coke bottle full of mentos, but it's also fun to get a challenge and experiment until you get it right.

Tuesday we went out for Karaoke and it's probably one of the funniest things I've tried while being here. I was really nervous at first, but seeing how Ash and Aaron screamed their lungs out and everyone was laughing, I dared to be just as ridiculous despite not being able to hit even half of the notes (I'm sorry for any bleeding ears I might have caused)! At work I was also assigned a shot where I got to do hair animation!!!! I couldn't stop writing to Cherry about how excited I was and I still am! Hair and clothes are my favorite things to animate! My shots this week have been challenging, which has sadly slowed me down significantly, but thankfully they've been a lot of fun. 

We also carved a bunch of pumpkins at the studio before going out for Karaoke, which is yet another thing that I've never tried before. There was a lot of trial and error but in the end, my pumpkin ended up with a decent face. His name is Gregory.

Today we're going out for a ladies only lunch at a vegan place and tomorrow we're going to watch Cowboy Bebop and play games! The weekend is pretty packed and I'm really looking forward going to High Park and see if all the leaves have changed color, especially since I've been told that it's one of the most beautiful things to see when you're in Canada, so Canada, you have a lot to live up to now.

Next week is my last week, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to sneak in one last blogpost. If not, then I won't say goodbye but see you all later, as I hope to come back to say hello in the future at least once more!

- Bendix

Bendix Becomes Increasingly Canadian!

Hello again! 

This is my second to last blogpost. I only have one official week left here but I asked if I could come in for a few extra days as I'm still in Toronto a week after the internship is over, so maybe this is my third to last blogpost? I've grown to love the studio and the people here so much that I already know now that the trip home will be bittersweet.

This weekend we celebrated David and Kosta's birthday and the day after I went to my third life-drawing session ever! It was very relaxing to just focus on drawing whatever was before me and on all the technical stuff, rather than having to come up with an image in my mind first. In the evening Kris and I went swing dancing again and according to him, I'm doing really well! I'm going to believe what he says as he, in my mind, is a swing-dance-master. Just the fact that he can actually move and not trip over himself makes him a dance guru compared to me. 

We went out yesterday to play ping-pong and other table games and it ended up being an incredibly late evening but with tons of fun and good laughs, and speaking of laughs – Rich insisted on paying for my coffee a few days ago, but I'm really bad at letting people pay for me (despite that I had bought him a coffee months ago), so I slammed the money back in his palm. He said that it was very Canadian of me. 

Today I'm going to visit Cherry and stay over at her place for the entire weekend, and if all goes according to plan, we're going to have at least three food adventures, play Mass Effect and Bioshock and watch some horror movies! 

I've also hit a milestone for animation and I reached 21 seconds this week! It feels awesome to get faster and faster week by week and even more so to hear the reactions from the creators of the original show. They're always super positive and engaged and their enthusiasm for the movie is very contagious! 

And one last note: at the beginning of the week, the studio was used to film a few scenes for a tv-series with the smiley's working in the background, and now I can finally say: LOOK MA' I'M ON TELEVISION!

- Bendix 

Bendix Makes Comparisons and Conquers Flash!

Plenty of things have happened this week. I got a package full of Danish (and some Swedish) candy from my parents, we went out dining at a Danish-ish place to test just how Danish it was, we've been playing around with helium balloons, covering our ears because of a fire alarm testing and Cherry left for HK and Japan and won't be back for two weeks ( :( ).

The differences between Canada and Denmark are becoming more and more clear every day. I feel that it's the subtle differences that set us apart, besides the obvious things like architecture, our history and language, it's also our different taste in food and humor that I find deeply interesting. Thus I was pleasantly surprised when three people from the studio actually liked the licorice with salmiakki that I brought in. When we went to the danish restaurant, it seemed that most people liked the food! I won't go into detail about what was wrong and what was right about the food, but all in all it was a fun experience and I was really excited to get to share something danish with the rest of the studio. Ever since I got here, I've become more aware of how much I actually appreciate my own country, and I think I've talked more about Denmark in these two months, than I have in my entire lifetime. It's not because I'm homesick, on the contrary I LOVE being here, and I love how being here has made me more aware of how my own country is put together.

Another thing that I think the entire studio knows by now, is that Sweden and Denmark have a love hate relationship for each other. It's our duty to hate each other and it's deeply rooted in our history, but if I meet a Swedish person outside of Scandinavia, we will greet each other like family! You love the people you hate....yeah?

But more importantly, we don't like to get mixed up, hence why when I showed Darien our Danish beers, Darien and I are no longer friends. It was nice as long as it lasted. Only kidding, Darien is great.

 

 

And I'm finally conquering Flash! The program is less scary than when I first started out and I'm getting up to speed. I feel like the style of Todd is more natural for me to both draw and animate in, and for the first time in a long time – weekends are becoming a bore, and I genuinely look forward to Mondays so I can come back to work, see people and get cracking with my scenes! I'm so happy that everyone always has time to help and give me advice, as it has really helped making the experience of learning a new program, a lot less scary than it could have been.

 

The scenes are also really fun and challenging and a good mix of having different characters with various traits to keep in mind while portraying them, and a mix of both puppet-animated scenes, and full on skewed hardcore perspective and classically 2D animated scenes. It feels good to try both out and be trusted to do both :)

- Bendix