The 15th Animation Show of Shows toured through LA's major animation studios and one of those studios was Sony Animation.

I had one of the best screenings on the tour, and one of the best Q&As from the artists that work there. Marcelo Vignali, an incredibly talented art director, asked a really relevant question about the process from start to finish. He wanted to get a sense of how much our ideas changed from when we originally came up with the idea to the final product. For me, the answer to that question is basically, I try to preserve the original feel and intention all the way through the project. I try to make the film almost like a speed drawing, so I accept the technical mistakes along the way as long as the original spirit of the idea makes it all the way to the finished piece.

I was on tour through LA with my good friend Ula Aronova with her super cute film My Mom is an Airplane, Chris Landreth my good friend and fellow NFB filmmaker with his super eclectic film Subconscious Password, and the wonderful Ron Diamond co-founder of AWN and owner of Acme Filmworks.

We had lunch with Marcelo Vignali and the rest of his team, just talking about cinema and the creative process. A funny thing he said to me; he was watching my film and getting wrapped up in the story, when suddenly he was worried that I might ruin it by showing their faces at the end, or breaking out of the fantasy element of it, and he said with a smile "I was worried you would ruin it for me and ... you didn't... and I appreciate that." It was a great little moment for me.

Also in attendance was Rick Mischel the Vice-President of Sony Imageworks who I met at the Whistler Film Festival when my film won Best Canadian Shortwork.  Was great seeing him again and catching up. 

I loved my visit to Sony because they were so welcoming and they let us learn about and try out all kinds of proprietary software and hardware that they develop in house. I just hope one day these properties make it to the consumer level so that we can all get a chance to use them. 

And another artist who works at Sony, Franklin Londin took this 3D stereoscopic photo of us. His business card is actually a pair of red-blue glasses without the stems which I find so unique and if you have your own red-blue glasses you can see this photo in 3D!