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They kind of ruined his life, but they also help teach him how to love and have friends. The cast is a found-family story with Sebastian, who is the older-brother-slash-father-figure, and then this trio of kids - Nine, Sticks and Kid - who find themselves employed on his fishing boat. Basically, the world of Port Harbour is built on old sailors’ misconceptions about the world, like the Earth is flat and any manner of fantastical creature is subject to exist. I have always been inspired by the ocean - specifically sea monsters on old maps and old sailors’ myths and folklore and stuff like that. Can you tell us a bit about that universe? I built that little story around the characters to show how they interact, and I figured out a lot of the current Port Harbour universe while I was in production on Scattershot. I knew that I wanted them to get hired to do something really mundane and absolutely mess it up in the worst, most chaotic way possible. I just knew the characters and their personalities, and how they interacted with each other. I didn’t even know that the ocean and nautical aspect was going to be part of it. When I wrote Scattershot, I didn’t actually have any of the world of Port Harbour built or even thought out. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise.Īnother test shot from my thesis film, Scattershot! I feel like this pretty much sums up the tone of the film #animation #shortfilm #characterart /D27RYsglPb- jade smania MaDoes Scattershot live within the world of Port Harbour?
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Heath recommended that I do Pitch THIS!, because it’s a really good experience and he thought I’d learn a lot. I reached out to Heath Kenny, Mercury’s Chief Content Officer, and was like: “Hey, can I talk about original content?” That propelled me to have the confidence to develop Port Harbour.
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Tom Bancroft reached out to me with an interest in my characters, and I got to meet him, which was amazing.
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I had been working on it and wasn’t planning on pitching it to anybody for a few years, ’cause I didn’t think anybody would want to listen to a little 22-year-old baby talking about their OCs. My thesis film was a very, very early instalment of it. I started working there, but I’ve had this idea for Port Harbour since third year. They also give an award to a thesis film every year, which I won. When they interviewed me and wanted to hire me, it was surreal. They were my dream studio because I absolutely love the work that they do and 2D rigged animation is my specificity. We had our industry day at Sheridan and Mercury Filmworks emailed me. Once I did, I fell more and more in love with animation. I heard that Sheridan was a really good school for it, so I just worked on getting in there. When I figured that out, it was like all my favorite things in one. I’ve always liked drawing, music and writing, and I hadn’t even considered animation as a career. In grade 10, we had to take a career test and I got animator. Hi Nico! Can you tell us about how and why you got into animation? The ambitious short features impressive cutout animation and character rigs. Scattershot by Nico Smania, credited as Jade. We caught up with Nico Smania to discover more about his experience animating Scattershot using Toon Boom Harmony, pitching Port Harbour and what’s next for the universe he is building. Now Smania is looking to develop Port Harbour into an animated series, blending fantastical characters with relatable stories, themes of individual identity and LGBTQ+ experiences.
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He then decided to enter, and ultimately won, the Pitch THIS! competition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2021. Smania was encouraged to develop Scattershot’s characters and the universe they inhabit, Port Harbour, into a pitch by Mercury Filmworks’ chief content office, Heath Kenney. The team at Mercury Filmworks loved Scattershot so much, they gave it their annual award for thesis films and offered Smania a position. He credits his small-but-dedicated Instagram following with helping it go viral. Sheridan College alum Smania’s thesis film, Scattershot, attracted significant attention both on his graduating class’ industry day and online - with over 1.1 million views on YouTube. For animator Nico Smania, it led to both. If their storytelling is strong, that film can lead to a studio job or serve as a platform to pitch their creative visions. An animation student’s thesis film represents a culmination of the skills they developed at school, and is also an opportunity to create a fully realized animated project.
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