Pencilbite Studio, a new student-run animation studio, has launched with plans to produce an independent animated short film.
Established this summer, Pencilbite Studio is Penn’s first student-led 2D animation studio. They will host drawing sessions, movie screenings, and guest lectures open to the greater Penn community in an effort to cultivate passion around animation. The primary focus for the Studio team will be putting together a five-minute animated short film by the end of the academic year.
College senior and founder and director of Pencilbite Studio Lilian Liu was inspired to start the club after an animation challenge last year where her team was tasked with creating a 30-second animation from scratch in under 24 hours. The group she worked with during the challenge now forms the majority of Pencilbite’s executive board.
“It was not good,” she said about their 30-second creation. “But I think the atmosphere and the teamwork that came out of something like that was so fun.”
Liu, a design editor for The Daily Pennsylvanian, thought about creating a longer film for her senior thesis and the positive memories of the challenge convinced her to create a permanent space for animation rather than pursue an independent project.
“I knew the people to make it happen,” she said. “I think the pieces have been existing, someone just needed to put them in place.”
After their first application and interview cycle, the team has grown well beyond the original founding board.
“We just really wanted people who were as excited about it as we were… [People] who love to make art and would love to have an excuse to make art throughout the semester for projects that would become bigger than themselves,” College junior and lead character designer for Pencilbite Collin Wang said.
For the fall, Liu said, they will focus on pre-production, drawing from both industry and independent practices to figure out how to develop a film with a big team.
Formal production will begin in the spring semester, and by the end of it, College sophomore and member of the visual development team, Insia Haque — a DP staffer — said they hope to have a standalone piece they are “really proud of.”
Despite the passion and excitement within Pencilbite Studio, the members themselves are not seasoned animators. But they aren’t uncomfortable with this fact, the team said.
“I don't think I'm alone in saying the animation industry is something that feels very intimidating,” Wang, a design editor for the DP, said, "It feels like there's a lot of hoops and connections and just fate that goes along with getting there.”
The team has a plan in place to overcome these industry obstacles. Drawing events, animated movie screenings, and industry alumni speaker events have already been planned and are set to take place throughout the year.
“We're building a space on campus where we can really foster that passion for animation and hopefully get people exposed to real industry practices,” Engineering senior and Pencilbite producer Cindy Xu said.
The Pencilbite Studio team said that the club is filling a much-needed hole in the Penn community.
“Penn has a serious lack of creative clubs that are actually producing creative material and material that other Penn students can watch and admire,” College senior and member of the Production team Erica Messics said.
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