Entering into the state-of-the-art Mr. X studio and surveying the scene, one can’t help but notice the many sets of eyes gazing back at you. Big reindeer eyes, that is, looking out from pretty much every one of the 28 computer screens in the room. For many of these sleigh-pullers, it’s time for their close-up, and their faces – with lips moving – fill the screens. Other buck and doe are playfully flying through the CG-magical midnight-blue air. Meanwhile, in the corner of the studio, a large life-size puppet reindeer with soft brown eyes is watching over the proceedings.

These reindeer games are all part of Mr. X’s large-scale assignment to create the animation for Blizzard, a US$10 million live-action/CGI family movie from Toronto’s Knightscove Entertainment. Brenda Blethyn, Kevin Pollak and the voice of Whoopi Goldberg star in this tale of a girl and her aunt who develop a friendship with an eccentric reindeer named Blizzard.

Christopher Plummer plays Santa Claus and LeVar Burton directs. The film, which shot in Toronto and Quebec City this winter, is expected to be released – via distributor 20th Century Fox – across North America for November/December. While live reindeer were used on location, more than 200 visual effects will be incorporated into the finished product, including many scenes where CG effects are added to footage of live reindeer to make their lips move.

Blizzard is the first large-scale project since Mr. X – TOPIX’ feature-film arm – opened its doors a year and a half ago.

‘Mr. X was built to work on large projects that would take eight months to a year – that was our plan in setting up our work stations and bringing on the talent we did,’ says Dennis Berardi, Mr. X president. After opening, Mr. X took on five smaller projects before landing Blizzard, creating effects for films such as Ararat and Men With Brooms.

‘Blizzard is on a different level than anything we’ve done before,’ continues Berardi. ‘The studio is involved, there’s big talent, and it will open on a couple of thousand screens, not a couple of hundred.’

Mr X. won this animator’s dream job after five competing shops made a pitch for the assignment.

‘We pitched purely on the creative,’ says Berardi. ‘We showed on our tape how reindeer fly, while other shops did things on more of a technical front. Ours really captured the imagination and the magic of it all. We asked ourselves, ‘What is the attitude of reindeer when they fly? What’s the color palette? How can we really capture the spirit of reindeer flying and playing tag in the air?’ They loved it. LeVar Burton said, ‘Wow. Now I really get that we’re making a movie about flying reindeer.’

The Mr. X mandate is to get involved with projects at the ground level. For example, before shooting began on Blizzard, the Mr. X team storyboarded the visual effects sequences, doing some rough animation. ‘A lot of the shots that we created and pitched got into the movie because LeVar liked them. We did 3D scenes where there are eight reindeer and five actors, and two of the reindeer are talking and the camera is moving. It’s tough to do that kind of blocking and it helped LeVar as a director visualized the scene. That’s one of the main reasons he went with us – we weren’t taking a post approach, and we obviously were going to be helping him make his movie.’

And that, says Berardi, is why Mr. X exists: ‘To partner with filmmakers, not just to be a location-based post service.’

Berardi admits that Mr. X doesn’t yet have any market presence but believes it soon will. In the meantime, it ‘benefits from the TOPIX vibe.’

‘I don’t think Mr. X would be possible anywhere else,’ he says. ‘It’s a great collaboration. There is high energy at an artistic level here and a real åcan-do’ vibe.’

Mr. X is currently looking at scripts, and getting involved in new projects by partnering with a producer or director, and creating one-minute advance teasers or ‘stings,’ to help new films pitch to get funding.

Meanwhile, as that part of Mr. X grows and begins to bring in new business, in-studio, it’s pretty much reindeer all around.