Supervising Director Jayson Thiessen visited Ponychan!!

[GraphiteDoodles]

(EDIT: Oops, for forgot one of this answers!)

The supervising director of MLP:FiM came to visit PonyChan! (There was a bit of doubt, but it was in fact confirmed to be him via his Twitter account.)

Because this was an epic and memorable thread, it has been put in "Twilight's Library", PonyChan's archive.

You can find the thread here:

http://www.ponychan.net/chan/arch/res/6286.html

The thread started with him saying this:

i'm the supervising director of the show and I just wanted to say hi to you guys and that all of us on the production team really love the enthusiasm and excitement you have for the show. We work hard to bring you the best ponies we can and your response has been incredible! It really makes it worthwhile and exciting for us. I love all the great macros and fan art, I save the best ones for my desktop.

thanks to all for your support and feedback!

sorry for the sappy post, but I mean it.

He also fielded a couple questions throughout the thread, such as Derpy's origin. (Also, the board wordfilters "someone" and "somebody" to "somepony")

derpy truly came from the fans... some cheeky animator stuck her in the BG with her eyes weird.. i saw it but left it in cuz it made me chuckle (and hasbro didnt catch it) then i couldn't believe it when somepony pointed her out . we loved the response so much that when we were finalizing the episodes, whenever we would catch the grey pony in the BG I'd call for a revision on her eyes to make them DERP. thats why you don't see them crossed again until several episodes in... we had finished a bunch before she was born. we did it without Lauren's blessing actually and i was a bit aprehensive how she would react. but she loved it and Derpy remains.

He had this to say about working with the voice team:

i love the voice team. i couldnt have asked for a more awesome bunch! ashleigh ball has a band called "hey ocean" check it out. you can see what she looks like.

Tabitha (rarity) is a total goof, and she always has cookies. its always fun to record them. we sometimes get pickups when a read is a bit off from what the drawings are or if we change something or there's a clarity issue.

Mods were still trying to figure out whether Jayson was legit at this point, and it didn't seem Jayson knew his way around *chans too well. Someone had asked him who voiced the mule in Ep. 4:

yes i'm a chan dummy. none taken. (by the way, the voice of the mule in episode 4 is the co-director James Wootton... we call him Wootie)

People of course asked about upcoming stuff:

i don't want to give too much away about whats upcoming. i could get in trouble.... it happened to our composer already... when that happened all hell broke loose. it was fun to see how fast the winter wrap up song exploded on the internet. its hard to keep up with the ponytrain. thanks again all! i'll be around...

To set people at ease about the composer:

Daniel (the song composer) did not get in trouble.. its all good.

His final thoughts before parting ways:

when i was first approached to direct MLP i was harshly skeptical. but once i saw that what Lauren had done with the property i was hooked.

i vowed to make sure the show was made properly entertaining... but i am not taking all the credit. its a collaborative effort. Lauren wrote great characters and created this world. the writers, storyboard artists, designers, layout, animators, music, score, sound fx, voice.. it has to all come together and become one. and everypony at every stage has put their love and blood sweat and tears into it.

listen to me.. i sound like i'm giving an acceptance speach.... geez. ok i'll go now. i'm supposed to be reviewing a storyboard...

thanks again!

Every interaction with every member of the production crew has been so positive. I've already had heaps of respect and love for the guys who put together the show, but the fact that members of the production team are willing to so publicly give their thanks and supports is absolutely HUGE! I love those guys even more than I did before.

What's more, I love how very warm and friendly PonyChan was. We didn't know if he was a troll (which is filtered to "parasprite" on the image board), but I loved how we welcomed him anyway. It was a truly beautiful thing to see so much genuine and heartfelt thanks come from everyone. =)

[GraphiteDoodles]

I'm also tickled that it was my question he answered about the voice team! (I go by "Heartmend" on that board.)

I asked: "Um, how much work do you get to do with the voice actors? If you do, what's it like? And speaking of voice tracks, do you ever find you need to re-record lines at all?"

[Teh_Brawler]

That's really cool. I'm hoping at some point someone on that team finds this site.

[RCTwilightSparkle]

Oh wow thanks for posting this! that is SO awesome

[Puck]

I didn't see this on Ponychan when it happened? I must've been asleep. ;(

*Missed MLP History^ That is amazing and i'm glad the creators actually went that far to check in with their fanbase.

DAY MADE!

[SunsetSombra]

And this is another reason why this fandom is already leaps and bounds over everything else...

The Creators give a hoot about the show and the people watching it.

Ponies - Bringing world peace, one Episode at a time!

[buxy]

I love how enthusiastic and positive everyone involved in production is about interacting with the fanbase. It's.... ~magical~

[Faun]

That is actually really cool. I love the way they actually care about the fanbase.