Getting Started As A Supervisor / Lead
A supervisor's role is to oversee the creative and technical aspects of visual effects production, ensuring that the final output meets the project's artistic vision, quality standards, and deadlines.
A key aspect of this is to ensure your team knows what they are working on.
1. Manage Your Department
Departments are designed to help supervisors and artists focus on their tasks. Once a user is linked to one or more departments, supervisors and artists gain direct access to a filtered view of all tasks associated with that task type.
Departments are also used to define what metadata columns appear for users within that department. If a metadata column is linked to a department, then they will only show up for users in that department. If a metadata column is not associated with a department, they will show up for everyone.
To manage your departments, select the Department page under the Admin section from the main navigation menu.
Creating Departments
Defining your studio's Departments is typically the first step in setup, as multiple objects such as people and task types are linked to a department.
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By default, Kitsu provides some example departments to help you get started.
If you need to create more departments, you can click on the Add a department button:
When adding a department, you need to define:
- The name of the department
- A color (it will be displayed as a small round circle next to a column task type or a custom column)
Click on Confirm to save your changes.
Once you finish creating the department, your page should look like this. Each department has a unique name and a corresponding color:
Update Departments
To update a department simply stay in the Departments page and hover your cursor over the department row you wish to edit and click the Edit icon.
Delete Departments
To remove a department, hover over the department row you wish to select and click the Delete icon.
2. Assign Tasks
In Kitsu, a task is a fundamental element used for planning, organizing, and tracking various aspects of your production.
Assigning a task to a user offers several benefits:
- You have a clear understanding of who is responsible for each task.
- Users are aware of their assigned tasks.
- Users can log time spent on each task.
- You can monitor individual workloads.
- Task groups by user are visible on the detailed task type page.
- The team schedule provides an overview of your studio.
- You can forecast team productivity.
- You can track the actual performance of your team.
Assign Tasks From the Global Page
Once you've added all your users to the production, it's now time to assign your first task!
Definition
In Kitsu, tasks from each task type are visually represented by the Status of the task cell, as shown below.
Click the status on the task that you want to assign.
You'll then see the comment panel appear on the right side of the screen, containing various options for configuring that task.
Then, click on the assignee button to open the assignment dialogue
This is where you can assign users to the task. Click into the box to reveal a popup with available users. Alternatively you can start typing the users name to quickly narrow a specific user. Select the user you want to assign, and click on the assign to selected task button to complete the assignment.
Note
You can assign more than 1 user to a single task
You can also assign a user to multiple tasks simultaneously. First, you'll need to select the tasks you want to assign. You can do this by holding Ctrl / Cmd on your keyboard and clicking on the tasks you want to select. Alternatively, you can use the Shift key to select a range of tasks. You'll notice that the selected tasks are highlighted in blue.
Once you have your tasks highlighted, select a user to assign and confirm your selection by clicking the Confirm button. Similarly, you can use the unassign from selection option to remove these assignments.
Now, you can see the artist's avatar next to each of the task's status.
You can toggle the visibility of task assignments on or off by using the Show/Hide Assignments button located at the top of the spreadsheet 
.
Keep in mind that task assignments can determine what a user sees, depending on their role (for instance, vendors need to be assigned to a task before they can view anything).
With your assignments completed, everyone knows their tasks and responsibilities!
Assign Tasks From the Detailed Task Type Page
You also have the option to assign tasks from the detailed task type page. To access this, click on the column header of the task type.
Next simply click on a status to open the comment panel. From there, you'll have the same options available as on the global page. You can select one or multiple tasks simultaneously to assign a user.
Assign Tasks as a Department Supervisor
From the global shots / asset page, your view is automatically filtered by My Department. This shows you tasks from your departments Task Type and the Custom Columns linked to your department.
When you assign one or several tasks to someone, you will notice that you only have access to people from your department. This makes it faster to find the right artist for the task.
Assign Tasks from the Production Schedule
In Production Menu > Schedule, you can click the button Assign Tasks to assign tasks in batch to your team by task or asset type.
It's much faster than hand-picking each task to assign manually.
Next Steps
3. Bid Estimates
Estimating the time for each task can feel overwhelming, but the benefits far outweigh the effort. By filling out task estimations, you can:
- Clearly see the estimated days for any task in your production.
- Easily compare task estimates with actual time taken, allowing you to more accurately forcast tasks in the future.
- Adjust tasks from the entity schedule or team schedule once they have estimations, start, and due dates.
- Help your artists stay organized and be aware of the time they should spend on each task.
- Improve forecasting for your current and future productions.
Kitsu offers various features to help you easily track, review, and forecast task estimates. Let's look at some of the features that enable you to do this.
Add an Estimate for a Task
To get started, click on the name of a task type.
You'll then be taken to the Detailed Task Type view. Here you can see a list of of every task of that specific task type, along with additional details.
To add an estimate to a task, click on the Estimate (Est.) field and input the number of days. You can select multiple tasks with ctrl / cmd or shift and apply the same estimate across all selected tasks.
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The duration represents how long your task actually took and is calculated automatically from logged time. We will cover this in more detail later.
You can also define a Start date by clicking into the field, and choosing a data from the pop-up calendar.
The Due date is automatically calculated based on Estimate and Start Date provided.
Detailed Task Type View Features:
Here is a summary of the cases and features you can leverage from the detailed task type view.
- See and change the status of tasks
- Assign people to tasks
- Add an estimate for the task (in days)
- View the cumulative sum of logged time from an artists timesheet
- Track the number of back-and-forths with the retake status
- Add a start date for the task using the calendar picker
- View the auto-generated due date based on the start date and estimate
- See the WIP and Feedback dates automatically filled in
- Monitor the latest comment section to keep an eye on the latest activity for this task type
Forecasting Team Speed and Bidding Estimates
Click on the name of a Task Type to open its dedicated page. On this page, you can access three tabs: Tasks, Schedule, and Estimation. To help you set accurate estimates and forecast your team's speed, we'll focus on the Estimation tab.
The left half lists the tasks with their assignments and the number of frames (1). Based on the FPS you have set for the production, the number of seconds will be automatically calculated (2).
Definition
Quotas visualize your team speed.
You can see on average how many shots, frames, or seconds the artist needs to complete daily to finish all tasks within the estimated number of days.
The right half shows the entire department team (based on the assignments you made), the number of shots they need to complete, the number of frames and seconds, and the average quota. You will also see the Remaining line, which gives you the current status of your team.
The last column is the Estimation. To modify the estimate, hover over the row with your mouse and click the editable area. You can also select multiple tasks simultaneously to edit them all at once.
Every time you change the Estimation (in the number of days), you will see that the Average Quota updates in real time.
For more information about the Schedule tab, refer to Task Type Schedule.
Bidding Estimates by Artist
The Estimation page can also be viewed from a per-artist perspective.
On the left, you have all the tasks sorted by artist, along with their number of frames and seconds. On the right, you have a summary of your team, with one line per artist showing the total number of assigned tasks, total number of frames and seconds, and the updated total number of estimated days.
With this information, Kitsu can calculate different estimated Quotas: per Second, per Frame, and per Task.
You can now fill the Estimation column on the left and see the result on the right. As soon as you fill in an Estimation for a task, the artist's row will update on the right.
This allows you to ensure the distribution of tasks among your team members is equal and helps to understand their estimated quotas for production. You should consider artist's experience and the difficulty of each task when doing this.
Changing Priorities
Priorities are often changing during a production, and you may want to easily highlight this change in priority to your team.
To do this, click on the space near a task's status (1).
The action box will appear.
Click on the icon in the action menu to choose Change Priority.
There are four levels of priority: Normal, which is the default value for all tasks, High, Very High, and Emergency. Save the changes with the Confirm button.
As with changing statuses or assignments, you can change the priority across multiple tasks at the same time by selecting the tasks, and choosing Change priority of the selected tasks.
You will now see exclamation marks next to the task status. The more exclamation marks there are, the more urgent the task is.
- (1) is Normal
- (2) is High
- (3) is Very High
- (4) is Emergency
4. Daily Supervision Tasks
A supervisor will typically have tasks assigned to them in addition to supervising your department. You need to split your time between completing your work and managing your team.
Once the assignments and estimates are done, you can focus on the day-to-day operations. To easily see an overview of tasks from your department, you can click on your task type name from any page.
Once on the detail page, your first action is to click on the Display tasks as a contact sheet 
button.
Now, you can easily hone in on tasks that require your attention using the built-in filters. For example, say you want to see only the tasks that are not done yet. In this case, you can filter tasks with the -done status, along with adding a Due Date Status filter, to show tasks that are Due This Week.
You can easily enable / disable filters to quickly hone in on the right information.
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If you need more information about a task, click on it's name to open the comment panel on the right.
5. Team Schedule
As a studio manager, staying informed about team activities is crucial. For a comprehensive overview of each department's activities, the Team Schedule provides valuable insights.
To access the Team Schedule, navigate to the main menu (
) and click on Team Schedule under the Studio section.
In the Team Schedule, on each row you'll find a list of all personnel in the studio.
At the top of the page, you can adjust the displayed timeframe by selecting the Start Date and End Date, as well as adjust the Zoom Level for a more detailed or broader view.
Additionally, you have the option to hone in on a specific Department or individual Person.
In cases where an artist has multiple simultaneous tasks, these tasks will be stacked atop one another for clarity.
You can manipulate each task by selecting and moving it around as needed. These tasks are directly linked and reflected in the task type schedule, and can be edited in both areas.
Managing Your Department's Schedule
As a Supervisor, you can access your team's schedule the same way, from the main menu under the Studio > Team Schedule section. From this page, you can see all the artists in your current department working on your project. You can expand a person's schedule to see the details of their tasks.
From there, you can:
- Move tasks to change their start and due dates.
- Adjust the length of tasks.
- Drag and drop tasks to reassign them to different team members.
- See days off.
6. Timesheets
As a Supervisor, you may also be responsible for monitoring your team's hours. The Timesheet page shows how many hours they work daily, weekly, and monthly.
It's important to highlight abnormal patterns such as extra hours, sick days, or lack of vacation. The timesheet view can provide a high-level overview of where artists are spending their time, which can help you take care of your team to ensure they are not burning out.
7. Review Previews
Typically, when an artist finishes a task, they call the supervisor for a review. But frequent interruptions can be unproductive and make it difficult to maintain focus.
To avoid this, set a specific timeframe for reviews. This approach benefits both you and your team by providing a structured schedule. Artists will know when they can expect feedback and can plan their work accordingly, while you can dedicate uninterrupted time to your own tasks.
Click the My Checks button at the top of the screen to see a list of all your department's WFA tasks.
This list covers all relevant Productions, Task Types, and Task Statuses. As with other pages in Kitsu, you can click on a Status to open the Comment Panel on the right and review tasks one by one.
Alternatively, you can use the Build playlist from list button to create a playlist with all the tasks on the list. This playlist has the same options as other views, allowing you to open the comment panel, compare versions and task types, and add annotations.
Another option is to go to the Task Type Page and change the Display as contact sheet. For example, you can filter by Due Date Status and select Due this week.
From here, you can click on the contact sheet to open the comment panel or select several tasks to create a playlist.
8. Review Concepts
If you're a Concept Artist, you can upload and share concepts for review. Once your artists upload a concept, the supervisor or director can review it.
When your artists upload a concept, you can review it through the navigation menu at the top of the screen by selecting the Concepts page.
On this page, you can see all uploaded concepts along with their status, assignment, and linked assets.
To review a concept, click on its status to open the comment panel. You can enlarge the comment panel or enter fullscreen. You can then write a comment, set the status as Approved or Rejected, and confirm your changes with the Post button.
You can narrow down the page using the Status filter to display all concepts with a Neutral status. Additionally, you can filter by artist and change the sort order to better hone in on the data you need to review.
