Ottawa Animation Fest '08 highlights!

A bunch of us went to Ottawa for the annual Animation Fest, and this year was fab! Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that The Celestial Ox made it into the Teletoon Scholarship Competition and was screening there....naw, that had nothing to do with it :) [BTW we got Voter's Choice, go Penguins!]

This was my second time there, and it was great! Saw many great shorts, and saw some amazing peeps - most fab for moi was Doug Sweetland [Director of Presto from PIXAR], Richard Williams [uber-animator who did Roger Rabbit!], and Eric Goldberg [animator extraordinaire legend from Disney]. See below for a pictorial overview of the fun!

Cliff, Alysia and I in front of some of the awesome buildings in Ottawa, we were walking to another screening.

Eric Goldberg giving a talk about character animation - awesomeness!!

Andy and Brock [fellow Celestial Ox animators!] at our Teletoon screening, yay!

Moi drawring at one of my fav places in Ottawa - Byward Market.

Alysia and I being silly amongst the sculptures.

We always take a pic of this ginormous spider outside the National Gallery of Canada. This one is hilare, from left to right: Alysia, Cliff [pretending to have succumbed to the spider's wrath], moi [doing a sort of praying mantis], Kenny [apparently thinking the spider leg is a vine], and Andy [making grand friends with the 8-legged horror].

Richard Williams at the 20th Anniversary screening of Roger Rabbit - so fab!!

Tams in front of more coolio architecture...it made all the walking much more enjoyable!

Alysia, moi and Tams enjoying a dog of the hot sort. Yummmm.

You can't see me, I have perfectly blended into the skinny peopled sculptures.

'The Celestial Ox' got selected for two festivals!

Some exciting news came my way in the last couple weeks, and I thought I'd do a special Ox-update post! The group film I animated on for my 3rd year group film this past year at Sheridan [see group film blog here], entitled The Celestial Ox has made it in two film festivals. Yay Mo-Cap Penguins! [Our studio name. 'Tis self-explanatory if ya think about it.]

It will be screened firstly in Los Angeles at the LA Shorts Film Fest on August 20.08 [SO exciting - wish I could be there!!], and secondly it will screen at the Ottawa International Animation Fest on September 20.08 - we made it as a finalist in the Teletoon Animation Scholarship category.

Me both excited and uber proud of my fellow penguins!

Ottawa Animation Fest 07!

We just got back tonight from a fun-filled weekend adventure at the Ottawa Internationl Animation Festival! It was my first time there, both for seeing the city and attending the festival. Ottawa was really beautiful and funky, it reminded me of a combo between Toronto, Winnipeg and New York City. Lovely!

And the festival was great!! I really lucked out, this year they were doing a 4-part tribute to the awesomeness of UPA animation, which is my FAV... so I got to screen a lot of Mr. Magoo that I had never seen before! Another major highlight was the Disney workshop where we got to meet and greet with the directors/animators who worked on the new Goofy short. Crazy cool.

In between all the walking and screening, I found some time to do some sketchin'... see above.

Here are a couple pics – good times at the festival!

A super cool chalk artist dude. We gave props.

Alysia and I outside the first venue on Friday night.

Tams in front of some shwanky parliament buildings, it was near one of the major screening venues.

Me being attacked by a giant spider. A typically normal day at the animation festival.