Awards and Honors:
Special Prize, Hiroshima International Animation Festival
Special Mention, Premio Simona Gesmundo Animation Festival
Prize for Best Animated Work, Chelyabinsk No-festival of Video Art and Animation
Screenings:
Athens Video Art Festival, Athens, Greece, May, 2012.
Istanbul Animation Festival, Istanbul, Turkey, November, 2011.
Animatic 2011, Pamplona, Spain, November, 2011.
Punto y Raya Festival 2011, L’Alternativa Curated Program, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain, November, 2011.
Big Cartoon Festival, Moscow, Russia, November, 2011.
Golden-Kuker, International Animation Festival, Sofia, Bulgaria, September, 2011.
Santa Rosa International Film Festival, Santa Rosa, CA, September, 2011.
Northwest Animation Festival, Portland, OR, June, 2011.
Visual Music Concert, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, May, 2011.
Cinequest Film Festival, San Jose, CA, March, 2011
Savannah International Animation Festival, Savannah, GA, February, 2011
Animpact Animation Festival, Seoul, Korea, December, 2010
2010 Animation, Art Basel Miami, Miami, FL, December, 2010
Hiroshima 2010 Special, Animax TV, Tokyo, Japan, November, 2010
No-festival of Video Art and Animation, Chelyabinsk, Russia, November, 2010
17th International Film Festival Etiuda & Anima 2010, Krakow, Poland, November, 2010
Kinofest 2010, International Digital Film Festival, Bucharest, Romania, November, 2010
Tindirindis 8th International Animation Film Festival, Tindirindis, Lithuania, November, 2010
Prize Simona Gesmundo for Animated Films, Cetraro, Italy, October, 2010.
FIA Festival 2010, Forum for International Animation, Stockholm, Sweden, October, 2010
London International Animation Festival, London, UK, September, 2010
Strasbourg International Film Festival, Strasbourg, France, August, 2010
Hiroshima International Animation Festival, Hiroshima, Japan, August, 2010.
New Filmmakers, Contemporary Experimental Animation, New York, NY, July, 2010
Melbourne International Animation Festival, Melbourne, Australia, June, 2010
Vesak 2010 International Buddhist Film Festival, Colombo, Sri Lanka, June 2010
backup_festival 2010, Bauhaus Film Institute, Weimar, Germany, May, 2010
SoundImageSound VII, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA, March 2010
Videographies 21, Digital and Experimental Film Festival, Liege, Belgium, March 2010
ByDesign10, Northwest Film Forum, Seattle, WA, March, 2010
Anima2010, Brussels Animation Festival, Belgium, Feb.2010
Iota Salon, UCLA Art and Media Dept, Los Angeles, Ca Jan.2010
Music &Technology Concert, DeMontfort University, Leicester, UK, Oct.2009
Stash DVD magazine, #60, Sept. 2009
Siggraph 2009 Computer Animation Festival, New Orleans, LA, Aug.3-7, 2009
This animation is a very loose and abstract meditation, inspired in part by the 17th Century Japanese screen painting by Kano Tanyu, “Night Fishing with Cormorants”, and by the very stark and beautiful novel of Akira Yoshimura, “Shipwrecks”. I am not telling a naturalistic story in this piece, but rather I have tried to make a work that will hold in equal reverence the spirit of the bird, the fish, and the fisherman.
Music by The Headroom Project, “Winter Skies”, from the CD, Dominatus Illuminato Mea.
Is there a link between the Japanese tradition of painting and your film? (iota center interview)
sumi ink AND drawing, both the inky look of the final piece, and the drawing process inform the entire piece.
I work very free-form in Cinema 4D, moving around as if I’m painting on a large canvas. I don’t use any sketches or preparatory studies for my 3D work. I use the motion sketch tool in Cinema to draw everything free-hand, all the movement of the shapes, even cameras, even some of the smaller parameter values I create using an improvised “scratcher” that is driven by simple expressions.
Did that style inform some of the choices you were making when designing
this film? (iota center interview)
I wanted something very simple with the feeling of compressed energy that can be found in some classical ink drawings — so I intentionally limited myself in Cinema 4D to five simple 3D cubes, and created the entire animation with this restricted palette of shapes. I choreographed many small interactions between these basic shapes, always looking for a balance of stillness, space, movement, coming together, exploding together. Then I moved these 3D renders into the VJ application, Modul8, where I could explore further association of time, sequencing, and effects — I composed the final mix using this real-time VJ software and a midi controller. Audio was added after the final visual mix was completed.
