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September 11
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September 12
Holy G, the planet's guardian angel, struggles to recover the Mo-Nad's degenerating baby-form.
Director: Jack-Henry Lee
Jack-Henry Lee is an animator and multimedia artist making funny, gross, and spiritual independent films about cycles of degeneration and the pervasive power of love in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, in 2024 with a BFA in 2D Animation and Digital Art.
Corentin, a slender and reserved young man, comes across a video of a muscular, charismatic man encouraging him to go to the gym. Intrigued, he decides to check it out, but discovers a place with a strange atmosphere, where the members have a strikingly unusual appearance.
Director: Anna Murie
Made over the course of a three day animation challenge, Bluebird follows a lowly animator who, by way of catastrophic computer error, releases a peculiar force of chaos in the world.
Directors: Toby Duska, Damon Orcherton, Jack Hornecker
The Grease Pencil trio (Toby Duska, Jack Hornecker, and Damon Orcherton) are the creators of Bluebird, a short film crafted for the 19th annual Animation Lockdown, a 72-hour animation challenge hosted by Calgary’s Quickdraw Animation Society. This film stands as the trio’s first collaborative production effort.
Toby Duska is an experienced puppeteer and stop motion animator who served as the film’s primary stop motion artist. Damon Orcherton is a digital animator and sculptor who served as the film’s main 3D artist and compositor. Rounding out the three, Jack Hornecker is a digital animator and illustrator who established the look of the film as the set designer and lead storyboard artist.
In an era where the boundary between material and digital worlds grows thin, the final film combines traditional and digital animation techniques with the aim of sharing its creators’ love for animated storytelling in all its many forms.
“TRICHOTILLOMANIA” tells the story of one girl’s Google-search-gone-wrong to find out why she can’t stop pulling out her hair.
Director: Kelly Schiesswohl
Kelly Schiesswohl (Shees-wall) is a 21 year old director and motion designer currently based out of New York City. Her most recent work could be described as “Like a hotdog. It takes the most slimy, overlooked, underbelly of life and turns it into something tasty and erotically shaped”. She will be attending Hunter College Integrated Media Arts Master program in the fall to continue her filmmaking journey of making people laugh, cry, and lay awake at night considering their mortal chains. She uses her endless knowledge of late 90’s-early 2000’s toys, media, and ephemera to inform her work... and to bore unsuspecting strangers on the subway.
On the outskirts of a future city in what used to be Sweden, Vidya and her dad live with others in a small community. The grown-ups talk about something lurking in the ruins of the city center, something they call "the Stray." Vidya, who likes to do things her own way, pulls away from her friends. Today, she doesn't want to help with the chores either. Instead, she's worried about the strange threat outside their safe home. She decides to protect everyone from the Stray, but soon finds herself lost.
Directors: Anna Drake, Marjo Palokangas
Marjo Palokangas and Anna Drake are Stockholm-based directors and animators with a shared background in storytelling and animation from Stockholm University of the Arts. They have collaborated on several projects and bring complementary artistic strengths and a strong visual sensibility to their work.
Marjo Palokangas works across film, theatre, and installation art. She has created animated projections for prominent stages such as Unga Klara and Marionetteatern, and exhibited her own multimedia installations. Her animation work for “Historien om Bodri” (dir. Stina Wirsén, 2022) was produced by HOBAB/Dockhus Animation.
Anna Drake is the founder of Peryton Production and focuses on films exploring animal rights, feminism, and mental health. Her short film Frigående kvinnor inomhus (2019) was screened at, among others, Uppsala Short Film Festival and STOCKmotion. She teaches stop motion animation and continues to explore hybrid formats combining animation and live action.
Together, they direct Irraren, bringing a deep commitment to visual storytelling, social themes, and poetic imagery. Their artistic process is collaborative and interdisciplinary, blending handcrafted animation with meaningful narratives.
An unlikely situation inspires optimism.
Director: Clara Gainer
Based on the creator's experience with chronic pain, 'fusion' is a multimedia animation that sheds light on the duality of suffering and beauty within the uncomfortable. It is a cathartic release of emotions and thoughts, once repressed by pain and limited by words, now come to light in a visual exploration.
Director: Rafeeqa Teo
Based in Brooklyn, Rafeeqa Teo is an Illustrator, Animator, and Graphic Designer who graduated in the Spring of 2026 from The New School, with a dual degree in Illustration and Screen Studies. Born and raised in Brunei, Rafeeqa aims to explore the complexities and intermingling of cultural and personal identity - with an emphasis on the visually weird and wonderful. Her body of work spans a variety of mediums, from 3D sculptures to hand-drawn illustrations to filmmaking. With a passion for Film, Fine Arts, Theatre, and Music, Rafeeqa aims to share art that is not confined to one medium or message but instead embraces the intersection of all the arts in whimsical ways.
An aged man attempts to create a sentence that defines his life.
Director: Stephen Vita Tronicek
Stephen Tronicek is a director/screenwriter/animator focused on psychological horror and comedy. He grew up and is based in St. Louis. Stephen discovered film at a young age and became a professional film critic in his junior year of high school. This eventually led him to write screenplays and make short films. His horror screenplay, "Pieces" was a Finalist in Horror in the Script Pipeline First Look Competition. His focuses include character-driven stories, violence as an extension of the psyche and seeing how much emotionally resonant story material you can get away with if you stick to the theme. Stephen has a Bachelors in Film Production and a minor in Screenwriting from Webster University.
The rock I’ve carried my whole life has been taken from me. The pressure I’ve lived under was stolen from my grasps, what will I do with these empty hands? Shall I carry these instead? Now these are gone too! My legs? They’ve taken me this far, I’m sure they can be a burden. Gone as well! Where else in myself can I find a burden?
Director: Faraz E Ghorbanpour
Faraz Ghorbanpour is an emerging stop-motion video and sculpture artist in Brooklyn, New York, exploring grief and yearning in Gen Z populations. Using clay, digital software, and live video, he shares short animations representing aspects of desire and desperation within our generation. He holds a B.A. in Arts and a B.S. in Digital Media Studies from the University of Rochester, and a Masters in Entertainment Arts and Engineering from the University of Utah. He exhibited his animations globally, from Seoul, Montreal, and throughout the United States, and has been featured in Nguyen Wahed’s residency program focusing on new media. Faraz Ghorbanpour is exploring new media and collaborative works, previously working with Carolina Herrera, Patreon, and the Hilton Hotel.
“2nd Day & the End of the World”
It is a 12 minutes hand drawn on paper, Hyper-Family-Drama about processes of secession, post-traumatic attacks, tempting body conditions & powerless loneliness in a climate-catastropic universe.
Director: Sara Koppel
Musicians Bobby Conn and Monica BouBou retreat to the astral plane, leaving their imaginary companions DUKS and L.A.R.R.Y. behind. Alone, the curious pair discovers a mysterious bottle and drifts back from the astral plane through crude TV dreams into Earth’s fast-food gravity.
Director: David Kellner
Lives and works in Vienna (Austria).
Uses animation to build unstable narratives.
Studied Fine Arts, practices Brut Animations.
He is interested in characters that fall out of rhythm and in images that refuse to stay still.
When a disturbing sound prevents a hand-drawn man from falling asleep, he looks underneath his bed to discover a 3D rendered abstract horror.
Director: Jack Lynch
Jack Lynch is a musician, animator, cartoonist, and researcher based in Queens, NY. In any medium, they express their ideas by combining extreme experimentation with more familiar elements.
i thought about how i am very alive and how everything is very alive and how we came alive and the universe came alive and in any such way anything came alive it is so very alive.
Director: Maisie Sherriff
Maisie Sherriff is an experimental animator from London who just completed their studies at Kingston School of Art. They make short experimental animations by hand, mostly exploring feelings of overwhelm, hopefulness and more abstract emotions through bright, intense, playful animations.
How cool can a dog get before he faces consequences?
Director: Jude Larson
After a frail grave digger comes to the realization that he is a hand puppet. He must put on a performance to confront the stubborn sheriff and blinkered town to follow his path of enlightenment.
Director: Tommy Adzema
Tommy Adzema is a living Muppet, obsessed with the art of bringing things to life through the exploration of texture and movement. A multimedia artist who bends his work toward narrative, he's currently studying animation at Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts.
An astronaut explores a vast, empty world. On her journey she is stalked by a spindly robotic creature. She comes across a castle which contains a network of information transfer which runs on an infinite army of rabbit-like creatures capable of running faster than light. In order to escape her stalker, Ivy grabs onto one of the rabbits and falls into an endless void underneath the world.
Director: Will Bradley
Director: Hank
