Just got news that Warming won 'Honourable Mention for Most Inspirational Short Film (for ages 13 and up)' at the 2008 Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth.

Warming will be screening on Feb 9 in the Siskiyou Film Fest in Grants Pass, OR, as part of their "Teen Festival" program.

2008, off to a start

Warming will be playing in Vancouver at the end of February, at the Reel to Real International Film Festival for Youth.
I don't remember ever actually applying for the festival, but somehow I am in it, so hooray!

Also, Warming will be in Toronto once again, this time at the end of April during the Green Living Show, as a special screening put together through the Planet in Focus festival.

Not too much new around here -- unfortuantely the Beirut International Documentary Festival has been postponed due to the "current stressed environment" in Lebanon right now, but hopefully it'll go up sometime next year.

On the home front, the first half of Novemember was littered with rejection letters, but the second half blossomed with invitations from other festivals. It seems some representatives from different festivals who saw 'Warming' in Planet in Focus and the NYC Shorts Festival now want to invite it to their own festivals, which is exciting.

Hopefully I'll have some more news regarding 2008 festivals in the next month or two, but for now....happy holidays!

eye weekly article

Warming has wrapped up its screenings in New York and Toronto as of this weekend, and got a nice little mention in an article over at Toronto's Eye Weekly.

"The free Children's Programme (Oct. 27, 11am, Innis College, 2 Sussex) features Colleen MacIsaac's animated short Warming, a poetically spare meditation on our overheating sphere. The images are arresting – a school of submerged pop bottles hovering like jellyfish; a polar bear slipping forlornly into the water – and the tone is gently melancholy rather than strident."

Nothing else new to report around here!

Halifax to Ottawa

This was a busy weekend for warming, with three festivals screening it, none of which I was able to attend, unfortuantely. I was in town for the Atlantic Film Fest, but left for the Ottawa International Animation Festival (which warming got rejected from) on the morning that my film screened in Halifax. It was kind of sad, but I got to enjoy a week of some great films beforehand as well as in Ottawa.

Some of the highlights for me in Halifax were the two frame x frame animation screenings (many of which were repeated at the Ottawa festival, so it was a treat to see some of them twice or more), finally getting to see Paprika which I had missed by a few days in Vancouver, and seeing the Canadian and Atlantic shorts (I also saw an International Shorts screening but it wasn't as strong, I felt).

In Ottawa my favourites were Madame Tutli-Putli, Zhadarkha (I know I'm spelling that wrong, but it was an AMAZING children's cut-out animation), Sainte-Barne, (again, I can't remember the exact title but it was an NFB co-production done in stopmotion), and too many others to list. My big dissapointment was not getting to see Persepolis which I had really been looking forward to, but the weekend made up for it with great short films, fun times with friends, and crazy side trips to a ghost walk (CREEPY) and the national gallery.

So the news for warming right now is that it got into the Beirut DocuDays Documentary festival in Lebanon, where it will screen in the beginning of November. So far I've gotten about half my submissions accepted to festivals and half rejected, which seems like a pretty fair balance to me.

website online!

The website for warming is finally up!
You can go see it at http://colleen.radarfriends.net/warming, and it has all the info on the film up, including upcoming screenings at film festivals! Yes, it's actually gotten into a few, and a couple of them have already gone by. In the next few months, warming will be screening from Serbia to Edmonton, stopping in Toronto (twice!), Savannah, Halifax, and Colorado in between.

In other news, warming is now distributed by Ouat Media Distribution, a fine company based out of Toronto. I'll be putting most other updates about the film up at the website, but if there's any exciting news I'll post it here as well.

done!

Well, I basically finished my film a week or so ago, had the first screening on Friday at preview night, and then graduated and had the second screening the night after! It's been really interesting seeing people's reactions to the piece.....it definitely is still a more controvertial topic than I had thought. It feels really good to be done though -- it still hasn't quite sunk in I think.

In any case, here's the poster, the films will be screening at Emily Carr every day at noon in the south building lecture hall until Victoria day, and we also have the external show (see below) coming up this weekend!


Here's the external show info, in this lovely poster designed by Daisy and Marie-Lou. If you're in Vancouver you should come out and see, if there's any tickets left!


So I guess this is it! I'll still be posting things here, but I'm not sure what exactly. Perhaps film updates in terms of festivals (if it gets in to any) and screenings? Sketches from the upcoming summer? Some crazy comic project? I'll figure something out.

Thanks, guys!

So, it certainly has been a while! Things have been pretty crazy, but we're down to two weeks left (3 days until grad panels), and I think I'm going to make it. Here's some things from my desk(top) as of late:

Screenshots from the completed coral sequence, before and after!



The polar bear, looking upwards. After I animated her doing that, I realized that I had essentially animated the Nelvana logo. hahaha.


The cityscape scene! Suffice it to say that I apparently don't know what actual cities look like. Actually, the "tall building" reference photo that I had gleaned from the internet was this great shot of sunrise over Tehran, though I didn't really end up drawing from it too much.


And that's about it from me....I guess I also have the background image for my poster up at my livejournal if you haven't seen that yet.

The end is nigh! Best of luck to everyone.

sandbags

I've been working on a lot of things recetly, but as there was a lot of walkcycles and less postable things, this is the first that I've decided to throw up here. This is the background for the sandbag scene, without the sky and foreground and people walking.