Categories
Animation

Born in Baltimore

Born in Baltimore Film & Photography Festival Official Selection
The Benefits of Radiation is an office selection.

On Wednesday at 5:30PM EST, the Film Center at JHU-MICA will present Born in Baltimore on Facebook. It’s free to attend, and looks like a lot of great photography and film.

From the Born in Baltimore website:

Born in Baltimore celebrates new voices in cinema and photographic arts. 
Filmmakers and photographers of all ages whose work is of, from, and about Baltimore are invited to submit.  The Festival seeks images, sounds, and textures that are uniquely Baltimore; the music, the faces, the stories of our city and its citizens, past and present, young and old, native and newly arrived.

For 2021’s virtual festival, Born in Baltimore welcomes submissions from across the globe, reflecting on Baltimore subject matter and themes, and on shared current challenges: stories and images of city life and city neighborhoods; and images that explore distance, proximity, community, loss, resilience, and innovation. 

Born in Baltimore is a production of Baltimore Youth Film Arts,
an affiliate program of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at

Johns Hopkins University. It is made possible by the financial support of Johns Hopkins and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
 

https://www.borninbaltimore.org/

UPDATE

The Benefits of Radiation received both the Audience Favorite and Judges Awards! Wow!

Winner, Judges award
Winner, Audience award
Categories
Animation

Indigo

During non-pandemic conditions, the Sweaty Eyeballs animation festival opens with live musicians accompanying a silent animation. Since this year’s festival is online, Phil Davis decided to try the reverse, where animators add film to Baltimore musician’s recordings.

Phil asked me if I’d be willing to do one, and I asked to work with the band WUME. They sent me a track called Indigo, and this is what I made.

I started working on this in August. I listened to the song, wrote the lyrics in my book, and let the images appear. I like narrative, and the more surreal, the better. I threaded certain images into the loose narrative, and some key elements repeatedly show up.

My notes on the animation table

I made dozens of puppets and props for the scroll, which ended up being 45′ long. I began the actual process of animating on September 27th, and finished on October 11th. The video clocks in at 4:11.

It is an honor to participate in Sweaty Eyeballs. I’ve drawn such inspiration from the programming there, as well as the time I’ve known Phil Davis. We have all done our best to persevere during these weird times (please make sure you vote – and as Phil said, please vote for people who support the arts).

I hope you enjoy this. I had fun making it, and fun with this opening!

JD

Categories
Animation

Sweaty Eyeballs

I’m so very happy to say that A Job as the Moon will be screened at this year’s Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival: Friday, Oct 23, 2020 – Friday, Oct 30, 2020. I’ll post more as I know it.

From the event site:

?Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival is a 7-day juried festival of the world’s most boundary-pushing, mind-blowing animation.

Since 2012, Sweaty Eyeballs has carried the torch of the animation scene in the Mid-Atlantic with independent programming & special events. Now in our 9th year, we have partnered with our longtime friends at the Maryland Film Festival to launch our 2nd international festival of animation. 

The festival will take place October 23-30, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic the festival will be held online in 2020. The festival will open with six original animated music videos set to music by six Baltimore area bands, an international competition of 80 animated shorts, a Baltimore showcase, animator retrospectives, and online workshops.