Quick reminder: we’re soon going to begin accepting submissions for the 3rd annual Cartoon Brew Student Animation Festival. Last year’s selections were fantastic and we’re planning to put together another showcase of outstanding student animation from around the globe. If you’re finishing up a student film this year, we hope you’ll submit to Cartoon Brew’s festival. Any student film completed after May 1, 2011 and not yet posted on-line is eligible. Full details coming soon!

Kickball is a third-year film made by Dana Terrace at the School of the Visual Arts. The highlight of Dana’s film is the animation: it’s lots of fun to watch, with fantastic control over shapes and design, and expressive motion that brings out the personalities of the characters.

(Thanks, Killigan)

I post films for many different reasons on Cartoon Brew. Laissez, Laissez Entrer Le Soleil merits a post mainly because Charles Lemor added a butt to a house. Perhaps it’s funnier if you’ve been up all night (as I have), but frankly, adding asses to inanimate objects always helps. Besides that bit of whimsy, it’s your typical short made at Supinfocom, which means it has above-average production values for a student film.

The weary residents of a large residential complex want to get away from it all, until a young man with a musical instrument moves into the building. Jonatan Schwenk’s Maison Sonore is an engimatic piece with a simple concept and loads of atmosphere. The stop motion puppets successfully blend realism and caricature, and the wide-angle compositions and eerie calm heighten the film’s tension. Schwenk created the diploma project at the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany.

Making-of video and credits after the jump.
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“A young boy tries to reach his brother, gone for the war.”

The beautiful, poignant graduation film of Geoffroy Moneyron from France’s Ecole des Métiers du Cinéma d’Animation (EMCA) in Angoulême.

Once upon a time, a cook tried to prepare a turtle for dinner. Papaye was directed by Geoffery Godet, his 4th year project at France’s Supinfocom.

Canada’s Sheridan College is well known for the quality of their animation program and the work of their students (alumni include Dean Dublois, Michel Gagné and Danny Antonucci). Here’s a sneak peek/montage of this year’s graduate films – 63 of them in 2 minutes – which will screen publicly on Industry Day, Thursday April 26th. Beautiful looking stuff – can’t wait to see the full finished films.

It’s the time of year when many of our student readers are finishing up their student films, and inevitably there will be lots of questions: Should I submit my film to festivals? Should I post my film online? Will posting my film online hurt my festival chances? Avner Geller, the co-director of the Student Academy Award-winning short Defective Detective, has shared his personal experiences dealing with these issues in this must-read blog post. He addresses the myth that festivals disqualify filmmakers if a film is posted online, however, Avner points out that both the Student Academy Awards and SIGGRRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival require filmmakers to keep their films off the Internet. Take heed of that advice if qualifying for either of those events is part of your gameplan.

Also, I shouldn’t let this moment pass without pointing out that Geller’s film debuted online last year as part of Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival. It has been the most viewed film in our festival with over 425,000 views to date. We’ll be launching the 2012 edition of the student animation festival shortly—stay tuned to Cartoon Brew for submission details.

Kooky fun with women and fish! Calarts undergraduate thesis film by Jovanna Tosello, possibly NSFW.

This one’s a hoot… or a quack. The animation’s a bit crude, but this short story – about a boy transforming into a duck – has heart. It was created by Cody Walzel, a junior animation major at Pratt Institute, for his Character Animation class last fall.

“Vaesen is an original story that I wrote and directed. It’s not based on any specific folktale, but I chose a very iconic visual aesthetic, and used folktale conventions that are engrained in many from childhood, so that I could explore a looser narrative. Basically I wanted Rankin-Bass on acid, written by Borges.”

So says Danish-American Adrian Dexter, currently working at Important Looking Pirates (ILPVFX) in Stockholm. He recently graduated from The Animation Workshop in Denmark with this Bachelor film project (2012). As you can see, he definitely achieved that “on-acid” Euro-fairy tale feeling.

Omer Ben David’s graduation project from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, in Jerusalem, Israel. For The Remainder takes a sensitive look at the last moments of a dying house cat, a moving (in every sense of that word) portrait made especially effective by the film’s almost abstract sketch and brushstroke style.