My name is Sacha, I am a Calgary-based stop-motion animator who just completed my first short film. The film is entitled Camping and was created as part of Quickdraw Animation Society’s Chris J. Melnychuk Memorial Scholarship and Residency. I also work in social work and love to use animation and art as tools for building a connection with ourselves and with our greater community.

Founded in 2011 by writer and composer Benjamin Hackman, The Holy Gasp is a Toronto-based music, performance, and cinema collective comprised of well over 50 collaborators. Together, they have released 3 studio albums, 2 durational performance art pieces, 1 live film score, 2 spoken word records, 2 documentaries, and three animated musicals–their most recent being Out of the Hands of the Wicked, which has thus far won the People’s Choice Award at the Tiny Mountains Film Festival, Best Music Short at the Regina International, and Best Music at the Paris Film Art Festival. Longtime collaborator, Luke Sargent, returned to The Holy Gasp to direct Out of the Hands of the Wicked following the success of their CBC documentary, The Love Songs of Oedipus Rex, which was nominated for a Canadian Cinema Editors Award, and which won Best Documentary at the Black & White Film Festival. The music from Out of the Hands of the Wicked is available everywhere online music is streamed and sold. For more information about The Holy Gasp, please visit www.theholygasp.com or follow them on social media at @theholygasp.

Sarah Houle is an artist and performer from Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement in Northern Alberta. Her practice is collaborative and time-based, evolving from personal mythology, familial roots, and material exploration to encompass animation, installation, filmmaking, digital media, sound, and community mentorship. Despite wide material interests, a clear aesthetic thread follows her practice. Sarah’s bold, pastel colours and floral motifs reference Metis beadwork. Recurring characters of the Shapeshifter, Bird Boy, and the Little People haunt her projects, flickering in and out of view across mediums. Sarah makes her home in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, but family – near and far – is integral to her process, both as subjects and collaborators. Her sons, nieces, and partner join in various works. She draws from ancestry and creates in community, never alone as she explores secret worlds, hiding in plain sight.

Pedro M. Siqueira is a Brazilian multidisciplinary artist based in Victoria BC. Pedro is an Actor, Cinematographer, Director and Producer whose work has been seen in front and behind the camera, and on stage. Recent film credits (different roles) are Rupture, The Mess You Made, Walking Backward (Leo Award Winner), The Space Between, Chesapeake Shores, Don’t Look Away.
@pedrom.siqueira

Ingrid Hansen (she/her) puppeteers Heart, a giant orange monster, on Sesame Workshop’s series ‘Helpsters.’ Hansen also puppeteers the body of ‘Ma Gorg’ on Henson’s new Fraggle Rock reboot. She directed music videos and puppeteered Melissa the Dog on series Miss Persona. Hansen co-created the spicy puppet cabaret ‘Epidermis Circus,’ on tour now with the SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles. @snafudance @iamingridhansen

Boubaker Boukhari, a native of Algeria, currently resides in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He pursued higher education in the fine arts field and received training from traditional jewelry artisans in the history and techniques of jewelry making. In addition to this, he also works as a director and animator.

William Bradford is a Canadian Animator. Series he’s animated on include “Star Trek: Lower Decks”, “Animaniacs 2020”, “The Peabody and Sherman Show”, “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle”, “My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic” and Sean Mccarron’s award winning short film “Corvine”

I’m Esandi Amarakoon, a Sri Lankan-Canadian artist based in Montreal, Quebec. Before pursuing a formal education in fine arts, I worked with painting and collage using digital tools to create references. This experimentation eventually led me to digital painting and paved the way for my BFA in Film Animation at Concordia University. There, I discovered my passion for the moving image, particularly through stop motion and under-camera techniques.

Today, I work as an animator and filmmaker, specializing in tactile animation and sound design. My films often have a dreamlike, surreal quality that blends sensory and symbolic elements to explore the spectrum of human emotion. Through my work, I aim to create a space where audiences can see their own experiences reflected back to them—offering moments of validation and connection.

Bryan DeMarco excels in making the mundane entertaining. He has a knack for writing unusual situations for the Comedy and Horror genres. However, he is more than capable of writing provocative material in most genres. Bryan is the creator of Late Night Paper Cuts, a satircal late night show that airs on YouTube. Late Night Paper Cuts features a wildly creative spin on the classic late night show format in the style of Adult Swim’s original programming. The series can be found at @latenightpapercuts on YouTube.

Bryan is an accomplished writer for projects in video games, cartoons, and short films. His future projects include a comedy feature film and a dramatic cartoon series.

With influences ranging from Rod Serling, to David X. Cohen, Bryan DeMarco enjoys pushing the boundaries to create fresh and interesting content in as many formats as he can get his hands on.

Nadia is a Romanian-British artist based in between Cardiff and London. She makes films about her personal obsessions, from insomnia to dentists.

Nadia’s previous short films have been screened at film festivals across several countries. She has also illustrated two picture books for children.

Monica Ila is a Visual Artist and Puppeteer in Calgary who is currently attending the Alberta University of the Arts for a BFA in Sculpture.

Christian Perry & Eric Tsuchiyama are the creators of Sockz Studio, a production studio specializing in creating zany, handcrafted puppetry films. Their adaptation of “I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly” (2023) has been screened in theaters throughout the United States as part of Children’s Film Festival Seattle’s “Best of the Fest” Tour. Their short film “Orbie” (2022) was featured in The New York Times’ “5 Things To Do This Weekend.”

Christian and Eric are driven by a shared mission to create work that inspires creativity and whimsy!

Michael Dondero is an Emmy-award winning filmmaker, animator and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. As a storyteller, Michael embraces a variety of techniques including live-action video, stop-motion animation, audio-dramas, and photography. His work explores comfort through discomfort, finding humor and liberation in silly moments where embarrassment and self-seriousness collide.

With over ten years experience in the film and television industry, Michael’s background includes working behind the scenes on independent documentaries for PBS, and studio and network TV shows, such as Ray Donovan, Mr. Robot and High Maintenance. Michael graduated from Penn State University with a degree in English and Spanish, and later obtained his MFA in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York. In addition to filmmaking, he is also a short fiction author and the co-creator of the audio drama series The Lost Signal Society. He enjoys horror films, hiking and spending time at the Jersey Shore.

Shengnan Dong is an artist based in New York who mainly focuses on creating 3D character design and fabrication using illustrations, modeling, and sculpting techniques. She aims to build an exciting world filled with amusing and adorable characters for her audience to enjoy. Since she was a kid, she has loved to experiment with all kinds of media and learn new things that could expand her world of art creation.

She grew up with exposure to animations and cartoons from various countries and cultural backgrounds, which inspired her work to become stylized, cartoony, and full of color. She graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz with a dual degree in game design and fine art and now has obtained her master’s degree at SVA (School of the Visual Arts) in computer arts.”

Sarah Sklar is an American filmmaker and animator best known for her short stop motion film The Lonely Life of Lint (2023). Originally from New York, Sklar currently resides in Los Angeles, where she is earning her MFA from UCLA’s Animation Workshop. With a BA in psychology, Sklar makes animated films that explore raw and complex human emotions like loneliness, anxiety, and self-doubt. By centering these delicate yet universal themes in her work, Sklar aims to help audiences who struggle with feeling isolated or misunderstood feel seen and included. Her hope is that telling their stories will encourage viewers to translate their shared empathy off the screen and into reality, ultimately contributing to a more emotionally tolerant and understanding world.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then taking a thousand pictures expresses a lot of big emotions. CAPP started in 2020 to help its founder Catherine deal with life changing circumstances. Along the way she recruited good friends to help out and somewhere in the journey we became an animation team.

Cobra Collins (She/Her) is a  Métis poet of significant height based in Mohkinstsis (Calgary) – Treaty 7 Territory.

Cobra was the captain and coach of Calgary’s 2015 and 2016 Slam team, representing our city on a national level at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and was a member of Calgary’s Inkspot Spoken Word Collective, home of Calgary’s official poetry Slam.

Cobra has participated in several Nationwide Spoken Word festivals, as well as collaborated with artists of different backgrounds for dance (Fluid Movements Arts Festival) and performance festivals (IKG 1 ! Live Performance Festival). Cobra was honoured to be shortlisted as a nominee for Calgary’s 2016 & 2018 poet laureate. Above all things, Cobra truly believes that our words can change us.

The Bum Family are a group of 6 cousins from Calgary, Canada, who create short animated movies together. Maezy, Medina and Zaiyah Dennie (ages 21, 20 and 17), and Berlin, Ocean and Sol (ages 21, 18 and 14) write their stories, create the artwork, direct, animate and voice their movies. Maezy and Berlin had nothing to do with the making of this movie, more or less. The Bum Family’s short films have screened at over 180 film festivals, and have won awards for Audience Favourite and Best Animation. They once made a short film for pre-schoolers for Sesame Street, but it was too …something… and did not get aired.

Ellis Lalonde is an elaborate hoax constructed to give the world’s most annoying children something to look forward to.

Foam Memory

Mingwei Ma, Jiayi Christina Fu

A young boy explores a mysterious, magical world where he encounters an unexpected reunion with his mother.

Early Bird Gets The Worm

Terri Grant

Terri Grant

The Suitcase Adventures

Monica Ila, Ali DeRegt

Amelia the Suitcase Monster tells us about her greatest adventure!

Banana Gram

Terri Grant