New western Manitoba digital animation festival helps showcase talent from Brandon and beyond

A new film festival that had its first eventin southwestern Manitoba this week hopes to continue connecting digital artists, animators and audiences for years to come.

The inaugural WestmAnimationFestival was launched by the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandonas part of Culture Days a nationwide celebration of arts and culture that takes in September and October.

The new festival, which screened 13 shorts at Brandon's Riverbank Discovery Centre on Thursday, was createdto bring digital artists together, saidAna Camelo, one of the festival's organizers.

"It is really hard to find colleagues and people to have these conversations" about digital art, said Camelo, who isthe digital projects co-ordinator with the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba.

The festival served to showthere is a vibrant scene in the community, she said, and was agood way to show peoplethat digital art is "dynamic."

"This is accessible. People enjoy it."

Digital artis any art made using digital technology, including media created on a computer or hand-drawn images scanned into a computer. Someinvolves manipulation of video images to create animations.

WestmAnimation organizers put out a call for submissions earlier this year, and got responses from peoplein the western Manitobaarea and beyond, said Camelo.

"We received some submissions from people who once lived in Manitoba, or even, like, in the western area," she said. Thework submitted was"really rich in the variety."

"It is amazing to see so many different themes and techniques across all the submissions,"said Camelo.

The festival includes work from "super experienced artists that are very well known in Canada," she said, such asacclaimed Manitoba artist Diana ThorneycroftandAnita Lebeau, a Manitoban who has created shorts for the National Film Board.

But it also features the work ofpeople trying out new things, Camelo said.

"We have kids experimenting with stop-motion as a result of a workshop we hosted here before."

The 13 animations submitted will be judged in three categories under 18, over 18 and audiencechoice. All 13 shorts are available on the art gallery's YouTube page, which also has a link to the audience choice award voting form.

The winners will be announced on Oct. 20 at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba.

'There's a lot of talent'

One of theartists featured in the festival isErica Lowe, who livesin Harding,a small community northwest of Brandon. She submitted her own animation to the festival, in addition to helping her children Mateo Finnie, 12, and Charlie Finnie, 9create a stop-motion short.

"The ones I made on my own are just like paper cutouts ... pictures that I've drawn, I cut out the different parts of it and then I create little variations of them to add movements," Lowe said.

"With my kids, we do Lego animation where you move the Lego guys just a little bit.... It's really fun."

Camelo said the hope is to makeWestmAnimation an annual festival.

Shelaunched the festival with help from local artist Chris Reid, who took classes at the gallery.

The more she studied the art form, the more Reid wondered who else in the community shared her passion for animation.

"There's a lot of talent, but finding it and making sure that it's showcased isn't always that easy," Reid said. "People are there it's just finding them."

Reid approached the gallery with the idea of startingthe event to help bring digital art creators together.

It was a thrill to seesubmissions roll in for the festival, she said, and even more exciting to see an audience gather at the Riverbank to take in the digital creations.

"Hopefully we'll be able to have a second one. This was a pilot project," said Reid, who hopes the festival will be apart of Culture Days every year.

As an artist from the region,Lowe said it felt great to be part of a festival that drawsthe digital arts community together in Westman.

"There's a lot of artists that probably really find it a really great way to express themselves," Lowe said. "I feel it'll just grow from here."