Hey there! If you haven't yet, check out my animation Pig! It is a film I have been working on for a couple of years and it was finished last year. Since then it has screened at a lot of festivals, some of which I have travelled to, and it also picked up some awards.
I'm also very excited to finally release my animation Flower Found! online! I made the film all the way back in 2017 at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht as a graduation project, and it has been screened world wide at over 66 festivals and also toured in North America as part of the Animation Show of Shows. It has won 16 awards and has received acclaim from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Animation World Network, among others. You can find all the reviews, awards and selections on my website if you'd like to!
There is also something very Newgrounds about Flower Found! because I first connected with composer Bryan Teoh through enthusiastic comments he was posting on the concept art for the film! He really did an amazing job with the music, the film wouldn't be the same without it! I strongly recommend you check out his work!
Follow me on Instagram to see some behind the scenes stuff from Pig and Flower Found! I'm posting storyboards, concept art, animatics among random other stuff! If anyone is interested I can also make a blog post here detailing the process, let me know in the comments!
Pig meanwhile is still being screened at festivals! Next week I am going on a big trip to South-Korea! Pig will be screened there at the Busan International Kids and Youth Film Festival and I will be travelling in South-Korea and maybe also Japan for a couple of weeks. When I get back I will slowly but surely start working on a new project, possibly an animated web series. Give me a follow if you want to stay up to date!
Emrox
Wow those are some big-name film festivals! (and like 50 more I've never heard of!) What was your process for submitting to all of these international film fests? Like did you have a big list and just send it in to everything you could think of, or did you screen it at a couple of things and then people came to you? I've only ever done a small handful of theater screenings (like four) and most of those were from people randomly emailing me to submit a specific thing, so I'm curious how people who are serious about festival stuff actually go about getting their cartoon out there.
And did you get a chance to go to some of these? Any fun stories?
aap
Hey Emrox! :) For Flower Found I did the festival distribution myself, but for PIG I got a grant so I could afford someone to do the distribution for the film. I definitely recommend submitting to all the bigger festivals but you will have to fill in a lot of forms. For a lot of smaller festivals there's also this amazing website called FilmFreeway! You just fill out all the details for your film once and then you can submit to as many festivals as you can find with just a few clicks. Sometimes I also get emails from people, and I am always happy to send them my film, except if they ask for a fee, which is rarely worth it.
I did visit a lot of festivals over the years! I go whenever they invite me and arrange accommodation and/or travel. And so I find myself in countries I would never think of going to! Last year with PIG I went to Azerbaijan, Los Angeles, Kosovo, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Belgium and France. With Flower Found! I made a beautiful train trip right through the Alps from Animafest Zagreb to Annecy and I even went to Cannes as part of a program from Animation Nights New York. Same year I also went to OIAF, visited the NFB and was attacked by a raccoon! I also went to Japan twice, Hiroshima and Kyoto. With an older film called Quacksalver I went to a Ukrainian festival called KROK which took place on a old cruise ship in Russia. Lots of stories! Some of these festivals I just found on FilmFreeway, so it is definitely worth checking out!