Category Archives: Festival 2014

MinnAnimate 3 bios

As an outsider artist, Trevor Adams is oblivious to most animation techniques analogue and digitial, and painfully aware of how hip his record- and comics collection is.  Despite barely graduating high school, he attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for a year and managed to pay off his debts in 3 months after dropping out freshman year.  He was born the same year Nixon resigned and cites his birthplace the same as Bruce Conner and Moondog.

Alexa Akre and Kyle Ward are both in high school in the Twin Cities area, and are possibly interested in pursuing careers in the film world. This is their first animation.

John Akre is an animator, documentary video maker and youth worker who lives in Minneapolis and organizes the MinnAnimate festival.

Kirk Anderson is a Twin Cities cartoonist.

Greg Bro operates thebroshow.com, where his irreverent shorts — including the miniseries “Stuper Powers” and “The Crazy Misadventures of Christ” — can be viewed. When not making animated shorts, Bro spends his time wearing jean shorts.

Susan Shay Brugger works primarily in 2d animation, usually combining watercolor backgrounds with computer animation. Susan is strongly influenced by the Saturday morning cartoons and the pre-feature film animations of her well-spent youth as well as the crazy antics of her family’s pets. Her early interest in animation started with creating character voices, but quickly developed into creating and drawing the characters themselves. Susan grew up in Minneapolis and currently lives with her family in eastern South Dakota. She is also an accomplished fiber artist, creating yarns, textiles and clothing.

Adina Cohen is a Stop Motion Animator who is currently working in the Los Angeles and Burbank area. Mostly known for her animation work on Robot Chicken season 7, Adina uses her spare time to create short films. Her Senior Thesis “The Trip” was the official selection in the Square lake Festival and MinnAnimate 2013. Fork and Knife is her most recent short film. Her other interests include spoken word, figure drawing and going on adventures. To find out more visit http://www.adinacohen.com

Lisa Rydin Erickson is a Saint Paul artist and lives on the same block with the writer Lisa Sackreiter. They created this animation in a weeks time. Lisa filmed by candlelight during an early morning window when the light was just right to make the gold pastel powder flicker and painted puppets and backgrounds while Lisa Sackreiter embellished and formed the story stirring luck into the nisses nightly travels.

Sue Grant– As a retired person in my 70s I am probably the oldest animator who is submitting work to your festival. Aren’t too many animators my age around. Perhaps I provide a different point of view?

Mike Hallenbeck is a composer and sound designer active in film, animation, games, branding, and performing arts. He is bald. Home page: http://juniorbirdman.com

Peter Kirschmann – Peter is a youth worker and media maker from the midwest, currently living in Chicago. He likes using paper cut animations to illustrate other people’s stories.

David Koesters. David recently transplanted to Minneapolis from Nebraska. He has two cats.

Editor and Animator, Leah Mann, recently graduated from UW-Stout in 2013 with a degree in Graphic Design and Interactive Media. She’s dabbled in a bit of everything, but is happiest when her design projects contribute to making the world a better place.

Jane Nelson Meyer works in many mediums outside of animation. The result is much cross-over between painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and creative writing. ‘Navel Gazing’ is no exception. While working as an intern at High Point Center for Printmaking, Jane made the illustrations through the process of drypoint intaglio. She now is working at Franconia Sculpture Park. In 2011, she graduated as a studio art major from St. Olaf College.

Shelby Pearson is an animator/illustrator residing and working in Minneapolis.

Beth Peloff likes to make cartoons (still and moving), documentaries, music, cookies, and soup.

Josh Stifter makes toons. But don’t laugh, you’ll just encourage him.

Jordan Studanski, etc. – A group of South Dakota State University students got together to make this short film so a bio on just one of us doesn’t seem sufficient. We’re all from different corners of the globe but we all have one thing in common, we love animation. The group of us really worked well together and we had a blast making the short film. Of course we had our ups and downs but in the end it was all totally worth it.

Oanh Vu is a youth worker at the Science Museum of MN and an artist with a Bachelors of Arts in Studio Art from the College of St. Benedict. When not working Oanh can be found making videos and organizing MNKINO a bi-montly video screening.

Leo Winstead is an illustrator and filmmaker based out of the Twin Cities. Leo has been involved with various film projects over the last 20 years, starting with short stopmotion vignettes shot on super-8 which then lead to 16mm film and video production during college. He produced the storyboards for the film The Quiet Storm (2000) about domestic violence, while an undergraduate at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Other projects have included This Is My Body (2008), where he worked as storyboard artist, animator, and 2nd unit director and more recently Akello & the Lion (2010), an animated film dealing with the effects of the conflict in Uganda involving the LRA.

Caleb Wood is an animation artist. He is most interested in the dynamism of the mundane and overlooked, abstract, and all things moving. He incorporates several different mediums in his work, and aims to expand upon the possibilities of animation. He received a BFA in Film/Animation/Video at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011, and has since gone on to show work internationally and continue making films independently.