Category Archives: Profiles

Trevor Adams work can be seen online at sinemodafatestare.com. He was born and resides in the Midwest.

John Akre is an animator who lives in Minneapolis and is interested in figuring out ways to create animation in public places. He teaches animation at Hamline University and to youth and co-owns Green Jeans Media, where he creates animation and video with his wife Beth.

Born in California and raised in Apache Junction, Arizona. Joseph Dutra currently attends his senior year at Minneapolis College of Art and Design to better extend his creativity. He is influenced by Animaniacs-type of animation and hopes to bring it back into popularity.

Joel Erkkinen is a self taught animator and film maker. My work usually tends to dance the line between funny and gross. I aim to make people laugh.

Sarah Urquhart Evenson is a genderqueer printmaker, illustrator, and now animator(?) originally from Denver, CO.

Emily Fritze is an independent animator and motion graphics artist based in Minneapolis. She has worked on a variety of projects that include music videos for Pert Near Sandstone, Trampled by Turtles, and Perry Project, among others; documentaries, feature films, commercial work, as well as illustration and graphic design. She has been shown and awarded in film festivals – Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival, Square Lake, MNTV, Philadelphia Film Festival, and SoCal. Her works can be found at emilyfritze.com.

Me Cable [Hardin]. Me make move things.

Dean Hatton is a mime trained by world renown mime Marcel Marceau and has been performing since 1984. In 97′ he moved from Ohio to Minneapolis where he continues to create perform today. He only recently discovered doing animation using photoshop and this is his first major project.

Lizzie Hutchins (she/her/hers) is a filmmaker, media educator, and creative spirit. She loves collaborating with others to seek out the secret worlds. She believes moving image is important for building empathy.

Julie JAO is primarily a painter and performance artist. She has exhibited and performed at Bedlam Theater, Vine Arts Center, Intermedia Arts, The Southern Theater and at various festivals doing live speed painting in the back of a pick up truck. This is her first animated short.

Robert Jersak is an independent animator, audio documentary producer and Communication Studies faculty member at Century College.

My name is Buko Laditan. I have been in the entertainment industry for about 10 years.

Adam Loomis is a film programmer and animator from Minneapolis, MN. In addition to joining the Film Society in August 2017, he has worked with organizations such as the Walker Art Center, Trylon Cinema, Northern Exposure and, most recently, Hellavision Television Animation Show.

Kelley Meister (pronouns: ze/hir/hirs) uses drawings, video, and participatory experiences to investigate this how the planet is shifted by the indelible touch of humans. Ze received an MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2008 and continues to live and work in Minneapolis. See more: kelleymeister.com.

Stephen Miller is currently a student at Hamline University, working towards a Digital media arts degree.

Wayne Nelsen teaches English as a Second Language in St. Paul.

Beth Peloff is a video maker and teacher who works in both documentary and animation. Her films have played at film festivals including the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, the Twin Cities Film Festival and the Sodak Animation Festival.

Tom Schroeder has been making hand-drawn animated films since 1990. His films have been broadcast on Independent Lens, the Sundance Channel, Canal + France, SBS in Australia and CBC in Canada and have screened at the American Cinematique in Los Angeles and Anthology Film Archives in New York. The films have also played widely on the international festival circuit, including at Annecy, Rotterdam, Sundance, Ottawa, South by Southwest and Edinburgh, and have won over thirty festival awards.

Patrick Schwalbe graduated from the Art Institutes, MN in 2000. I spent the following years working in the medical animation industry doing technical direction.

Colin Stanhill is a self-taught animator working in Minneapolis. He draws all his films by hand on paper. According to Malcolm Turner, of the Melbourne International Animation Festival, he is “quite a lucid sort of fellow.”

Persephine Yang is 12 years old. I started animating in 4th grade when I saw a youtuber post a animation for their school. I was inspired to make my own animations just for the fun of it and I slowly liked doing and I would want to be an animator when I grow up.

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.