November Program: Award-Winning BYU Animated Films

November 6, 2009 – Orem, UT – Animation, an art form which has grown from a black-and-white scrawled Mickey Mouse to critically acclaimed films like UP, has found a foothold in Utah Valley in the form of BYU’s Animation Department. To highlight this, the Orem Arts Council will host a presentation by Kelly Loosli, an assistant professor in the department, who will share some of the many award-winning films created by his students in the last few years and talk about the animation process. The program will be held in the Orem Library Storytelling Wing on November 19 at 7 p.m.

Since its beginning less than a decade ago, student productions from the BYU Animation Department have garnered dozens of awards at national and international film festivals. Beginning in 2004 with “Lemmings,” a six-minute, computer-animated short film about a furry quadruped who tries to convince his fellows not to jump off a cliff, BYU has received a number of Academy of Television Arts & Sciences College TV Awards (Student Emmys). In 2009, the program took home 2 awards for its entries “Kites” and “Pajama Gladiator.”

Animation as an art form has occupied a broad niche, ranging in scope from two-dimensional drawings to three-dimensional stop-motion and, more recently, computer-generated images. Animation can be the entirety of a film or can be used only in segments: a single scene or character, or perhaps as a special effect. In recent years, the success of films like UP, Kung Fu Panda, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and many others have placed the art form as a field with staying power and, for students, something worth studying.

Kelly Loosli, an assistant professor in the department, was doing animation at BYU long before the program began. While earning a BA in Film, he received an award for his claymation film, “Nocturnal,” and later worked for DreamWorks Feature Animation and Buena Vista Motion Pictures at Disney. When he came back to BYU, he was asked in 2000 to help create the animation program by collaborating classes from Industrial Design, Visual Arts, and Theatre and Media Arts. Until that time, students from these programs had been creating animation independently and even been placed at major companies like DreamWorks and Pixar, which continue to seek students from the program.

The Orem Arts Council Presents series seeks to introduce and educate community members about the power of a variety of art forms, and to provide local artists an opportunity to share their talents. For more information about this series and about the Orem Arts Council, visit arts.orem.org. For more information on programs at the Orem Public Library, visit www.oremlibrary.org.

Upcoming Orem Arts Council Presents programs

2009

December 17: Tales for the Season with Cherie Davis and Nanette Watts
Join storytellers Cherie Davis and Nanette Watts as they share Christmas stories to warm the heart! You'll enjoy a variety of tales, from personal vignettes to folk traditions.

2010

January 21: An Evening with UVU Synergy Dance Company

February 18: Orem High Schools: Sterling Performances

March 18: SCERA Center for the Arts Presents!

April 15: Mark Pulham Puppetry

May 20: Q'd Up! Jazz Ensemble

June 17: Daron Bradford and Friends

Orem Arts Council Presents is a series of free and family-friendly art events held locally in Orem, usually on the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 pm.