SPARK ANIMATION 2017 is a celebration of creativity, inspiration and innovation in animation from around the world, presented by Spark Computer Graphics Society (Spark CG) in partnership with Vancouver ACM SIGGRAPH. The event runs from 26 to 29 October in Vancouver, Canada.
Now in its ninth year, SPARK ANIMATION introduced festival submissions and a Jury in 2014. The first Jury awarded Tonko House’s The Dam Keeper, Best Animated Short. The film later went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. The 2015 Jury awarded top prize to Konstantin Bronzit’s We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, and 2016 Lou Hamou-Lhadj and Andrew Coats’ Borrowed Time won the Best Animated Short prize. Both films went to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
In 2016, four out of five Academy Award nominated projects were screened at SPARK, including Vancouver director Robert Valley’s Pear Cider and Cigarettes which won second prize at the festival. In the same year, the event received over 700 submissions representing over 60 countries.
The festival provides diversity, ensuring a mix of animation styles, a diaspora of cultures, languages and a wide range of storytelling from CG, the traditional to the abstract. The event includes a film festival, conference, business symposium, career fair and exhibition, and artist expo.
Filmmakers, studios and students are invited to submit their projects for festival consideration. The festival accepts all styles and forms of animation including narrative short films, commercials and PSAs (public service announcements), music videos, game cinematics and feature films. Regular submission deadline is 1 September, 2017, while the extended deadline is 11 September, 2017.
