A newly graduated film student is on the cusp of launching his own production company.

His first short film, a professionally animated cartoon, will be shown at an international film festival this spring.

The film, titled “The Death of Mr. Smith,” was written by MFA thesis student David Silverstein and directed by Silverstein and Victor Navone. The two met as students in the NYU Animation program’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program.

“Victor and I had a great time working together when we made our thesis films,” Silverstein said. “We formed a strong creative partnership. And we learned to trust each other’s abilities and ideas.”

After Silverstein received his MFA degree in May 2013, he and Navone began working on their new short story together.

“It was just a couple of years ago that I started learning how to animate,” Silverstein said, “and I’m still learning all the time.”

Silverstein said he believes animation is perfect for telling a story in any genre.

“Creating animated films requires me to think visually,” he said. “I’m forced to develop my storytelling skills in ways that are different from live action filmmaking.”

Navone, who also has an MFA degree in

Recently, a story surfaced that an animated short titled “In a Heartbeat” had been accepted to this year’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival. This is huge news for the animation industry, as it represents the first time a student film has been accepted.

The movie’s creator, Beth David, is an MFA student at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She wrote and directed the movie, which features a boy named Sherwin who has a crush on another boy named Jonathan. When Sherwin notices that Jonathan reciprocates his love, he tries to tell Jonathan how he feels. But every time Sherwin is about to express his feelings, something goes wrong and he dies from embarrassment.

The film was entirely self-financed by David with assistance from her classmates and her thesis adviser, Eric Froemling (who also worked on the Oscar-winning short “Gopher Broke” in 2003). Her team of 24 students worked for free in their spare time to bring the project to life. The good news is that she raised $15,000 on Kickstarter from almost 300 backers.

She’s a MFA graduate (from the Rhode Island School of Design) and has been working on this film for over a year. She says she hopes to have it completed by next spring. I had a chance to watch some of her earlier work, and I can’t wait to see what she does with this film. Her most recent work can be seen here.

You can read more about her here.

The International Animated Film Association, or ASIFA, is having their annual festival in San Fransisco next month. This year they have added a new category: best independent animated short film. To qualify as an independent film, the film must have been independently funded and produced. The movie I have been working on for the past two years, called “The Man Who Returned,” is going to be featured in this category.

The movie itself was independently conceived and written a few years ago by my protege, Bill Jones. I connected with him through a mutual friend, and then he and I worked together on the concept and script through dozens of drafts. After it was done, we shopped the script around to several potential producers, but no one wanted to back it financially. Then I decided that since it was such a great story (in my opinion), I would direct it myself and find the funding elsewhere. So far I’ve sunk about $50,000 into the project myself.

I’m hoping that ASIFA’s recognition of “The Man Who Returned” will help get it into more festivals so that we can get some more exposure to distributors who deal in independent films. It might even mean that we’ll be able to make some money off of it someday

It is difficult to imagine a place our whole family will enjoy more than the San Diego Museum of Art’s Family Sundays. The Museum hosts these special events every Sunday afternoon from 1-4 p.m. and offers an interactive and educational experience for kids, teens and adults. This past Sunday my family attended Family Sunday with the theme “Art Adventures” that included activities such as coloring, drawing, collage making, and paper crafts.

The “Art Adventures” theme was inspired by MAAP (Museum Animation Archive Project), an initiative of the SDMA’s Department of Education. MAAP consists of short animated films created by local students which are shown at Family Sundays and then archived in the SDMA library. In celebration of this year’s Day of the Dead exhibition, MAAP has partnered with the San Diego Film Foundation to present its first-ever animated short film festival on Saturday, Nov. 2 at 6:30 p.m.

Titled “Superheroes,” this inaugural animated short film festival will feature four original animated shorts that were created by MFA graduates from San Diego State University’s Department of Art & Art History in collaboration with MAAP students from local schools in San Diego County. The shorts that will be screened include: “We’re All Superhero

Animated short films are an art form which is only now beginning to be explored. It is a form of filmmaking that has been developing over the past couple of decades, but has not yet reached its full potential.

In this age of high-definition televisions and 3D movies, animated short films have been largely overlooked by the mainstream film industry. This is a shame because it is a medium that allows filmmakers to explore themes in ways that cannot be done with live action movies.

The first animated short was created in 1889 by the French film pioneer George Melies. The film, called The Humpty Dumpty Circus, was made up of drawings on glass which were shot frame-by-frame and then shown to an audience. It was very different from the types of animations that are familiar to modern audiences, but it was an early step forward in the development of animation.

Sixty years later, Walt Disney introduced audiences to his first cartoon short called “Steamboat Willie,” which featured Mickey Mouse as the star. It was an instant success and an extremely popular movie at that time.

In recent years, New York City has become home to several talented animators who are working hard on new projects that push boundaries in this field. One such project is “Art

The audience will become more familiar with the characters as the plot thickens.

The lead character is a 7-year-old child named Claudia. She is an imaginative, introspective, honest and kindhearted girl.

The antagonist of the film is “the man in black” who wants to take her dog away from her.

As the story unfolds, the viewer will realize that the man in black is trying to take all joy and happiness away from Claudia, including her dog. He goes to great lengths to achieve this end. The movie ends with a “twist” ending that can be interpreted various ways depending on the age of the viewer.”