A new animation festival in Seattle 🐚
and more fest application reminders
Greetings from snowy-ish Seattle, Washington. We’re stoked to share a new project that we’ve been working on this month!
Mark your calendar for the larval edition of Sea Slug! Sea Slug Animation Festival is a film festival in Seattle celebrating the ingenuity, creativity, and weirdness of independent animation. Brought to you by Rhys Iliakis and Hannah Baek of SIFF, along with the help of a group of local indie animators and animation enthusiasts :)
We’re proud to announce that we’re officially sponsoring the fest ✌️ We’ll be there on March 7th for the Seattle premier of Boys Go to Jupiter by Julian Glander, and on March 8th for an Artist Alley and short film screenings :)
Check out the festival poster that we animated and risograph printed below. It features a phenakistoscope animated by Zack Lydon with design by Alex Barsky.
A phenakistoscope is an early form of animation printed on paper that started getting passed around in the 1830s. Animations were arranged in concentric circles and viewed by physically spinning the disc. It’s a little more complicated than that though, you had to view it through tiny slits cut at regular intervals to create a strobe effect that allows you to witness the images in motion. And for that to work, you had to look at it through a mirror 🤯
One of our first steps into riso animation was through the creation of a phenakistoscope. It felt like a natural translation of animation into print. Below is Alex’s 2018 phenakistoscope inspired by the Korean folktale of brothers Heungbo and Nolbu, printed in Federal Blue and Bright Red.
A really beautiful collection of 19th century phenakistoscopes has been archived and made available online by Richard Balzer here.
The slug rider animation contains 12 frames of individual illustrations to make the full loop. But squeezing 12 frames into a circular format for the phenakistoscope was too many - the frames were way too small. So we dropped every other frame and made a 6 frame phenakistoscope format.
We still really wanted to see the slugrider at its intended frame rate, so we also printed a contact sheet with all 12 frames below.
We’ll have this poster and contact sheet for sale at Sea Slug’s Artist Alley on Saturday, March 8th from 1:45pm - 3:15pm at SIFF Cinema Uptown. We’re excited to collaborate with organizers in the local animation scene to make our community stronger!!
Speaking of which, we are planing to participate in more screenings/readings in Seattle and Olympia in March. The people want comics and animation!
We’re deep in production mode for the slew of festivals in March - a new fan animation, comic, ceramic figures, and an art book collaboration are in the works.
Upcoming Events
Feb 15- 16 - Outsider Zine Fest at Outsider Comics - Fremont, Seattle (We’ll be tabling on Sunday, 2/16, 3pm-6pm, but check out rotating artists at different times!)
Mar 6 - 9 - Emerald City Comic Con Artist Alley- Seattle
Mar 8 - Sea Slug Animation Festival Artist Alley at SIFF Cinema Uptown - Seattle
Mar 16-17 -MoCCA Fest - New York, NY
Apr 6 - Risograph Flipbook Workshop (details soon) - Paper Press Punch, Seattle
Apr 18 - 20 - Sakura Con Exhibition Hall - Seattle
Apr 26-27 -Punk Rock Flea Market Zine Alley - Seattle
Also, you may have noticed that Emerald City Comic Con and Sea Slug Animation Festival are happening simultaneously. Too much fomo to pick just one, so Alex will be tabling at Sea Slug while Zack is at Emerald City on Saturday, March 8 👯
Application Reminders
Here are some more events that currently have open applications. While we’re interested in and wish we could attend them all, we’re prioritizing local and west coast shows as much as possible this year. Still, we can dream about the Asian Art Book Fair Tour in the Fall and hitting up fests throughout Europe…
Seattle Zine Fest - free - apps due asap (open until filled)
Thought Bubble Comics Festival - £100 - £1000 table tiers - Harrogate, UK - apps due 2/23
Short Run Trailer Blaze Comics Residency - Seaview, WA - apps due 2/28
Anime NYC - $460 - $1180 table tiers - New York, NY - apps due 2/28
Madrid Art Book Fair - free - Madrid, Spain - apps due by 3/2
Oly Zine Fest - Olympia, WA -$30 half table -apps due 3/3
In other news, we’re making our way through almost 100 meyer lemons from family in Southern California. After giving away loads to friends and coworkers, we finally got a zester and have been making batches of lemon curd, preserved lemons, and an Italian whipped ricotta lemon cake. Basically, our lives are animating, riso printing, and lemon management for the foreseeable future.
Until next time 🍋
Alex and Zack
