<h3>Where</h3><p>Online</p><h3>When</h3><p>March 24-26, 2022</p>

Toronto Animation Film Festival

<h3>Where</h3><p>Online</p><h3>When</h3><p>March 24-27, 2021</p>

<h3>Where</h3><p>Hot Docs Cinema | Toronto, Canada | 506 Bloor Street West</p><h3>When</h3><p>Monday April 25th</p>

<h3>Where</h3><p>Online</p><h3>When</h3><p>November 11-13, 2021</p>

Toronto Animation Industry Conference

<h3>Where</h3><p>Online</p><h3>When</h3><p>November 18-22, 2020<span class="ql-cursor">﻿</span></p>

<h3>Where</h3><p>Corus Quay, Toronto, Canada, 25 Dockside Dr.</p><h3>When</h3><p>Saturday to Sunday, November 2-3, 2019</p>

Toronto Animation / VFX Job Fair

TAAFI News

<p><span style="background-color: transparent;">We know that animation isn’t just for cartoons, but recently it seems like the rest of the world is starting to wake up to that notion, as new streaming services start to take animation seriously. Join us for a discussion on the ins and outs on crafting your ideas for a primetime world.</span></p>

Animation: Not Just For Kids

<p>Aaron Long is an animator and filmmaker from Toronto. He currently lives in Los Angeles, and has directed for Bojack Horseman, Tuca &amp; Bertie, Triptank and more. He also creates independent cartoons Sublo &amp; Tangy Mustard and Fester Fish which appear online and in festivals around the world.</p>

<p>Aaron Long is an animator and filmmaker from Toronto. He currently lives in Los Angeles, and has directed for Bojack Horseman, Tuca &amp; Bertie, Triptank and more.</p>

Aaron Long

<p>Jason grew up in Bayfield, Wisconsin, a very small town located on the south shore of the largest lake on the planet, Lake Superior. He studied classical animation at Sheridan College in Ontario Canada, where his student film, Mt. Ehn, won the Teletoon: Most Promising Student award. In 2002, Jason began his professional career at Naughty Dog Studios in Los Angeles, animating the hit game series Jak &amp; Daxter, and later Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3.</p><p>A move to New York came next to work at Blue Sky Studios on feature films including Ice Age II, Horton Hears a Who, Ice Age III and Rio. Jason has combined his career moves with his love for travel; he has lived in Madrid, working on Planet 51 for Ilion Animation Studios, in London working on Iron Man and Paul for Double Negative, and in Melbourne he worked on After Earth for Iloura Studios.</p><p>In 2012, he settled in Vancouver BC at the Coalition, working on Gears of War; and at Sony Pictures Animation working on Hotel Transylvania 1 and 2, Cloudy 2, Storks, and finally, Emoji the movie. Next he returned to Blue Sky Studios in New York as senior character animator on Ferdinand.</p><p>In 2018 Jason began work with Moon Studios on their visually stunning game, Ori and the Will of the Wisps. In Jan 2019 Jason relocated to Montreal Canada, and began work for Reel FX. Current he is lead animator on Scooby-Doo (based on the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon).</p><p>Throughout his career, Jason has shared his passion for animation with his students. As an animation mentor instructor, and through his demo reel improvement program. In addition, he provides studio animation teams around the world with specialized training (based on project needs).</p>

Jason Martinsen

<p>As senior vice president of content for Portfolio Entertainment, Liliana leads the company’s development of television and digital media content across all platforms. Liliana has a successful track record as an executive producer and development executive with wide-ranging experience from creative development to television production and distribution. Previously, she served as vice president of development for 9 Story Media Group where for six years she spearheaded development of the company’s original animated and live-action productions. Prior to that, she was VP of acquisitions and co-productions at Salter Street Films, Canada’s leading producer of comedy content. As one of the earliest development executives to recognize and advance digital content, Liliana served as co-executive producer of the ground-breaking animated series Chilly Beach, the first web-to-TV series in Canada. Most recently, Liliana co-created and spearheaded development for Doomsday Brothers, which in partnership with N12 Productions, is Portfolio’s first adult animated comedy series. Commissioned by Corus Entertainment, the series is scheduled to air in 2020.</p>

Liliana Reyes

<p><span style="background-color: transparent;">The merging of animation and live action has been around since the start of movies, but we are seeing animation used in feature films and TV series more prominently and seamlessly than ever before. In this discussion, Marc-Andre Baron (Detective Pikachu) </span>Cesar Dacol Jr (Happy Feet 2), Jeff Robinson, and Lon Molnar (HBO's Watchmen)<em style="background-color: transparent;"> </em><span style="background-color: transparent;">will talk about the use of animation in live action, and how to achieve seamless interaction between animated characters and their live action counterparts.</span></p>

VFX Character Animation

<p>Cesar Dacol Jr joined SpinVFX in 2016 as a concept supervisor. Dacol has been bringing creatures and characters to life for 20 years. He started his career in the makeup effects industry and transitioned to CG in the mid 90s. From designing the hero dinosaur, Giganotosaurus, in Journey to the Center of the Earth to the Werewolves in The Mortal Instruments, this talented artist has carved a path in animated features such as The Wild (Disney), Happy Feet 2 (Warner Bros.), and live action features that include, Fantastic Four (20th Century Fox), 300 (Warner Bros.), and The Incredible Hulk (Universal Pictures).</p>

Cesar Dacol Jr

<p>Jeff&nbsp;Robinson (born in Vancouver, 1980) - animator, filmmaker and woodworker</p><p>During his over fifteen years of experience in the animation industry,&nbsp;Jeff&nbsp;has worked on many TV, feature and commercial projects.&nbsp;&nbsp;Jeff&nbsp;loves cartoons, mahogany and monsters.</p><p>Jeff&nbsp;currently works as an animation director at Sinking Ship Entertainment in Toronto. In the midnight hours he is making the first ever monster movie about a ten foot tall mutant Canadian goose.</p>

Jeff Robinson

<p><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">With more than 20 years of experience, Lon Molnar has contributed a vast amount of visual effects&nbsp;to film&nbsp;and television as an artist, VFX supervisor, and former CEO of the award winning VFX company Intelligent Creatures.</span></p><p>Inspired by the magic of Toy Story, Lon attended the Vancouver Film School with the single goal of opening up his own VFX studio. As he built his resume, he became dissatisfied with working on VFX for TV, and set his sights on feature films. He became a VFX generalist, working in animation, lighting, compositing and modelling, while using a vast array of software. After serving as the CG supervisor on the groundbreaking films Chicago and The Cell, he fulfilled his earlier dream and opened up Intelligent Creatures in 2002.&nbsp;</p><p>Working with talented creators like Mark Forster, Darren Aronofsky, Alejandro González Iñárritu, David Tattersall, Oliver Stone and others, Lon quickly built the Toronto-based VFX house into an award-winning studio. Intelligent Creatures lent its creativity to dozens of projects such as Mr and Mrs Smith, The Witch, Curiosity: Battlefield Cell and Babel. They built robust pipelines to tackle critically-acclaimed projects, such as the Watchmen's famous Rorschach mask of moving inkblots,&nbsp;or the clones&nbsp;in Orphan Black.</p><p>Fifteen years after the formation of Intelligent Creatures, Lon recognized that unlike when he had started in the industry, TV was no longer the "lesser" medium for VFX. When he spoke to Jonathan Bronfman, the two found themselves sharing symbiotic ideas. They saw a gap that others didn't. In 2018, the two co-presidents founded Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies with the goal of delivering feature-film quality VFX exclusively to TV series. Over the past year, MARZ has worked many shows including HBO's&nbsp;<em>Watchmen</em>, Amazon Prime's&nbsp;<em>The Boys</em>, as well as Netflix's&nbsp;<em>The Umbrella Academy</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Living With Yourself</em>.</p>

Lon Molnar

<p>Having been in love with art and animation since a young age, Marc-Andre joined the visual effects industry in 2003 and has had the chance to travel the world for his work. After working abroad at Animal Logic and Sony, he relocated to his hometown in Montreal and joined the Framestore team in early 2018. Hard at work from the get-go, Marc-Andre has applied his animation expertise on Deadpool 2, the Oscar nominated Christopher Robin, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and most recently Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. Throughout his career, he has continued to perfect and hone his acting skills, one of his most valuable assets. </p><p>While animation is his full-time passion, Marc-Andre is always keen on mentoring artists and values the talent and thirst for knowledge of his teammates. Marc-Andre always says that he did not pick animation but it chose him and that he is thankful for!</p><p>"Animation is the best job on earth, it's like getting paid to play with Legos in my room".</p>

Marc-Andre Baron

<p>With the rise of board driven shows in the U.S, storyboard artists have seen a massive increase in their role as animation creators, so why hasn’t this approach been adopted by the rest of the world? In this panel will discuss the up and down sides of scripting vs boarding.&nbsp;How can storyboard artists and writers work closer together to craft amazing stories and what new story creating models can we adopt in Canada.</p>

Writing vs Storyboard: The Ultimate Showdown!

<p>Elizabeth Ito is a 15 year veteran of the animation industry. She has worked for many different studios on TV, feature, and commercial projects. Her many credits include supervising director on Adventure Time, &nbsp;feature storyboard artist on Hotel Transylvania, Astroboy, and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.  In 2017, she won a Emmy for directing the Adventure Time episode, Islands Part 4: Imaginary Resources.</p><p>She is also the creator of the award-winning short, <a href="https://youtu.be/idT98H8TK-U" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">Welcome to My Life</a>, &nbsp;which to-date, is the second-most viewed short in Cartoon Network history.&nbsp; It won the Audience Award for children aged between 12 and 17 at the New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF), and Best Film For Children at the Zagreb World Animation Festival. </p><p>Elizabeth currently works at <a href="https://elizabethito.com/www.netflix.com" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">Netflix</a>, and is developing her own project about ghosts. </p>

<p>Elizabeth Ito's many credits include supervising director on Adventure Time,&nbsp;feature storyboard artist on Hotel Transylvania, Astroboy, and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.</p>

Elizabeth Ito

<p>Elize Morgan is a writer of TV, games, and digital series. Elize has worked on animated series like MYSTICONS, OLLIE: THE BOY WHO BECAME WHAT HE ATE!, and BAGEL &amp; BECKY. She was a writer on ASSASSIN'S CREED: ORIGINS. Elize also created and produced two digital comedy series: PRETTY IN GEEK and THE GATE. </p><p>Elize wrote for the CSA-winning convergent project Grojband: The Show Must Go On and was nominated for a WGC Award for her Mysticons script “Heart of Gold."</p><p>Elize has an MA in Popular Culture and is a graduate of the CFC’s Prime Time Television Writing Program.</p>

TAAFI News

Toronto Animation Film Festival

Toronto Animation Industry Conference

Toronto Animation / VFX Job Fair

Writing vs Storyboard: The Ultimate Showdown!

Elizabeth Ito, Writer, Storyteller, Director, Netflix

S. Elize Morgan, Writer/Producer, Alpaca VS Llama