Kaj Pindal Award
The Kaj Pindal Animated Person of the Year Award is given in honour to an individual or a group of individuals who make a lasting impression and uplift the world of animation through their work.
Past recipients include namesake Kaj Pindal, Ray Harryhausen, Marv Newland, Dean DeBlois, Blair Kitchen, Gerald Potterton and Domee Shi.
Sam Chou - 2023 Recipient
This year we are honored to present the Kaj Pindal Person of the Year award to local hero, series creator and director - Sam Chou
Early in his career, Sam was a traditional animator on feature films like Osmosis Jones (WB) and Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights before learning how to direct animation, mentoring under legendary animator, Chuck Gammage.
Sam developed and directed the animated, comedy series City in Crisis (Mondo, Adult Swim Canada), CG action-series Max Steel: Team Turbo (Mattel), and Kody Kapow, an animated adventure series starring Jason Alexander (Universal Kids). He co-created and directed the web series Crime: The Animated Series, which premiered at both Sundance and TIFF and won Best Series for Adults at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2014.
Currently, Sam is the creative director of development Look Mom! Productions, where he oversees the prodco’s creative development slate, which includes animated fare for teens and adults.
Look Mom!’s slate of premium programming includes "Doomlands" (Roku), Adult Swim Canada’s "Night Sweats", VRV's (USA) "Bigfoot", and "Gary and His Demons" for Mondo Channel on VRV (USA), CBC Gem (Canada), Comedy Central (UK) and ABC Comedy (Australia).
Kaj Pindal | 1927-2019
Born and raised in Denmark, animation great Kaj Pindal spent most of his long career in Canada, where he is best known for award winning work ranging from such NFB shorts as What on Earth, to the PBS series based on his most beloved character, Peep. He is also well remembered and deeply missed as a teacher of animation, particularly for his time on faculty at Sheridan where he inspired 100’s of students to, themselves, strive for greatness.
