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

Toronto Animation Film Festival

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

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

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

Toronto Animation Industry Conference

<h3>Where</h3>Online<h3>When</h3>November 18-22, 2020﻿

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

Toronto Animation / VFX Job Fair

TAAFI News

Director and Writer, Ron Clements, will be kicking off our 2020 festival with the opening keynote address.&nbsp; Ron is best known as the director of Disney classic films such as Moana, The Princess &amp; The Frog, Treasure Planet, Hercules, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid.

Opening Keynote featuring Ron Clements

RON CLEMENTS (Director) is a renowned storyteller and filmmaker at Walt Disney Animation Studios. With his longtime collaborator, John Musker, Clements has written and directed iconic feature films that have become part of Disney’s legacy, including beloved classics like “The Little Mermaid” in 1989 and “Aladdin” in 1992, as well as Disney’s 2009 return to hand-drawn animation, “The Princess and the Frog.”&nbsp;Clements teamed up with Musker again, this time venturing to ancient Oceania for an epic adventure about an aspiring wayfinder, on the Academy Award®-nominated “Moana.” “Moana is a vibrant, tenacious 16-year-old growing up on an island where voyaging is forbidden,” says Clements. “But Moana has been drawn to the ocean since she can remember. She’s torn between what’s expected of her and what she is compelled to do.”Born and raised in Sioux City, Iowa, Clements traces his interest in animation to his first viewing of “Pinocchio” at age 9. As a teenager, he began making super-8 animated films, including “Shades of Sherlock Holmes,” a 15-minute featurette he animated single-handedly. “Shades” won critical acclaim and led to a part-time job as an artist at a television station, where he animated commercials for the local market.&nbsp;After graduating from high school, Clements came to California to try his luck at animation. Because there were no openings at Disney, he worked for several months at Hanna-Barbera while studying life drawing in the evening at Art Center. With persistence and determination, Clements was finally accepted into Disney’s Talent Development Program, a training ground for young animators.&nbsp;After successfully completing the training program, Clements served a two-year apprenticeship under Disney legend Frank Thomas. He quickly progressed through the ranks from in-betweener to assistant to animator-storyman. His credits include “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too,” “The Rescuers,” “Pete’s Dragon,” “The Fox and the Hound” and “The Black Cauldron.” Clements made his writing-directing debut with Musker on the 1986 feature “The Great Mouse Detective.” Their credits also include 1997’s epic comedy “Hercules” and the intergalactic adventure “Treasure Planet” in 2002.&nbsp;Clements and his wife, Tami, live in the San Fernando Valley.

Ron Clements is a renowned storyteller and filmmaker at Walt Disney Animation Studios. With his longtime collaborator, John Musker, Clements has written and directed iconic feature films that have become part of Disney’s legacy, including beloved classics like “The Little Mermaid” in 1989 and “Aladdin” in 1992, as well as Disney’s 2009 return to hand-drawn animation, “The Princess and the Frog.”

Ron Clements

Nelvana

Join independent/crowdfunding guru Spike Trotman as she sheds some light on the transition her company Iron Circus Comics made with expanding into animation. Spike will be joined by cartoonist Tracy Butler, creator of Lackadaisy and animator Fable Siegel to discuss the ups and downs of their campaign, as well as show a few never before seen rough tests from the short. (maybe?)The conversation will be moderated by Illustrator and professor JoAnn Purcell.

Comics to Animation: Iron Circus Tells All

Fable Siegel is an animator and comic artist who lives with a flock of modern-day dinosaurs (parrots, chickens, and pigeons, oh my!). Native to New Hampshire, Fable's bold, moody artistic style was heavily influenced by the dark atmosphere of the cold northern woods. Their credits over a decade-plus career include board artist on Ben 10 (2016), animator on Midnight Gospel, and animator on Hazbin Hotel. Bouncing between several studios before committing fully to indie animation in 2020, Fable landed the role of director for Lackadaisy: The Animated Short, based on the webcomic of the same name penned by Tracy Butler.You can follow the project's development at <a href="https://www.littledaisycafe.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Little Daisy Cafe</a> and read Fable's New England-set zombie apocalypse series, Umbagog, <a href="http://www.umbagogcomic.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>. Follow them on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/Fablepaint" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@Fablepaint</a> for daily updates on everything mentioned, with frequent art streams featuring cast, crew and friends on <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/fable_paint" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Twitch</a>.

Fable Siegel

JoAnn Purcell&nbsp;holds a PhD in Critical Disability Studies from York University where she combined her background as a visual artist and registered nurse and drew her dissertation in&nbsp;comics form alongside her daughter, born with a genetic difference. She is the current and founding Program Coordinator of Illustration at Seneca College and occasional contract faculty at York University.&nbsp;She was instrumental in the creation of the award winning Animation Arts Centre and coordinator in the early years. She held the interim position of Chair of the School of Creative Arts and Animation in 2019. &nbsp;As Faculty she teaches drawing, painting, colour theory, art and illustration history and a seminar class in Comics and Social Justice.&nbsp;She has years of hands on experience as a visual artist, animator and visual effects artist and previously, psychiatric nursing.&nbsp;JoAnn was also one of the founding board members of TAAFI back in the day, and helped define it’s vision in those early years. &nbsp;&nbsp;In her spare time or whenever she needs to think, she runs the streets and paths of Toronto.&nbsp;She misses travel and the real company of friends. She believes comics will save the world.&nbsp;

JoAnn Purcell

Spike is a cartoonist, editor, executive producer, Kickstarter pioneer and thought leader, and founder of Iron Circus Comics, Chicago's largest comics publisher. She has earned nearly $2,000,000 on Kickstarter since the site's launch, and grown Iron Circus from a self-publishing imprint for her webcomic Templar, Arizona to an internationally-distributed small press powerhouse, responsible for provocative and timely Amazon bestsellers like The Harrowing of Hell and Banned Book Club. Under Spike's&nbsp;direction, Iron Circus recently became a multimedia company, launching its first animation venture, Lackadaisy, with a $330,000 Kickstarter project, unseating Academy Award winner Good Hair as the Short FIlm category's highest earner.Spike like Korean food, pit mixes, obscure animation, minicomics, and vids of Columbus statues being rolled into the sea. In her spare time, she likes to fall asleep. She has been to France exactly once, and has barely put on anything that wasn't a set of pajamas since late March.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Spike Trotman

Tracy Butler is an illustrator and comic artist situated in St. Louis, Missouri. Her early art career was spent working for a small game developer, capering between roles as a concept artist, 3d modeler, animator and art director. In 2015, she left the game industry to pursue comic-making and cat-drawing on a full time, independent basis. More recently, following a successful&nbsp;Kickstarter under the auspices of Iron Circus Comics, she’s begun adapting her comic series, Lackadaisy, for animation with director and studio virtuoso Fable Siegel.When she’s not drawing cats, Tracy spends her time lost down a 1920s research rabbit hole, hiking to obscure and abandoned historic sites, looking after feral cats, and chasing after them for spay/neuter. (If you don’t keep tabs on them, they might start up a shady speakeasy operation or something.) You can find Tracy’s comics, art and social media links at Lackadaisy.com.

Tracy Butler

Atomic Cartoons

Writer, Producer, Director and Showrunner, Dana Terrace, will be closing our 2020 festival with a talk discussing her latest hit show The Owl House and what it takes to get a show off the ground.

Closing Keynote featuring Dana Terrace

Dana Terrace is creator and executive producer of Disney Channel's animated fantasy-comedy series "The Owl House."Terrace previously served as a director on Disney's Emmy® Award-nominated "DuckTales."A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Terrace was featured as one of Variety's "10 Animators to Watch" in 2017 and Animation Magazine's "Rising Stars of Animation" in 2019.As a child, Terrace would sneak into the living room to watch cartoons and copied what she saw into flipbooks. She decided to pursue a career in animation when she was 16 and began sharing her work on different forums while in high school. Her art blog gained notice from the creative team behind Disney's "Gravity Falls," with Terrace landing her first job out of college as a storyboard revisionist on the series.Born in Hamden, Connecticut, Terrace currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Dana Terrace is creator and executive producer of Disney Channel's animated fantasy-comedy series "The Owl House."Terrace previously served as a director on Disney's Emmy® Award-nominated "DuckTales."A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Terrace was featured as one of Variety's "10 Animators to Watch" in 2017 and Animation Magazine's "Rising Stars of Animation" in 2019.

Dana Terrace

Emmy and Bafta Nominated, Michelle Melanson has over 25 years experience in the production business with hundreds of episodes produced and over 50 awards and nominations.In early 2018, Michelle started Headspinner Productions with husband Ken Cuperus, an Emmy Nominated creator and showrunner. They currently have several shows in active development with broadcasters including a reboot of the Canadian classic series Hilarious House of Frightenstein.Michelle was vice president and then president of Radical Sheep Productions from 2009-2018, executive producing such shows as the worldwide hit The Next Step, as well as Fangbone!, The Bagel &amp; Becky Show, Tee &amp; Mo, Stella and Sam, The Yup Yups and Ollie The Boy Who Became What He Ate. Michelle has won the Canadian Screen award, the Grand Prize of the Youth Media Alliance, mulitiple Kidscreen Awards and Cynopsis Awards. She also has a Juno Award for producing the Stella and Sam Album.Michelle is also the founder of Women Drawn Together -a free organization that fosters learning, networking and mentorship for Women in the Animation community. In the past four years, the group has grown to 4 cities and well over 1500 members. The organization is open to all, with a focus on opportunities to learn about various departments in the animation field in a safe, comfortable environment.Michelle graduated in 1990 from Ryerson with a BAA in Radio and Television Arts and is a Wall of Fame Alumni recipient, an award she received in 2019.&nbsp;

TAAFI News

Toronto Animation Film Festival

Toronto Animation Industry Conference

Toronto Animation / VFX Job Fair

Closing Keynote featuring Dana Terrace

Dana Terrace, Creator & Executive Producer, Disney

Michelle Melanson Cuperus, President, Headspinner Productions Inc.