Originally from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Denver Jackson is a self-taught animator and visual effects artist who got his start making films in high school before emigrating to Canada with his parents. As a filmmaker, he leans heavily on the fantastical while still being grounded by real world characters and situations. He works in both live action and animated films, blending the conventions of both mediums to create his own unique style, and is known to write, direct, film, edit and animate almost entirely on his own. THE WISHING JAR (2016) has screened around the world, including at three Academy Award-qualifying festivals and won Best Animated Film at both San Diego Comic Con International Film Festival and Heartland Film Festival, while his first animated short film CLOUDRISE (2013) cut through the 400 hours of content uploaded every minute on Vimeo to become a prestigious Vimeo Staff Pick. He wrote, directed and animated three feature length projects from a web series (Esluna: The First Monolith) to two feature films (Esluna: The Crown of Babylon and Esluna: The Worlds Divide).

Tabitha is an animator, writer, and educator, and is currently a Full-Time Faculty member at Sheridan College's Honours BA Animation program teaching 2D Layout and Short Film Workflow to the second year cohort. Graduating from animation school in Toronto in 2007, she has held many positions within the Animation industry as well as supervised BG Paint and 2D Layout on various productions. Tabitha has competed an MFA at OCAD U in Digital Futures (2020) where her research focuses on the effect of online sharing culture on creativity. In 2011, she created/directed the animated short Missed Connection through The NFB’s Hothouse program, and in 2023 wrapped production on a 5-minute satirical rock opera titled Hey, Men! about the rise of populist bro-culture, which will make its festival debut in Spring 2024.

Tina Nawrocki is a 2d Animator and Illustrator who started working in the industry in 2006. Her experience spans video games, television and film. Tina joined Studio MDHR in 2015 to work on the video game “Cuphead” as a Concept Artist and 2d Animator. She designed and animated the bosses for Sugarland Shimmy and various platforming stages. After Cuphead’s release, Tina worked for two years on Studio MDHR’s new project, “DLC: Delicious Last Course”, animating the boss fight “Doggone Dogfight”. Since leaving MDHR in 2020, Tina had the pleasure of animating on the Netflix Series “Green Eggs and Ham” and the feature film “Space Jam: A New Legacy” as well as providing original animations for Drake’s Music Video “Knife Talk”.

Terry Ibele is an award-winning stop motion and 2D animator from Toronto. He is a two-time winner of TAAFI's The Big Pitch and a winner of OIAF's Pitch This competition. His credits include work for TV shows and video games. In his spare time he runs the Animation Industry Podcast, a weekly show interviewing today's animation pros.