Audience Choice Award Winners - Sweaty Eyeballs 2015

Here are the winners of the Audience Choice Awards for Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Invitational 2015:

1st Place - Loop Ring Chop Drink by Nicolas Ménard
2nd Place - Lesley the Pony has an A+ Day by Christian Larrave
3rd Place TIE - Small People with Hats by Sarina Nihei and Storm Hits Jacket by Paul Cabon

Congratulations to the winners and thanks for another amazing audience turnout!
View the Sweaty Eyeballs 2015 Program
​View the Animator Bios for Sweaty Eyeballs 2015
​Illustration by Tynesha Foreman

Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Invitational is Back!
Friday, November 20th, 2015

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The 4th Annual Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Invitational returns to the MICA Brown Center with a radical variety of international, independent short animations. Curated by Phil Davis (Towson University) and Max Porter (Maryland Institute College of Art); including narrative, experimental, and music video work made with a variety of techniques ranging from stop motion, hand drawn, to CGI. Come out for a night of weird and beautiful animation and cast your vote for the audience choice award!
Check out the 2015 lineup of animators here.

Sweaty Eyeballs is brought to you by the Animation Department of the Maryland Institute College of Art, the department of Art + Design, Art History, and Art Education at Towson University, and the Maryland Film Festival.

4th Annual Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Invitational Screening
Friday November 20th, 2015
7:30 PM
Falvey Hall Auditorium - MICA Brown Center
1300 W. Mount Royal Ave. Baltimore, MD
$5 ticket price
FREE for students (with valid student ID), University faculty/staff, and 
Friends of the Maryland Film Festival
Sweaty Eyeballs 2015 - Animator Bios
Sarina Nihei (United Kingdom / Japan)
Sarina Nihei is an award winning animator and illustrator living in Tokyo. She started animation at  Tama Art University in Tokyo where she had a BA in graphic design. To start Masters degree, she moved to London in 2012, and graduated with an MA in animation in 2014. Her graduation film from the RCA ‘Small People with Hats’ has been awarded and screened at festivals around the world including Ottawa and Annecy.
Tynesha Foreman (USA)
Tynesha is a passionate and strange animator with a proclivity for the grotesque. She incorporates these passions through animation, character design and Illustration. She works primarily in Stop-motion and 2D, but also has a deep interest in mixed-media.
Gustavo Almenara (France)
Born in 1978, Gustavo Almenara graduated with a focus in Animated films from the Arts Déco (Paris) in 2006. He's worked as creative, animator, graphist and editor in music clip, advertising, animation series, short films and channel identity. He is currently working in animation and live action on projects which share video and graphism. Since 2009, he is codirecting documentary films related to « speech value ». He’s also directing jazz concerts, shooting and musical performances.
Caleb Wood (USA)
​Caleb Wood is an independent animation filmmaker hailing from Midwest American roots. Graduated from RISD in 2011, and has gone on to continue making films in a range of experimental mediums.
Marcus Armitage (United Kingdom)
Marcus Armitage is a BAFTA nominated animator and filmmaker from Yorkshire with an MA in animation from the Royal College of Art.
Marcus makes films about change in modern Britain. Characters caught in the middle or fighting against it. He uses drawing, painting and mixed media to show transformation in his animated worlds.
Julian Gallese (Costa Rica)
Julian is an artist born in San Jose, Costa Rica, 1992. The unknown is his recurrent theme. His work is a constant exploration of the subconscious. His drawings and storytelling brings up the absurd, in an approach that honours irrationality over technique.
Yoriko Mizushiri (Japan)
Yoriko Mizushiri was born in 1984 in Aomori prefecture, Japan.  After she obtained a BA in Design at the Joshibi University of Art and Design in Tokyo, she has been living and working as a freelancer in Tokyo. Apart from animated film works, she also has from time to time an exhibited in the galleries. Her film Futon won the Japanese prestige awards Renzo Kinoshita Prize (Hiroshima International Animation Festival), New Face Award (Japan Media Arts Festival) and has been applauded and nominated/awarded at numerous international film festivals. Her following films Kamakura and Maku have been nominated at Berlinale two consecutive years.
Nicolas Ménard (United Kingdom / Canada)
Nicolas is a French Canadian graphic artist working and living in London. He produces illustrations, animations, books and interaction. He completed an MA in Animation at the Royal College of Art in 2014 and is a member of the Late Night Work Club.
Laura Vandewynckel (Belgium)
Laura Vandewynckel was born in 1986 in West-Flanders (Belgium). In 2008 she graduated as a Germanic Philologer at Ghent University. After having studied two years of Dramatic Arts, she then trained as an animation film maker at the RITS School of Arts Brussels. In 2013 she completed her first stop-motion puppet film What’s On and graduated with Paradise in 2014.
Christian Larrave (USA)
Christian Larrave is a filmmaker from the United States.  He attends the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. ​Lesley the Pony Has an A+ Day! Is his first film.
Frédéric Bonpapa (France / United Kingdom)
Following a master's in arts and technologies of image at the University of Paris 8 in the late 90s, he embarked on a career in animation and visual effects spanning over fourteenth years. Light Motif is his first film as director.
Nate Theis (USA)
Nate Theis is a director and animator based in Madison, Wisconsin. A Savannah College of Art and Design graduate, he has created a diverse body of work with studios such as JibJab, Warner Bros. Animation, and Planet Propaganda. Recently, Nate has returned to making independent films. His earlier short films have been screened at the Director’s Fortnight in the Cannes Film Festival and have won awards at both the Wisconsin Film Festival and Savannah Film and Video Festival.
Paul Cabon (France)
Born in Brest on 1985, Paul Cabon is a young french animator and director. His student film, Sauvage, won the special prize from the student’s films jury in the international festival of Annecy in 2010, a spécial mention in Bruz and the Optical Theater prize at the Fresh Film Festival of Prague. After finishing the university he has worked as animator, writer and layout man for the series « Michel » at the Folumage studios. He also collabores as an illustrator with different fanzines. Storm hits jacket is his first professional short film.
Richard Schemm (USA)
Richard is a filmmaker and animator who will be graduating from Towson University in the Spring with a degree in film production. Currently Richard's main focus is 2D animation within a variety of media including animated comics, short films, and micro format animation such as gifs and Vine videos.  He enjoys dark surreal humor and is working to push his abilities and become a collaborator in the animation industry.
Alice Dunseath (United Kingdom)
Alice is a London based filmmaker and animator and Lecturer of Animation at Goldsmiths College. She likes to work with materials, liquids, chemicals, crystals or elements that have a life of their own. She choreographs them around the screen to music or sounds to make visual poetry that encourages viewers to contemplate the bigger picture. 
Steven Subotnick (USA)
Steven Subotnik is an independent, experimental animator.  His work uses varied imagery – from cartoon to pure textural abstraction, unusual editing techniques, and carefully structured sound design to make human vulnerability, conflict, and history concrete and to convey a deeply personal aesthetic experience to viewers.  He has worked as an animator, director, illustrator, author, and taught animation at numerous institutions. He is currently teaching animation at Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Brown University.