The Savannah College of Art and Design will bring SCAD AnimationFest back to SCAD Atlanta Sept. 23-25, staging three days of premieres, sneak peeks and industry conversation at the university’s SCADshow theater. The anniversary program will be leaning on two marquee tributes: a 25th-anniversary celebration of “The Proud Family,” honoring executive producers Bruce W. Smith and Ralph Farquhar, and a closing-night premiere of DreamWorks Animation’s “Forgotten Island,” with director and writer Joel Crawford — an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominee — collecting the Variety Impact in Animation Award.
The anniversary edition arrives with two notable additions. SCAD is launching its inaugural Animated Shorts Competition, and the festival becomes the new home of Variety’s 10 Animators to Watch, a franchise first launched in 2015 that makes its SCAD AnimationFest debut this year. Woven throughout is a spotlight on SCAD students and alumni working at the leading edge of animation, motion-media design and visual effects.
Seuss’ iconic character, with Bill Hader voicing the Cat ahead of the film’s November release. Wednesday also brings special screenings of new series “President Curtis” and “Helluva Boss,” the latter featuring voice actors Richard Horvitz and Brandon Rogers, alongside the recently released “Toy Story 5″ and “Avatar: Aang the Last Airbender.” After the “Avatar” screening, director Lauren Montgomery joins attendees for a conversation on the vision, storytelling and artistry behind bringing Aang’s world to the big screen. Thursday opens with “The Magic of SCAD Alumni: Inside Walt Disney Imagineering,” a behind-the-scenes panel with university alumni who have turned their craft into careers building theme-park experiences.
Animation double feature follows, starting with “Batman: Knightfall — Part 1: Knightfall,” adapted from one of the most beloved sagas in “Batman” comics history and followed by a conversation with Peter Girardi, executive vice president for alternative programming and creative affairs, and supervising producer Rick Morales. The pair returns for “GET JIRO,” the new Adult Swim series based on the graphic novel by Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose, joined by executive producers and showrunners Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka for a talk on adapting Bourdain and Rose’s singular vision into a world that blends food, action and dark comedy. Thursday’s slate also includes Sony Pictures Television’s “Universal Basic Guys,” co-created and executive produced by brothers Adam Malamut and Craig Malamut, with a third season set to premiere Sunday, Sept. 27, plus the acclaimed “Hoppers.” The day closes with the North American premiere of “Sekiro: No Defeat,” presented exclusively by Crunchyroll.
Directed by Kenichi Kutsuna at studio Qzil.la and based on FromSoftware’s “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice,” the hand-drawn 2D adaptation lands in Atlanta following its world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, with Crunchyroll senior vice president of content Adam Zehner introducing the screening. The 25th-anniversary “Proud Family” celebration and the Animation Trailblazer Award presentation to Smith and Farquhar anchor the Thursday program. Friday begins with an exclusive sneak peek at LAIKA’s stop-motion feature “Wildwood.” LAIKA head of animation Brad Schiff and SCAD alum and stop-motion animator Tilly Fidler (B.F.A., animation, 2022) will take audiences inside the painstaking process behind director Travis Knight’s upcoming epic.
The closing day also features a special screening of the new series “Golden Axe,” a deep dive into Marvel Animation’s “X-Men ’97” with supervising producer Jake Castorena and Variety’s 10 Animators to Watch presentation. Variety chief awards editor Clayton Davis will host a conversation with this year’s honorees, a dynamic class whose work is helping shape where the medium heads next. The list of 10 honorees will be announced on Thursday, Sept. 10.
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