Missed Connection

A slow, agonizing, juicy exploration of the oldest form of affection.

Produced as part of the 7th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

The body is a magnificent system. But its harmony can be interrupted, sometimes by subversive agents within. Sick uses stop motion to bring to life a knitted body in a fanciful journey through the pulsating organs and dark recesses of the human body.

Produced as part of the 7th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

The macabre tale of a child trying to overcome her fear of the swing.

Produced as part of the 7th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

This animated short employs hand-drawn animation layered over stop-motion sequences of moving ink on drumskins to create a striking, mournful portrait of the Alberta tar sands.

Produced as part of the 7th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

Watch as one cloud’s imagination soars from the familiar to the unknown on a captivating journey from dusk until dawn. Animated using partial audio waveform data, A Cloud’s Dream is a stereoscopic particle simulation that explores various cloud formations.

Produced as part of the 7th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

In this short animation, a polar bear must try his luck finding a job in the big city when the last of his Arctic ice environment disappears. It’s hard fitting into the human world, however, so this bear finds a more creative solution to his predicament.

Produced as part of the 8th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

This animated short poses some interesting questions: what if buildings pulsed, trees tapped out beats, or shadows could whistle a tune? Through the creative interpretation and animation of the city's natural rhythms, Orange orchestrates a contagious urban dance.

Produced as part of the 5th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

Transformation, technology, higher powers, breath. These ideas and elements roil around inside Toronto artist and filmmaker Zane Kozak's CG-animated short, taking us on a somewhat troubling but eerily mystical journey from the human form to... something entirely different.

Produced as part of the 6th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

A sleeping computer dreams of humans forms, transforming their digital data into abstract and playful shapes. Movements, emotions, and musical lines are added layer upon layer until the complexity overloads the system and the dream ends. Reverie.exe combines Microsoft Kinect motion capture and music-driven visuals in an exploration of the connection shared between humans and machines.

Produced as part of the 8th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

This is a combination of stop-motion puppet and drawn animation. We observe a forlorn woman on a Halifax dock, whose loneliness is lifted by the passing of a fishing trawler. A metaphor on the connectiveness of water and water's capacity as a medium of freedom.

Produced as part of the first edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship. Theme was "Water and Our Relationship to It".

In this short animation film Dale Hayward brings to life his watercolour on paper.

Produced as part of the fourth edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.