On Campus News

Festival de Cannes 2013 Features Academy Director's Short Film

By StudentFilmmakers.com
posted Jul 8, 2013, 13:59

School of Visual Development Director Nicolás Villarreal graduated with honors from Academy of Art University and now has the honor of having his animated short film Pasteurized featured at the world-renowned Festival de Cannes.

Pasteurized is an animated short film about an alien cow who manufactures milk in space. Villarreal spent over 27 months working on the piece with a small team of sound, animation and editing experts. This team included editor, producer and Academy of Art University faculty member Alessandro Squitti, and School of Animation & Visual Effects graduate and faculty member, Sherrie H. Sinclair, who came to the university after a nine-year career at Disney.

Prior to joining the Academy, Villarreal, who was born and raised in La Plata, Argentina, worked as a traditional animator, character designer, sculptor and visual development artist for films and video games for Walt Disney Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment, Jim Henson Studios, Sega, DigitalDomain and Amazon Studios, among others.

“This is an absolutely incredible honor,” says Villarreal. “And I am particularly excited about sharing it with my students and the Academy of Art University community. Animation is the ultimate platform to display one’s creativity and I get a lot of joy out of helping students achieve that. It is very special for me to share this honor with them, so that they can see firsthand that their dreams will come true if they work hard.”

“We are extremely proud of Nicolás and wish him the very best at Cannes,” says Academy President Dr. Elisa Stephens. “Our mission at Academy of Art University is to prepare students for the art and design jobs of today’s global economy, and we are able to do that because of our talented instructors like Nicolás, who are professionals in their fields and passionate about sharing their creative talents and experiences with the next generation.”

Villarreal adds, “When I was in school at the Academy, I had an animation teacher who would fly up from Disney to teach us, and he used to share his personal work with our class, which was incredibly inspiring. Today I am trying to do the same thing for my students. The industry is extremely competitive, but now they have real-life proof that they can make it with hard work, persistence and patience.”

Organized by Festival de Cannes, the Short Film Corner will now include Pasteurized in its library and present selected short films on site at Cannes and after the Festival on shortfilmcorner.com, where private access is reserved to short film buyers and film festival programmers.

Resources:

www.academyart.edu