Will the real Saint Patrick please stand up?

As I do my best to avoid the throngs of drunken M.S.U. students today, I'm reminded that this holiday we celebrate nowadays has very little to do with the life and times of Saint Patrick.

Paraphrased from the meticulously researched "Saint Patrick" by William J. Federer:

The boy who would become St. Patrick was born in Britain around 389 A.D. He was captured in his teens by raiders and forced into slavery, tending sheep in the pagan land of Ireland--a period of time where he would turn his heart to God and become a devout Christian. After his miraculous escape from Ireland in his twenties, "St. Patrick" described a vision he received from God telling him to return to Ireland. He did so and preached the gospel of Jesus Christ over the next 40 years. During this time, he was instrumental in converting all of Ireland to Christianity. At the time of his death in 461 A.D., "Patrick had founded 300 churches, baptized 120,000 believers and his followers re-evangelized Europe."

No pinching people who don't wear green. No drunken partying. No leprechauns and their pots-o-gold. Just a humble man of God with a passion for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, who would love his enemies regardless of what hardships he had to endure.

I think that instead of going down the pub and having a pint of Guinness, I'm going to watch clips from "Brenden and the Secret of Kells" produced by Ireland's animation studio: Cartoon Saloon. The story tells the tale of a young monk and his struggles to complete the "Book of Kells"--Ireland's greatest national treasure: a lavishly illustrated manuscript containing the four gospels of the New Testament. If you are near a theatre that is showing this film (N.Y.C. and Boston first, then the rest of the U.S. in April), I highly recommend taking your kids to see this Academy Award nominated film.

Women in Animation: Madi Piller

Madi Piller was born in Lima, Peru. She graduated from the University of Lima with a degree in Communication Sciences before spending several years producing television commercials. She traveled to France and Colombia before finally settling in Toronto in 1998. Madi is the current president of the Toronto Animated Image Society (TAIS) and divides her time between mentoring budding filmmakers, organizing events for TAIS and producing her own films. Madi produces her films with a wide variety of techniques and subject matter ranging from the traditional stop-motion fare to abstract experimental slices of life.

Vive Le Film (Long Live Film)

Madi does a fair amount of work using digital rotoscoping. The original rotoscope technique had animators capture a scene in live action on film stock then project the film, one frame at a time, on the backside of a light table. The animator would then draw the character on paper, frame by frame, using the action on the film as a guide for the character's motion. Madi has taken this method of filmmaking a step further by combining both digital and analog techniques to create her films. For example: when creating her 2007 film 'Toro Bravo (Brave Bull)', Madi combined charcoal drawings, sand, cut-outs and photocopies with digital rotoscoping and editing techniques to produce the final film.

However, she is no stranger to traditional analog techniques. In her 2006 film "L'Etranger (the Stranger)", Madi printed each frame using a black-and-white printer before hand painting them and optically printing the finished film on 35mm film.

TAIS Christmas Cookies (animated by Madi Piller & Bryce Hallett)



2008 was the first time I attended the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International and that trip gifted me with several friendships. One of which is Madi Piller. I met Madi at the opening night party and was immediately intrigued with her stories of the Toronto Animated Image Society. Half a year later, I attended my first TAIS workshop (Martine Chartrand's Paint-on-glass). Since then, Madi has been instrumental in my joining TAIS and learning multiple animation techniques as well as encouraging me to participate in their summer screenings by finishing and submitting short films (sometimes you need some accountability to finish that film when you could be watching t.v. or surfing the web). It was due in no small part to Madi's influence that I joined the Toronto Animated Image Society this year. Having become sort of a fixture at many of their workshops and summer screenings, at my last visit to Toronto, Madi extended the offer that if I ever needed to use their equipment, then I was welcome to submit a proposal and they'd work me into the schedule--even though I wasn't a member at the time or even a resident of Canada. It was that welcoming attitude, which Madi consistently displays, that made the decision for me to join TAIS and make the move from being a supporter who attends their events to an actual member with a vested interest in supporting TAIS's (and Madi's) commitment to the art of animated film.

Women in Animation: Martine Chartrand

Martine Chartrand was born in Montreal in 1962. During her college days, she discovered animation while studing fine arts at Concordia University. After working in the television and film industry , she hooked up with the animation co-op "Ciné-clic". At Ciné-clic, Martine worked on animation projects while teaching workshops in creating backgrounds. She later joined the National Film Board of Canada working as a colour artist and collaborating on films. In the early '90's, Martine directed her first film "T.V. Tango". Also in 1990, Martine first saw "La vache" by Alexander Petrov, which inspired her to travel to Russia for four years as she studied paint-on-glass animation under the Russian master animator. From 1993 to 2000, Martine created her paint-on-glass masterwork "Black Soul", the story of an African-Canadian grandmother telling her grandson the history of the African people in North America. "Black Soul" went on to win twenty-two awards worldwide including Berlin's "Golden Bear" award and Indianapolis' "Crystal Heart" award.

Martine animates her films using a modification of Petrov's paint-on-glass style of animation. While Petrov uses a specific brand of bicycle grease that is very difficult to obtain in the west, Martine found an inexpensive, easy to obtain brand of industrial grease that, when mixed with paint, prevents the paint from hardening and doesn't change the color of the paint. The film is then animated, frame-by-painstaking-frame as she manipulates the paint, effectively destroying the contents of the previous frame to create the next frame.

Black Soul


Martine was part of my first experience at a workshop for the Toronto Animated Image Society. I didn't know what to expect so I went with the most humble attitude I could muster and a willingness to learn anything I could. To say that Martine made learning easy is an understatement of epic proportions. Martine is this little bundle of positive energy who spent Saturday night showing us her and Petrov's films and explaining the paint-on-glass technique. And on Sunday, she ran from workstation to workstation, watching what we'd produced thus far, showing us new techniques and providing encouragement as we struggled through a trial-by-fire with learning this new style of animation. By the time the workshop was over, and Martine was heading out for the train, none of us wanted to see her go back to Montreal. That weekend was my first experience with a TAIS/NFB workshop, but as I drove back to Michigan (invigorated from my experience and ready to animate), I knew it wouldn't be my last one.

During the workshop, I was paired up with this sweet young high-schooler who introduced herself as 'Chevron' (which she pronounced shee-vah-roh). During the next eight-plus hours of the workshop, we created this film by alternating back and forth under the light table where one of us would animate while the other would make thumbnail sketches for the next sequence, and vice-versa. The wave and flowers sequence became the inspiration for one of the films that I'm currently storyboarding.