Student's film earns top spot at international animation festival

“The Bricklayer’s Disaster,” an animated short created by graduate students at Texas A&M’s Department of Visualization, earned the 3D Animation Award at the Animex International Festival of Animation and Computer Games in Middlesbrough, England.

Nathan Bajandas, Jose Guinea Montalvo, Bobby Huebel, Ariel Chisholm, Megha Davalath, Matthew Sanford, and Robert Graf collaborated on the movie, the story of how a leftover load of bricks leads to one unfortunate consequence after another.

Three of the “Disaster” filmmakers now have staff positions at major animation companies. Davalath and Heubel are at Dreamworks SKG Studios as a technical director and technical artist, respectively; Graf is a technical director at Pixar Animation Studios.

In addition to the student film contest, the annual festival, which took place Feb. 7-11, 2011, featured presentations and workshops led by industry professionals.

Animex is hosting an audience award contest of the top student films at the 2011 conference. To vote for “The Bricklayer’s Disaster” visit the [Animex site] (http://animex.scm.tees.ac.uk/awards/audience/) .