Film Students Exhibit Their Recent Projects at UWM Animation Showcase

A sea of laughter, gasps, and cries flooded from the University Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union Cinema as viewers watched the diverse and unique collection of student animations in the 2024 UWM Animation Showcase. The many animated films created by students highlight the university’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of storytellers and digital artists. 

The showcase, which took place on Wednesday evening, is a tradition originally started by Professor Carl Bogner, a film, video and animation professor at UWM. The showcase has continued to grow over the past couple of years to coordinate with the growth of the film and animation program. 

The show was introduced by Professor Laura Harrison, a film, video, and animation professor and animation head of the past two years. Harrison was a painter for 20 years before discovering her love of the many possibilities of animation. 

The themes of each year’s event are chosen by the winner of the UWM Ethereal Animation Prize, this year it was student programmer Elizabeth Whelan. The class projects had the theme of expression this year, and the 48-hour challenge had the theme of nostalgia. 

“Each year the winner of the ethereal animation prize is awarded, along with a cash award, the honor of programming the animation showcase,” Harrison said. 

The showcase was made as a way for students to display their expression-themed animation projects from their classes. One student who showcased their classwork was Lucca Marcello, a sophomore film student in the Animation 1 class. For this class’s final project, students had the option to create a paper stop-motion animation or a digitally made animation, which Marcello combined into a multi-styled piece for his final project, which was exhibited in the showcase. 

“The expression theme for me was me expressing the kind of entertainment I want to produce,” Marcello said, “Nothing too deep or anything, I just want to make others laugh.” 

Along with student animation projects from classes, students were given a new opportunity to showcase their talent with the new 48-hour animation challenge, known as anijam. In this challenge, students were given 3 days to spend animating a film to the theme of nostalgia. 

“The anijam was based on the premise that within a 48-hour span of time, students could crank out some wild and unpredictable work that might take them (and all of us) by surprise,” said Harrison. 

Students had the option to take on this challenge either solo or with a group, one of these groups was sophomore film students José A. Perez, Hannah Nesen, and Jacob Solis. The trio used their many hands to create a clay stop-motion film titled “Mama’s Cooking”. 

“Because Jacob and I are from similar backgrounds, we overlapped a lot,” Perez said. “It was us really trying our best to infuse everyone’s actual backgrounds and make it equally important to all of us as a piece.” 

The film featured two kids playing with bugs outside while a mother was indoors cooking for the children, specifically making pozole, a traditional Mexican soup. The animation also included music from the Pokemon soundtrack, combining nostalgic memories from all three students. 

For one member of the audience, sophomore nursing student Josie Larson, one animation stood out in particular. “I really loved the whole showcase, the students are all so talented,” Larson said. “But out of all the animations, I need to see more of Notorious Network.” 

The Notorious Network is a comedy following a misfit group of villains going about their lives. This was the project of Sam Aria. The pilot shown at the showcase is also available on Aria’s YouTube channel, where he plans to upload future episodes as he makes them.