When I was in college I would often attend screenings of "Spike and Mike's Twisted Festival of animation." Those screenings, usually held in small art-house theaters and attended by an eclectic group of animation enthusiasts, was where I was first introduced to the animations of Bill Plympton, risque adult-style themed animations and a variety of strangeness that couldn't be found on television. The Los Angeles Animation Festival brought me back to that time. This years festival had all those things, including Bill Plympton himself in attendance showing off his newest animated works.

Held in a small theater in East Hollywood, the festival celebrates animated films from around the world. Because the festival tries to be a source of encouragement for animators of all types, they hand out A LOT of awards. I'm not usually in favor of this practice because giving awards to everyone usually erases the importance of the individual awards, however, the festival does not have Q&As after their individual programs, so giving awards the final night of the festival gives each filmaker a couple of minutes to address the audience. In my experience, these few minutes are much better that the limited time usually alotted for questions after screenings. This award program is what makes it truly unique. It's fun, comes with a band, a red carpet photos and is a great way to end the festival.

This year, "Nubbinwood" won the "Silver Award for Best CGI Animation," an award whose prestige was slightly diminished by what I was told was an unrepresentation of CGI animation this year, but taken in the company the award was given, I was happy to be honored. Staying true with the character of the festival, I did find the award encouraging, although, just being selected to have my film screened at the festival would have been recognition enough.

The only negative of the festival for me was the lack of information about the films shown. During the afternoon I was there I saw around 50 short films. If you quizzed me on what I saw or asked me to match a title with a film or a director, I don't think I could. Much of what I saw has become an animated blur. I often follow other animated films to see where they have been or how they are doing at other festivals, so physical programs and pictures on websites help me keep track of films on social media. I also do a fair amount of research about films I am about to see at festivals, and giving more information about the films before the screeings would have helped me prepare for what I was about to see.

One last note: up until now, "Nubbinwood" has only screened in film festivals in which animated films occupiy a small fraction of the programming, so I was very excited to have my film screened with a bunch of other animations. Only a handful of them of them were CGI animated films like mine. Despite the LAAF saying they had a smaller amount CGI animated entries than usual, this low percentage has generally been consistant with many of the other festivals I've been in. This is interesting to me because the most profitable and commercial style of animation today is CGI, and yet, their presence in film festivals is small. I suspect this is because the learning curve for producing profesional-level CGI animation is steep, and if the level of animation is not up to a certain "Pixar" standard, we label it "bad CG." But 2D animation and stop-motion animation does not have that hurdle to jump. Poorly drawn animation is simply regarded as a "style" and we allow poor stop-motion animation because we instinctively know how difficult it is to produce. There's no dispute that's it's all animation in the most basic sense, but most animations I see look less "professional" than I would expect. As someone whose film is being shown with these other films, it's disappointing. As someone who understands the difficulty of creating an animated film, it's inspiring. It's an internal conflict I deal with all the time.