25-28 April 2024
THE JURY
Meet the CIFF animation jury, who will decide which of the 31 films in competition will receive CIFF 2017's Best Animation award.
AARON WOOD
Aaron is the Co-Founder and Producer at London animation company Slurpy Studios, who create a range of animated content for commercials, education and entertainment platforms. Away from Slurpy Aaron co-owns Skwigly Animation Magazine and is Skwigly's Marketing Director. Additionally, he runs animation-festivals.com, the only website dedicated to listing and covering animation-specific film festivals around the world.
JAYNE PILLING
Jayne Pilling is an animation specialist who combines curating for UK and international festivals and symposia with publishing widely on animation. She has taught at the Royal College of Art, UK, the University of Pennsylvania, several universities in Taiwan, has guest lectured extensively in Europe and Asia, and was a Research Fellow at Norwich University College of the Arts, UK. She has also directed a series on European animation for Channel Four TV and is the founder of the British Animation Awards.
ALEXI WHEELER
Alexi is currently Senior Director of Animation at Nickelodeon International, having started at Nickelodeon UK in 2010 in acquisitions and programming. Before Nick, Alexi held multiple positions in children’s media and broadcasting including production and development positions at Contender Entertainment, Rubber Duck, HRTV, EOne Family, Squarezero as well as a stint as Managing Director and Founder of the creative consultancy and independent production company, Plimmy Ltd.
REBECCA MANLEY
Selected as a BAFTA Guru Pro Emerging Talent in Film 2016, Rebecca is an award-winning director working across commercials, branded content and short film. Rebecca has directed and designed multiple spots for some of the world’s top brands including Starbucks, Hersheys, Google, P&G, Sony, Kraft, and FIFA.
Her latest short Now You See It, featuring the voice of Ewan McGregor, is an artistic piece about environmental damage.
DARREN DUBICKI
Darren is a director and designer at Aardman, with 16 years’ experience in animation, film and design. He has a versatile hand in art direction, character and concept design, visual development for feature film, commercials and TV series. His work has won numerous awards, with his recent films ‘Darkside’ and ‘Flight of the Stories’ gaining international accolade – with the latter receiving the 2014 Annie award for Best Animated Commercial and a 2015 D&AD pencil for Animation in Film Advertising.