Pilar Garcia-Fernandezsesma is a freelance director, animator, and fine artist from and based in New York. She is a RISD animation alumnus, a Glas and Jerome grant recipient, and a Student Academy Award gold medalist for her film “Ciervo”. Outside of her commercial work, she makes a variety of short films ranging in style and genre, some of which have been shown at festivals such as Slamdance, Annecy, RIIFF, Animest, and Animafest Zagreb. Pilar primarily works with 2D cel animation and often uses mixed media elements in her films by combining traditional and digital techniques. As a whole, her work ranges from fiction and fantastical to poetic and metaphorical, and often deals with human interpersonal dynamics paired with themes of womanhood, family, and our relationship to the natural world.

Kris Theorin is the man behind Something’s Awry Productions' kinetic animation and unique visual styles. Working as an all-in-one animator, director, editor, sound designer, and VFX guru, Kris has created spots for Disney, Warner Bros, LEGO, NBC/Universal, and many others. After starting his career in stop-motion, Kris has transitioned into 3D Animation and his work can now be seen in movie theaters, TVs, and film festivals worldwide.

Amos Sussigan, a Swiss director and production designer based in Los Angeles. His heartfelt animated shorts, including "Broken Wing" and "Swan Cake," garnered international acclaim at over 40 film festivals, with six Academy Award qualifications. Notably, he co-produced "Aria for a Cow," earning an Academy Award qualification in 2015, and his latest short "COASTER" also qualified in 2020. Transitioning from visual development on Ryan Coogler's "Space Jam: A New Legacy," Amos now works as the production designer for Andy Serkis' "Animal Farm." He worked for studios such as The Walt Disney Company, Paramount, FOX, Dreamworks, Netflix and he's a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Tala Rae Schlossberg is an animator and video producer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her experimental video work focuses on the intersection of the physical and the digital, with an emphasis on capturing the beauty in the mundane. Schlossberg’s commercial and editorial work includes narrative shorts, experimental videos and data visualizations for clients including Patagonia, Planned Parenthood, MoMA, The Nature Conservancy and the New York Times, where she previously worked as an animator and video producer for the newspaper’s Opinion Video section. In 2022, Schlossberg co-founded the woman-owned studio Two Toes Creative, which strives to embrace the absurd and wonderfully unexplainable parts of human existence. Schlossberg experiments in a wide variety of mediums – she regularly scores her visual work with original compositions, produces an independent magazine called “The Eliditarian” and is currently working on a collection of short fiction.

Erika Gomi currently works in production at Paramount Animation and was previously at Cartoon Network Studios. Originally from the Bay Area, she now resides in Los Angeles where she likes to find free food and explore new neighborhoods.

Born in the Netherlands, Wilbert Plijnaar sold his first batch of stories to the Dutch Disney magazine at age16. He then co-wrote one of the longest running comic strip series in The Netherlands: "Sjors & Sjimmie"- which appears to this date and has been published in over 50 books- and a comic for girls called "Claire". 17 books appeared of this series. At the same time he worked in as an illustrator in advertising where he conceptualized and directed a bunch of animated commercials. In 1995 his entire work in comics was awarded the prestigious Dutch 'Stripschap' Prize. In that same year Wilbert moved to Los Angeles on invitation by Warner Bros, where he spent the last 25 years as a story artist at Dreamworks and Disney a.o. for successful animation films such as the Ice Age movies, Jimmy Neutron, Disney's "Princess and the Frog", Despicable Me 1 and 2 , The Minion Movie, Secret Life of Pets, The Grinch and many, many more.