Kalamazoo, Mich., will host the Midwest's first animation festival of its kind May 17-19, 2002, offering $15,000 in cash prizes and featuring a novel cartoon-creating competition the Cartoon Challenge.
The Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (KAFI), organized by the Kalamazoo Valley Community College's (KVCC) Advanced Technology Center for New Media, will feature the Cartoon Challenge, 24 competition levels, and seminars and workshops.
Entry is free for students and $30 to $50 for professionals. The deadline for student entries is March 15 and March 31 for professionals. To enter, send your submission, entry fee (if applicable) and the entry form (found at kafi.kvcc.edu) to KAFI, Call for Entries, KVCC P.O. Box 4070, Kalamazoo, MI 49003-4070. Submissions should be on traditional film, video, CD-ROM, DVD or in a form intended for Web distribution. For entry guidelines and festival information, visit kafi.kvcc.edu. For questions, call 616-373-7883 or email kafi@kvcc.edu.
Judging will be a two-tiered process. A screening panel of professionals and students will review the entries and determine the Top 100 to advance to the festival by April 23. Those will be listed on kafi.kvcc.edu and contacted by phone. Then a team of second-level judges will review the Top 100 to determine the winners of the cash awards.
Those who decide to test their animation talents in the Cartoon Challenge will bring their five-person creative teams as many as 10 such groups to Kalamazoo prior to the festival to produce their 30-second entry under deadline pressure. The teams won't know the topic until the weeklong competition begins. The competition runs May 12-19.
