Filmmaker's animated heroine is traveling the world

 

Jill Johnston-Price "My process of making animated films is a little different because I paint the images," Johnston-Price said.  By using a cutout style to enable movements, she can speed up the process of animating, but she still needs to paint hundreds of images to make a short film. "The fact that every part has to be painted takes a lot of work," she said. The images are only part of the process: she creates the story and does the sound.   Using Corel Painter, she paints in the digital realm. "I have a huge screen that I paint on called a Cintiq," she said, referring to the industry-standard graphics tablet made by the Japanese company, Wacom. "The pen is pressure sensitive and allows me to draw directly on the screen. The program I use is very painterly. It operates like natural media. It’s the closest digital software that I’ve ever found that imitates painting."

Jill Johnston-Price is one of SUNY Fredonia's newest assistant professors, hired this fall to direct the new Animation/Illustration major in the

Jill Johnston-Price's animated heroine, Prickle Britches, is gathering critical acclaim at film festivals all over the world.

Visual Arts & New Media Department. She is also the writer, director, producer and editor of “Prickle Britches,” a six-minute animated short about a young girl and the rite of passage that leads her on a surreal fairy tale journey. 

Johnston-Price’s film, along with 59 independent and amateur films from across the country, was officially selected for Minnesota’s first annual Twin Cities Underground Film Festival, taking place over Labor Day Weekend.  

It will also be shown at the upcoming Great Lakes Film Association Film Festival in Erie, Pa., Sept. 20 through 24.

In fact, "Prickle Britches" is really making the rounds. Less than one year old, the film has been invited to appear at festivals in Seattle, Detroit, California, Korea, and at one of the most historic and venerable international juried film festivals, AnimaFest in Zagreb, Croatia.

The maker of nine films, five of which are animations, Johnston-Price represents one of the growing number of individuals who’ve been empowered by inexpensive technology to produce their own films. She is currently at work on another.

Heads new Animation and Illustration major 

The Canadian-born (Thunder Bay, Ontario) filmmaker brings to her creative work a background in photography and painting, making her the perfect choice to launch Fredonia's newest major, Animation and Illustration. 

The Visual Arts and New Media Department took the serious step of creating the new major after a very successful and popular special topics course taught by Professor Stephen Komp in the fall of 2003 excited both students and faculty. "The success of that first class was key," Department Chairperson Liz Lee said. "It led the faculty to work together as a group to add the techniques of animation to the already popular Illustration program."

"I think this is a unique program," Professor Johnston-Price said. "There aren’t too many available to undergraduates. Of the few that exist, most gravitate to 3d and game art, whereas we're trying to build something that is first and foremost animation, but which can act as a foundation for a student to go on with a 3d program. What we’re trying to teach is what the industry really wants young animators to know: story-telling and how to draw."