It was an honour and delight to receive an invitation from the famed GEIDAI animation program at Tokyo University of the Arts, to serve as an international reviewer for their Masters thesis projects. This animation school is bursting with creative energy, storytelling sincerity, and — under the leadership of the brilliant Koji Yamamura — fully committed to artisanal animation.

By wonderful coincidence, this year’s internal reviewer was animator Ryo Orikasa, whose work I’ve greatly admired and written about. This was our first time meeting in person, and we both showed up with the same Len Lye tote bag!

With animator Ryo Orikasa
Chihiro Yamanaka, “Veils of Landscape,” 2025, 5 minutes

At the closing reception I was invited to present an honourable citation to one graduating project, and it was a joy to commend Chihiro Yamanaka’s “Veils of Landscape.” This beautifully composed film combines hand-inked animation and digital layering into otherworldly chromatic landscapes. I was not surprised to hear that Yamanaka’s film was accepted into this year’s student competition at Annecy.

The graduating class with their faculty and with the thesis review panel.