Toronto, Canada -- After a stellar inaugural year the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International, or TAAFI, is back again for round 2 and is looking to show the best international animation being created around the world. The 2012 festival brought well over 100 short films from all over the world, including Grand Prix winner Bobby Yeah (Robert Morgan) as well as audience choice winners Doggy See Doggy Do by Kathryn Durst and STUCK by Katherine MacDonald.

With programming underway for the 2013 festival, at the prestigious TIFF | Bell Lightbox July 26 - 28, festival organizers are pleased to announce an open call for submissions. This year’s festival will be accepting animation shorts (22 minutes or less) as well as feature length films (60 minutes or longer) in all genres, mediums, techniques and platforms. To support the mandate of exploring the animated arts, TAAFI also welcomes and encourages commercials, game trailers/cinematics visual effects, and motion graphics, bringing non-traditional animated arts projects to the Festival.

"We're thrilled to continue to build a world class animation festival here in Toronto!” says Barnabas Wornoff, TAAFI Chair and co-founder, “The response from last year’s event was overwhelming and the momentum for 2013 is already building! We’re looking forward to announcing an amazing line up of speakers, panels and workshops, as well as bringing some of the finest animated art from around the world to our enthusiastic audience."

Submission is free before January 30, 2013 and submissions close March 15, 2013. Chosen by a committee of experts, selected films will be eligible for: Audience Choice Grand Prix and The Jury Prize: Best of Fest Grand Prix. Our 2013 International jury includes Oscar winner, Chris Landreth (Canada), NFB animation Producer, Michael Fukushima (Canada) and CEO of AnimationXpress, Anand Gurnani (India). To access the online application and for full submission details visit taafi.com/submit.

Source: Toronto Animation Arts Festival International