Mide Kadiri’s Breakthrough Builds The Universe Frame By Frame
Still from Breakthrough by Mide Kadiri.
When Calgary-based visual artist Mide Kadiri began his residency with the Quickdraw Animation Society (QAS) in 2022, he was brand new to the world of animation. Two years later, Kadiri’s short film Breakthrough has screened across Canada — from the Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival here in Alberta to the Animation Festival of Halifax in Nova Scotia. Now, Breakthrough has been selected for the Calgary International Film Festival in both the Alberta Spirit and Experimental Shorts programs.
His animated short Breakthrough follows the creation of our universe across both digital and 2D animated art forms and was produced as part of his eighteen-month residency with the Quickdraw Animation Society (QAS).
Kadiri took part in the Chris J Melnychuk Memorial Scholarship and Production Residency beginning in 2022, which is designed to help emerging artists create their first independent animated short film, combining mentorship, production resources, and equipment.
New to the world of animation, the structure QAS provided was essential to the project. “I just had to do what I know how to do, which is just, draw and draw and draw, and just keep drawing, and everything started to make sense eventually,” says Kadiri.
For Kadiri the mentorship opportunities from the program were indispensable, including assistance from Calgary musician and animator Chad VanGaalen. VanGaalen brought decades of experience in Toon Boom, the software Kadiri used to animate his film. Van Galen was an “amazing mentor, [he] helped me maximize the software.”
The result is a film that reflects both Kadiri’s background in hand-drawn art and his leap into digital animation. Thanks to the help of compositor Lyndon Navalta, the pair were able to “take the real drawings that I had with marker and ink and almost lay them like a skin on top of the animation, and give it this real texture that is in my other like physical works, which is just a really cool way to bring both physical and digital [media] together.”
Now, Breakthrough is set to screen once again for Calgary audiences, and Kadiri is excited to embrace the festival community. “I love the vibe that [the Calgary International Film Festival] has and just the people they bring to the cinemas, and the movies they bring in from across the world. This is just what it's all about.”
Breakthrough will be showing in two packages at the Calgary International Film Festival, in Experimental Shorts on September 15 at Werklund Centre’s Micro Cinema and in Shorts: Alberta Spirit on September 22. Tickets are available at www.ciffcalgary.ca.