Rankin Inlet (Dec 11/06) - With a ground-breaking series of workshops coming in the new year, Nunavut artists are looking for ways to get involved in an animated art form.

In October, the National Film Board announced a comprehensive program to bring animation workshops and equipment to three Nunavut communities: Iqaluit, Pangnirtung and Cape Dorset. The program would train artists in animation, as well as providing state-of-the-art equipment that would remain in the communities.

Rankin Inlet student Ippiksaut Friesen hopes to be a part of upcoming animation workshops hosted by the National Film Board. - photo courtesy of Jim Shirley

One young artist looking to make her mark on the program is Ippiksaut Friesen, a Grade 12 student at Rankin Inlet's Maani Ulujuk high school. She contacted News/North in November to learn more about the program, and to find out about the program's future in the Kivalliq.

"I like the process of it," she said of animation. "It's just something that I've always been interested in."

While her affinity for animation began with British claymation characters Wallace and Gromit, Friesen said it was an animation program, led by instructor Chris Eccles, that pushed her farther into the medium.

"I've been working with a lot of cell animation and clay animations," she said, which has inspired her to submit animation projects for her non-art classes, such as Social Studies.

"Just anything I could come up with, I would animate that," she said.

When the $600,000 project was announced, NFB executive producer Derek Mazur said he hoped to expand the program to the Kivalliq one day. However, he said artists in the region are still welcome to apply to one of other three workshops.

"That would be really cool," Friesen said of the idea.

Mazur, speaking from NFB's Northwest centre in Edmonton last week, said applications were being put out soon, with a Jan. 3 deadline.

"If she was to call the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation in Iqaluit, she could make sure she gets an application," he said.

Mazur said the application process was "standard," asking for the artist's reasons for getting involved, their bio and photos of their work.

"(Applicants) should hear back within days," he said, before the programs' mid-January start times.

While Friesen said she would love to travel to the workshops, the mix of school, her work at a children's group home, and working on her portfolio with Matchbox Gallery's Jim Shirley (she hopes to attend the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver one day) will be a hard act to juggle.

"I'm still interested," she said. "I know it's going to be hard, because it's going to be another thing to do on the list."