Get a glimpse of the animated shorts, visual effects, scientific visualizations, and digital storytelling.
SIGGRAPH 2026 is right around the corner – taking place 19–23 July 2026 in LA – and one of the highlights will be the Computer Animation Festival.
The trailer is below, and it showcases what you might expect from the diverse set of shorts, VFX clips, scientific viz and other animation on offer. It’s also in the good hands of Marina Antunes, SIGGRAPH 2026 Computer Animation Festival Director.
The winners this year have been announced:
Best in Show: “Apart”
Pola Maneli, Social Popcorn Films (South Africa, United States)
In apartheid South Africa, a forbidden friendship between two boys is tested by a life-saving act that forces them to confront the hate dividing their world. Written by Spike Lee and brought to life by a team rooted in South African culture and history, the film blends four animation techniques — traditional 2D frame-to-frame, cut-out, 3D, and 2.5D — across roughly 18,000 frames crafted by a team of more than 250 creatives.
Best Student Project: “Beyond Words”
Antoine Barbannaud, Théo Merlet, Cyril Buisson, Damien Poncelet, Anthonin Haüy, Timothé Vergught, Mathis De Sauvecanne, Thémys Cheynel, Lilou Tiprez, Leandro Leijnen, and Romain Gueusset with Creative Seeds (France)
In a Viking world, a girl’s mother goes to battle following her husband’s death, and the emotions stemming from that distance haunt them as mysterious wolves appear. Built on the team’s proprietary “Hunter” pipeline with in-house motion capture, the student film delivered over 130 shots featuring fur and cloth simulation and complex facial animation across six hand-modeled characters.
Jury’s Choice: “18 Months”
Paulo Garcia and Natalia Gouvea (United States)
A true story about the unexpected paths to becoming a family: When Danny and Pete find a newborn in a subway station, their journey to adopt him is retold to mirror the stages of pregnancy, challenging traditional definitions of what it takes to build a family. The film was crafted with stop-motion animation,
Watch the trailer, here:
