Tampa Animation Festival Opens with Sold Out Screening

The first screening of the 2026 Tampa Animation Festival at the University of Tampa sold out within 10 minutes after registration opened online. Part of the draw was the return of alum Brad Schiff ’93, animation supervisor at LAIKA Studios, known for stop-motion spectacles like Coraline, Paranorman and others.

The studio’s newest film, Wildwood, opened the festival on Thursday, Nov. 5. The 132-minute epic, released in October, made history for being the longest stop-motion animated feature of all time. In a Q&A after the screening, Schiff broke down the team’s animation process, stunning the audience as he described the painstaking efforts that the LAIKA animators put into the film over the course of 16 years. The 142,030 3D-printed faces conveying the characters’ complex emotional expressions; the three years it took to execute the awe-inspiring battle scene; and the 24 frames that make up one second of animation were among the jaw-dropping trivia facts that Schiff shared with the crowd.

The festival continues through Sunday with a total of 119 films made by artists around the world, representing every continent except Antarctica. A second screening of Wildwood will close out the festival on Sunday at 6 p.m. View the rest of the schedule on the Tampa Animation Festival website.