About the Festival

Your Pacific Northwest hub for independent animation!

Sea Slug Animation Festival is a film festival in Seattle celebrating the ingenuity, creativity, and weirdness of independent animation from around the world.

Sea Slug showcases all animation mediums, with a special emphasis on films. Sea Slug strives to empower animators and animation fans local to British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and parts of Northern California to form personal and professional connections around animation, and to take pride in the talent right here in this neck of the woods.



In 2025, we hosted our very first Larval Edition. It was amazing, thanks to the incredible artists and audience members who joined us.

But these larvae are all grown up now. And we’re pissed off!

Artists are suffering blows from every which way, particularly in our corner of the world. The cost of living is rising but artists’ wages are not. Studios are prioritizing profit over creativity. Tech billionaires are thieving from artists in their race to wipe their skills from the face of the earth. Fascist governments are destroying the very fabric of society. It’s a pretty important time to build access, community, solidarity, and sustainability around independent art like animation.

So we’re absolutely OPENING THE THROTTLE for year two.

We’ve got independent animation coming to your screens FAST!

We’re putting dollars into artists’ pockets with a FURY!!

We’re back and we’re 2 SLUG 2 FURIOUS!!!!!!!

Mission

Sea Slug is committed to building access, community, solidarity, and sustainability amongst animators and animation lovers around the Pacific Northwest.

We’re living our mission by:

✷ Access ✷
  • Creating DCPs for any accepted filmmakers who require them
  • Teaching students about the festival process and how to platform their work
  • Mentoring early career programmers
  • Hosting artists to sell their work at the Artist Alley with no tabling fees
  • Lowering ticket costs for young people to attend the festival
  • Exhibiting films containing dialogue with open subtitles or captions as much as possible

✷ Community ✷

  • Connecting with local arts organizations to promote each other’s programming
  • Meeting with local artists and filmmakers to address their needs through our festival
  • Fostering relationships between artists and audiences via festival events

✷ Solidarity ✷

  • Sharing opportunities for exhibition, employment, and art education in Britich Columbia, Washington, and Oregon
  • Championing human-made animation only
  • Promoting worker solidarity including unionization, living wages, and pro-artist legislation

✷ Sustainability ✷
  • Paying screening fees to all artists whose films play in the festival program
  • Eliminating submission fees as a form of festival income
  • Minimizing paper printing and utilizing local print shops
  • Developing a consistent platform for watching animated films theatrically


Team

✷ the Furious ✷

CofoundersHannah Baek & Rhys Iliakis

Advisory Board Stefan Gruber, Lucas Marchi, Isabella Von Ghoul

Design Rhys Iliakis

Website Helen Paulini

Editorial Hannah Baek, Emily Sawan

Festival Programming CommitteeHannah Baek, Rhys Iliakis, Em Halladay Ptacek Choi, James Davis, Kasi Gaarenstroom, Marcus Gorman, Meghan Graham, Handa, Lucas Marchi, Patrick McFarland, Emme Morgan-Mueller, Peju Ogunyemi, Shannen Ortale

Festival Community Partners
48 Hour Film Project
ANEMONE
The Beacon Cinema

Common Area Maintenance
Far Star Media
Grand Illusion Cinema
Outsider Comics
Reclaim Clay Collective
Seattle Asian American Film Festival
Seattle Experimental Animation Team
Seattle Film Institute

Seattle Film Society
Scarecrow Video

Short Run Comix Festival
Third Place Books
Three Dollar Bill Cinema
Unstreamable

FAQ

✷ Is this festival for kids?
Sea Slug Animation Festival’s programming is curated with adults in mind. The films may contain non-graphic sexuality, violence, and nudity. They may also include abstract, experimental, and non-narrative styles that may be less engaging for very young viewers. That being said, you know the young people in your life best! If you think they would enjoy the program, we welcome anyone ages 2–12 who is accompanied by both a ticket and an adult.
✷ How do I get to the 2026 festival?
All films will play at SIFF Cinema Uptown. The Artist Alley will be hosted at SIFF Film Center, a few blocks away on the Seattle Center campus. Check out those venues’ pages for information on how to get there, where to park, and information about venue accessibility.
✷ Will there be open captions?
All films containing dialogue will be shown with open English language subtitles or captions, including English language films. All films without dialogue will not have open captions or closed captions available.

✷ I’m a local artist/animator/fan! Can I get involved? We want to hear from you! Please send us a message via our contact form.

Submit

Submissions for the 2026 Sea Slug Animation Festival are now open.

Submit to the Furious Edition via
FilmFreeway.


Note About Submission Fees


Sea Slug seeks to eliminate submission fees as a common form of festival income. Our 2026 submission fees are priced at $5 USD to reduce thoughtless spamming. However, any and all interested filmmakers are welcome to simply contact us to receive a waiver code for your submission fee—guaranteed. Our goal is to receive no money from filmmakers! Any submission fees we receive incidentally will be reimbursed.


Screening Fees


In an effort to value the labor of artists and increase the sustainability of art as a career, Sea Slug will pay all short films accepted to the 2026 Sea Slug Animation Festival program a $75 USD screening fee.