Hayley Foster, Animation ‘13 was awarded the Woody Woodpecker Award for Best Student Animated Short Film for Yamashita. Her film portrays a young girl who perseveres through the experience of being detained with her family at Manzanar, one of 10 camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.
The prize, which included a $2500 check and a statuette of the cartoon character, was presented by Edward Landry of the Walter Lantz Foundation on May 8, 2013 in the Mayer Theater.
The LMU animation community also took the opportunity to celebrate the recent gift of more than $1 million dollars from the Walter Lantz Foundation with a dedication of the state-of-the-art Walter and Grace Lantz Animation Lab. SFTV has already used a portion of the funds to outfit the animation lab with the latest digital technology and will continue to upgrade the facilities. The gift marks one of the largest the foundation has ever awarded to a university animation program.