Fox (The Dam Keeper) by Dice Tsutsumi

     Filmmakers Daisuke "Dice" Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo released the independent animated short film The Dam Keeper and founded their Berkeley, CA studio Tonko House in 2014. They garnered an Academy Award nomination in 2015. At CTNX Animation Expo in November 2015, Flesk Publications debuted The Art of the Dam Keeper. Dice and Robert created a Dam Keeper graphic novel trilogy for First Second Books.

      I met Dice at SDCC 2006 when he came out to SDCC with six of his Blue Sky Animation Studio colleagues to sign the comic anthology Out of Picture at my brother’s Stuart Ng Books booth. They returned to San Diego with Out of Picture 2 in 2008 with their own booth. Dice was a co-founder of The Totoro Forest Project and the Sketchtravel project.

      I saw The Dam Keeper at the San Francisco International Film Festival on April 26, 2014. Dice, Robert, and Erick Oh held a signing after the screening. Tonko House set up a booth at the Alternative Press Expo in 2014 (the last San Francisco show) and the CTNX Animation Expo in 2015. Dice and Robert came to Seattle for a Schoolism program and stayed for the Emerald City Comicon in April 2016. The new Tonko House film Moom will screen at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April 2016. Dice and Robert were guests at the inaugural Lightbox Expo in Pasadena, CA Sept. 6-8, 2019.

      This artwork turned up on Heritage and I was happy to acquire it. I was surprised to realize Fox is female as I don't recall any reference in the film. This image seems feminine to me.