Cadaver: A Bittersweet Love Story

Description

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About the Author

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CADAVER began as a short, whimsical poem that I wrote to my kid sister the day she cut open her first dead body as a med student at Chicago’s Northwestern University. I simply sought to lighten her mood and mitigate her understandable fears on what was then the biggest day of her life on her path to becoming a doctor.

My sister successfully cut open her cadaver. I successfully moved onto other projects. A year passed. But something in the poem kept prying me back to it. Beneath the rhyme that tickled the ear lurked a text that tackled a truth.

CADAVER isn’t a poem. CADAVER is a battle.

Of romantic versus cynic. Of how love inspires versus how love exploits. CADAVER is the net sum of my thirty battered years of falling into and out of love. Of having my heart crushed. Or discovering I was crushing someone else’s.

CADAVER is a story for the hopeful romantics. It is a story for the harshest cynics.

--Author Jonah D. Ansell

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Jonah D. Ansell is a Los Angeles-based writer/director of animated and live action films. He develops creative stories for film and TV. A former four-year NCAA starting pitcher, Ansell is a magna cum laude graduate of Amherst College and an award winning USC MFA screenwriting graduate of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. At 25, he created and sold Rivalfish a sports/pop culture humor magazine to National Lampoon. Ansell oversaw a staff of 30 writers nationwide to generate monthly readership of 150,000 readers.

He and his creative work have been featured on TV, in print and online at NBC, ABC, FOX, MTV, New York Times, USA Today, Entrepreneur, Glamour, Huffington Post, Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Allure, The Onion A.V. Club, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo! Sports, FHM, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, PRWeek, as well as the recent book How’d You Score That Gig.

Ansell currently serves as CEO & Chief Storyteller of Los Angeles-based integrated marketing and creative content development firm JAMS Productions, where he develops original creative content and campaigns for businesses, government agencies and individuals. Author Jonah D. Ansell is represented by William Morris Endeavor. He and his creative work can be found on the web at jonahansell.com and jamstories.com.

CADAVER was hand drawn with Sharpie markers and brought to life through the Adobe Creative Suite by illustrators Carina Simmons, Eric Vennemeyer, & Abe Dieckman.

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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATORS:

Carina Simmons is an illustrator, animator and designer living and working in Seattle.  She consistently pushes traditional technique with all of her projects and has currently started a production studio with a strong focus in animation.  Her most recent animated project will be premiering at Sundance 2013. 

Eric Vennemeyer studied Theater and German at Amherst College before setting out to see the world and use neither of his majors.  He is a founding member of the award-winning filmmaking group Chinese Takeout and has worked as a freelance artist, animator, and English teacher.  He is currently getting an MFA in film directing from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television.

Abraham Dieckman is an award-winning animator and special effects artist, as well as a dedicated film director living in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Having graduated from SFSU with a Fine Arts degree in Cinema, he is constantly pushing to expand his creative toolkit in bringing imaginative worlds to life.  Most recently he completed a feature length science-fiction film currently targeting the festival circuit, and screened a short film at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.  Connect with him online at skylightcity.com.

Praise for Cadaver: A Bittersweet Love Story…

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“A must-attend event of New York Fashion Week.”
-- New York Times

"A must-see pick!" 
– Animation Magazine

“Darkly beautiful.”
– MTV

"Explores grown-up themes about love and death through the youthful mediums of cartoon and rhyme."
-- Huffington Post

"Lively."
-- New York Magazine

"The least sappy but most tender love story I've ever encountered." 
– Tavi Gevinson, Editor-in-chief of ROOKIE Magazine

"It is a sweet and hilarious film full of creepily tender moments."
-- MTV

“Shel Silverstein whimsy and rhythm with an Edgar Allan Poe edge." 
-- My Old Kentucky Blog

"A dark romantic story in a time of commercialized love." 
-- Project Quality

"The stuff of Indie lore." 
-- Sonoma News

"Director Jonah D. Ansell could be channeling Tim Burton." 
-- Examiner

"A clever little fable about love, devotion, and the heart's ability to rebound." 
-- Sarasota Review

"Packs a Punch."
-- Jezebel

"Cadaver... will especially please lovers of the more macabre works of Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, and Tim Burton."
-- Cinespect

"Cadaver... is in the process of being developed into a full-blown animated musical ("think 'Little Mermaid' meets 'Les Miserables,')."
-- Los Angeles Times

"Inventive."
-- Filmmaker Magazine

"Tavi Gevinson is a cartoon character."
-- Vogue

As seen in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, MTV, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Huffington Post, Jezebel, The Onion A.V. Club, Page 6, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Daily Mail & Animation Magazine.