BIO

Sam Decoste

Regular Part-Time Faculty
Divisions of Media Arts, Animation & Art History and Contemporary Culture

CONTACT INFORMATION

Email: samdecoste@nscad.ca

Background

I am an independent artist-animator based in K’jipuktuk/Halifax. I received a BA in Political Philosophy from Dalhousie University, BFA in Film Animation from Concordia University, and an MFA in Media Arts from our very own NSCAD University.

I am fortunate to have taught animation at NSCAD University, local Colleges, Centre for Art Tapes, National Film Board, International Film Festivals, as well as abroad at my studio Pixtrix in Taiwan. I’ve curated animation shows for the Animation Festival: Under the Rug (2019) and Come Up and See Me Sometime (2021) and am honoured to have been commissioned by Calgary’s Quickdraw Animation Society to contribute to their book: On LGBTQ2S+ Animation.

At the heart of my animation is story. I start with a question, and through research, animate a perspective that is overlooked or misrepresented. My MFA at NSCAD really challenged me to think about the way I told stories, and resulted in my immersive NSCAD MFA thesis exhibition, Cahun and Moore: Unframed (2015). Here, my animated documentary reached a new audience by encircling viewers with 3 walls of larger-than-life animated sequences.

My films have screened at festivals around the world, including Hot Docs in Toronto, Tricky Women in Austria and Air Canada’s EnRoute. Most recently I’ve been exploring Augmented Reality (AR) animation as a new way of storytelling.