Jeff Chiba Stearns

Jeff Chiba Stearns is a Vancouver/Kelowna based internationally award winning animator and illustrator working in traditional and computer-based techniques. He enjoys creating works aimed at children and adults that combine different philosophical elements together to create humorous, inspiring, and entertaining stories. Jeff graduated from Emily Carr Institute with a Bachelor of Media Arts majoring in Film Animation in 2001. He also has a Bachelor of Education with a major in Secondary Fine Arts Education from the University of British Columbia (2003). Jeff is the classical animation instructor at the Center of Arts and Technology Kelowna.

Jeff's previous short animated films, Kip and Kyle (2000) and The horror of Kindergarden (2001), have both screened at film festivals around the world and have been bought and aired by the CBC for their show ZeD. His latest animated short, What are you Anyways? (2005), have been honoured by multiples prizes of excellence in Canada and in the USA. It is a classically animated film that was entirely hand drawn.

What are you Anyways? looks at Jeff's life. It explores his backgrounds growing up a mix of Japanese and Caucasian in a small white-bred Canadian city. This short animated film looks at particular periods in Jeff's life where he battled with finding an identity being a half minority —from his childhood origins to the epic showdown against the monster truck drivin' redneck crew. What are you Anyways? is a humorous yet serious story of struggle and love and finding one's identity trough the trials and tribulations of growing up.

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