Robert Stephenson

Lecturer
Animation

Robert gained a Bachelor of Education at Melbourne State College in 1985 and a Graduate Diploma in Film and Television at the old Swinburne School of Film and Television in 1988.

On the commercial front, he has animated and directed animated television commercials that include scary oily peanut butter people, singing polar bears and talking kangaroos selling insurance. To balance this greasy diet, he has created other animated short tales and sequences for the ABC and Australian Children's Television Foundation and more recently an animated music video. He has also worked as a storyboard artist on Australian TV series and feature films including Round the Twist, Lift Off, Amy and Irresistable.

Swinging from 2D to stop-motion and back again his animated short film work includes Still Flying, Redback, Lester Chiselbean and Lucky for Some. Awards include an AFI, and two Dendy Awards at the Sydney Film Festival for Best Animation.

His most recent film (stop-motion this time) Lucky For Some opened at the London Film Festival and was nominated for an AFI in 2004. Locally, it screened at Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Brisbane Animation, Canberra and St Kilda Film Festivals It represented Australia at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival in Japan and is also screening at Anima Mundi in Brazil.