Sky-David

"Light animation and original poetry in this initiatic journey by Dennis Pies, who is now known as Sky-David." - Daily Psychedelic. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

"I relocated to the Redwoods of Sonoma County upon graduation and in that relocation process the animation for Sonoma began. The design was built around the concept of the long wide horizontal 'pan' shot to express the concept of a dynamic landscape that passes across the screen like a traditional Chinese Scroll Painting. The deep personal meaning relates to the 'relocation' that was occurring within my own being after having done 2½ terms of active combat in the jungle as a carrier enlisted with the 82nd Airborne Division of the Army" -D. Pies. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

"This hand drawn animated film is a tribute to my hands. It was produced between 1977-79 with the assistance of a grant from the Sinking Creek Film Celebration. This animated film honors the legacy of Jules Engel the original head of Cal Arts Animation Program." -D. Pies. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

"This hand-drawn animation is based on a short story by Hermann Hesse THE HARD PASSAGE. It was produced at Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts 1980-81. The voice is my own and the sound score and recording is by Bob Stoloff. It won the award for best sound at the 5th World Festival of Animation in Zagreb, 1982." -D. Pies. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

"Some people might look at AURA CORONA as abstract but from my point of view it started with amorphous like forms that become more and more structured with a vertebrate form then the formation of a cranial form and then it goes into crystallized intelligence."

"The MERKABAH is the Vehicle Of Light that comes from the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel. This animated film is a meditation on this vision based on a dream I had in Dec., 1972. This animation was produced at California Institute of the Arts in the Spring of 1973 under the mentorship of Jules Engel. It was made with luminous pigments on jet black paper." -D. Pies

This is a short animation that I did on the pin screen built by Alexandre Alexeieff in Cambridge, MA while he and Clare Parker came to the U.S. to escape the Nazi occupation of Paris during WWII. This pin screen was left behind for his daughter Svetlana when he returned to Paris after the war. Svetlana let me experiment with it in 1983-84 at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University where I was teaching at the time. This is presented to honor the legacy of Jules Engel, the first animation program head at Cal Arts.

This silent animated tunnel sequence was made by filming liquid pigments on a 30"x40" sheet of black glass with an Oxberry animation stand. This animation honors the experimental animation program at Cal Arts under the direction of its creator, Jules Engel.

Inspired by Herbert Read’s novel of the same name.

1988 short directed by Dennis Pies

Directed by Dennis Pies.

A hand drawn animation developed between 2000 and 2007, Field of Green was based on drawings made by Sky David (formerly known as Dennis Pies) during his tours in the United States Army during the Vietnam War between 1967 and 1970. The documentary animation relives these events and reenacts the major metal and bodily traumas that they caused, mixing animation with video footage and body motion.

Animation by Sky David