Mr Chicken Goes to Mars

KATRINA MATHERS is an Australian AACTA-winning filmmaker; her 20+ shorts have screened at leading international film festivals such as Annecy, Stuttgart, Clermont Ferrand, TIFF, Sitges and SIGGRAPH, and won over 50 awards, including at Melbourne, Sydney, Flickerfest, St Kilda and Adelaide film festivals locally; and internationally at Aspen Shortsfest, Bradford Animation, Palm Springs Shortsfest and many others. She’s been a Tropfest finalist director with The Referees; wrote the winning screenplay, No Mail for Project Greenlight Aust, Series II and was a director for the Ch10 sketch comedy series The Wedge. Two animations Katrina produced were Academy® accredited - The Gallant Captain which she directed with Graeme Base, and Nullarbor which was released as Highly Commended in the 2012 Oscar® Nominated Shorts Collection and has almost 8 million YouTube views. Katrina co-founded The Lampshade Collective animation and VFX studio (2007-2013) overseeing production on TVCs, ghosting jobs and shorts. Currently she runs Cherry Hands Media, a multimedia company and works part-time with Monash University. She’s been a judge and guest speaker for film festivals and panels, and has also had a long career as a professional actor.

LEIGH HOBBS is an Australian artist and author, best known in Australia and the UK for his children’s books which feature his characters Old Tom, Horrible Harriet, Mr Chicken, Mr Badger, Fiona the Pig and the Freaks in 4F. His primary publisher is Allen & Unwin.

In 2002, Horrible Harriet was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Awards, as was his book Old Tom’s Holiday in 2003. He was shortlisted again in 2010 for the Prime Minister’s Awards for his picture book Mr Chicken Goes to Paris. A highly successful animated TV series, based on Leigh’s Old Tom series of books has been screened on free-to-air television networks in Australia and across Europe. Leigh was also the Australian Children's Laureate in 2016 and 2017.

The National Library of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the State Libraries of Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia all hold extensive collections of Leigh’s artwork.

Mr Chicken Goes to Mars, the short film, is his first foray into making his own animations. Leigh wrote the story, hand-painted all the backgrounds and animated the characters, working in close collaboration with filmmaker Katrina Mathers to produce and direct the film together.