Digital Short Story 2019 spotlight: “Timya’s Glacier: Song of the Snoz Crabs” by Pilar Newton-Katz

“Timya’s Glacier: Song of the Snoz Crabs” by Pilar Newton-Katz

Timya lives in a small house surrounded by a glacier in the lands of the deep north. She fishes for her dinner and spends time busting sick moves on her ice board. Timya is fearless to the point of getting herself into jams regularly. Luckily her best friend, a lovable mountain goat named Harby, is there to help her get out of a jam or to just plain talk some sense into her.

The little town of Glacier Gulch is ramping up to hold its festival celebrating the return of the whistling Snoz Crabs. Every winter during Sky Glow Time, the crabs emerge from their hibernation a few miles offshore and treat the surrounding land to beautiful whistling music that everybody loves. When Timya overhears a crafty captain named Bobbin Bill “Squiggy Beak” Sam III (Sam for short..arggh!) say that he will capture all of the rare whistling Snoz Crabs, it’s a race against time to save the crabs before the treacherous Sam reaches them! Will Timya make it, or will she get more than what she bargained for?

Pilar is an animator, a director, an illustrator and an educator. She got her start as a prop designer on the Cartoon Network cult classic Courage the Cowardly Dog. Pilar went on to be a layout artist on the MTV animated series Daria. She has since contributed work to companies such as Nickelodeon, Nick Jr. and TED-Ed. Her company PilarToons LLC is based in Brooklyn, New York. Pilar teaches animation at the City College of New York and was recently selected to represent the school at Pixar Animation Studios’ Story Summit in Emeryville, California. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Visual Narrative at the School of Visual Arts.