Sydney Padua

Melina Sydney Padua[1] is a graphic artist and animator based in London, England. She is the author of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage steampunk comic, and her animation work appears in several popular Hollywood films.

Sydney Padua, 2010

She has worked as character animator in feature films such as Marmaduke, Clash of the Titans, The Golden Compass, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Iron Giant, Quest for Camelot, and The Jungle Book.[2][3]

Her work has been exhibited at the BBC Tech Lab [4] and at a Steampunk exhibition by the Oxford Museum of the History of Science.[5] She gave a conference on storytelling at The Story,[6][7] an event shared with Cory Doctorow, Tim Etchells, David Hepworth, Aleks Krotoski, and Tony White among others. In December 2015, she was awarded the biennial Neumann Prize of the British Society for the History of Mathematics for The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.[1] In April 2016, she was nominated for the Eisner Award in the Best Writer/Artist category, and The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage in the Best Graphic Album—New category.[8]

In 2004 Padua decided to teach herself how to animate on a computer. She started by sketching a storyboard for a short film. The end result was the 2.5-minute Agricultural Report.[9] This film ended up being shown at over 200 festivals and won a few awards, including Best Short Film at the Taormina Film Festival and Audience Award for Best First Film at AnimaMundi Brazil.

Early life

Padua grew up in Mexico City and in the Canadian prairie (Western Canada). She now resides in London, England, with her husband.

The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
Main article: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage

Sydney Padua wrote the steampunk webcomic 2D Goggles or The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.[10][11] It features a pocket universe where Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage have actually built an analytical engine and use it to "fight crime" at Queen Victoria's request.[12] In April 2015, the comic was published as a 320-page book titled The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Pantheon Books.[13]

The comic is based on thorough research on the biographies and correspondence between Babbage and Lovelace, as well as other bits of early Victoriana, which is then twisted for humorous effect. It began as a one-shot for Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The comic was the source of a limited edition print of 25 to raise money for The Ada Initiative in July 2011.[14]

Episodes are also available as an iPhone app.

The comic was adapted as a stage show, A Note of Dischord, by Theatre Paradok at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.[15]

gollark: RCT idea: We find a few thousand people, assign half of them a gender different to their own and half the same, without telling them which, then check after a year to see how involved each group was in esolangs.
gollark: That would not be a randomized controlled trial.
gollark: RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL TIME!
gollark: Esoteric programming languages cause the gender-related regions in the brain to undergo change. Obviously.
gollark: > it was all the trans peopleNo, I mean I suspect esolangs programmers just tend to be trans more frequently than the general population for unfathomable reasons and the server was non-terrible enough about it that they accreted here.

References
  1. sydneypadua.com
  2. Shift Run Stop Episode 17: Sydney Padua interview
  3. Sydney Padua at imdb.com
  4. BBC The Tech Lab: Sydney Padua
  5. Lovelace and Babbage at the Museum of the History of Science
  6. The Story - About
  7. The Story - Who will be there?
  8. "2016 Eisner Award Nominees". 19 April 2016. Archived from the original on 19 April 2016. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
  10. The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
  11. Experiments in Comics with Sydney Padua
  12. Babbage and Lovelace Vs The Client
  13. "Tantaratara". sydneypadua.com. 12 September 2014. Retrieved 10 October 2014.
  14. valerieadainitiative. "Donate to the Ada Initiative: Seed 100 funding round opens". Ada Initiative. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
  15. "Reviews of A Note of Dischord". edfringereview.com. 13 August 2013. Retrieved 10 October 2014.
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