Seeking shelter from an ominous thunderstorm, a man sits in a dark pub watching the ice in his glass melt away. Director Howie Shia marries his striking graphic illustration style with subtle, enigmatic animation and a haunting, evocative soundtrack to conjure up anxiety and foreboding. Ice Ages was animated using pen and ink on tracing paper and later composited and coloured digitally.

This animated short was made for Hothouse 2, the NFB’s program for emerging filmmakers, whose central theme was “Water and Our Relationship to It.”.