Review of Bradford Animation Festival 2010

This is a review of the 17th Bradford Animation Festival, which I attended with North Wales School of Art and Design, NWSAD. Although the event is a four day affair I only attended the first two, due to illness, but the seminars that I did sit in on were rather dull and uninteresting from an animation point.

Over the two days that I personally attended the event I sat in on a number seminars and screenings by professional and students in undergraduate and postgraduate studies, after watching these works, I began to get the impression that a lot of the students in the student films section of the program had only done basics on the story, and then took a leaf out of the design courses book, and farmed the work out to companies, in fact in the credits of a number of them their was names like ILM, Image G and Skywalker Sound, all big Hollywood names. I personally feel that some of these entries where to well polished to be the work of students when compared to the work of the previous year.

Of all the screenings I attended I personally enjoyed one called "Metropia" by director Tarik Saleh, from Sweden. The story of Metropia takes place in a not so distant future in a time when the world is running out of oil and the underground train systems have been connected into a gigantic subway network beneath Europe. Although many of my class mates felt that this was a slow and uninteresting short, I enjoyed it and found the use on sepia tones relaxing and the use of a few colours every so often pleasing to the senses, as many films appear to over whelm the visual senses with information.

Scene from 'Metropia'

Another event I enjoyed was the student networking event, which was hosted by Animated Yorkshire, this was a interesting event as it gave me a much needed boost in my confidence as I normally tend to feel that my work on story boards and character art is lacking development when compared to the work I do on sci-fi concepts, space ships and submarines, but a number of the people that I spoke to during this where encouraging, I only wish I had taken some business cards with my e-mail, blog and portfolio addresses on, oh well.

I wish however that I had not been ill over the last two days of the event as on the final morning of the event there was a screening of my personal favourite film, Jason and the Argonauts, with classic stop motion visual effects by Ray Harryhausen, which was screened as part of the BAF 2010 Life Time achievement Award.

I look forward to attending next years as I hope to get a portfolio of work together so that I can show it to the gathered animators and professionals from the industry to possible get an apprentice ship with a company with links to the Canadian animation industry or even the Japanese anime field, to that end I plan to attend the upcoming Manga and Anime expo in London in October 2011 with a sample of my best work in an attempt to make some contacts with in the industry as part of my professional development and to generate more contacts to increase my chances for future job opportunities.

London Industrial visit, March 2010

Day One.

Arrived in London today, 8th March 2010, after leaving Wrexham at 8am, and after resting for a little while and getting my room sorted out I partook in the atmosphere of the West end, with Gemma Morris and Ying Yau and one of Ying's friends, who acted as a sort of unofficial tour guide as she lives's down in London.

As I very rarely come to London, I welcomed having some one around my own age, and with similar interests to show me around the West end of London, mainly the tube stations and China town. I am looking forward to tomorrow, 9th March 2010, as I am going to visit the companies Double Negative in the morning and in the afternoon Picasso Pictures. I'm not sure what to expect from these companies as I was not expecting t

o be going to see these companies so I have not really looked at them till the Friday before we came down.

Day Two.

Well started today by going to Double Negative where they showed us around there studio's and showed us a show real of the current work and talked abut work they are doing as well as ways to get into the film and animation industry, but due to a Non Disclosure Agreement I have signed I can not go into much detail, other than to list the new movies that are due out this year, such as Ironman 2, Sherlock Holmes and Hot Fuzz.

I then had some time to kill before I had to be at Picasso Pictures so I walked along Oxford street window shopping and looking for other animation houses.

In the afternoon I visited Picasso Pictures where they showed us around the studio, which was a bit on the cramped side, but they were working on some new Direct Line T.V. adverts.

If had to sum up what I all of the visits today would be to learn the following two programs, Adobe Flash and Autodesk Maya. I then rounded the day off with a trip round to the local public house with some of the second and third years from animation.

Day Three.

This was the most informative day as I started the day by going to 12foot6 where they showed us a selection of work on the show real they have for this year, including Dog Judo, which I had seen a few of on Youtube.

This was followed up by a walk to Cartoon Network to talk with a few members of the development team, on the way there I called into Nickelodeon and Sony to find out if they had in anyone in the development team that had five minutes to give a short tour, I was unsuccessful however I did get the e-mails for the people to contact in future. I then went to Cartoon Network where they showed us a selection of work and tips on pitching to a green light council.

In all I highly enjoyed the this visit to London as I have seen how the pro's work and the standards that they set for others to work in the industry, and plan to build on it in October when I go back for the animation expo over halloween weekend.