Le Mime Pire to be screened at this years -Stop -Trick festival inPoland

First of apologies for the great gap between posts been working on a few things mostly graduating and becoming a responsible adult but great news found out last week that "Le Mime Pire" will be screened at the Stop Trick festival in Poland that I attended last year. It's exciting alos due to wonderful line up it's been screened with like Michele Cusack's "Slight of Hand" and Spela Cadez "Boles".

Laika competition- mothers day.

Fete De L'anim

on a break during the Marathon I decided to go and talk to everyone involved and get them sign one of the posters, this will be a great keep sake for years to come. Just trying to keep myself motivated, Maybe it'll be worth something one day ;)

Fete de L'anim

Ok so a couple of weeks ago I too part in an animation Marathon with fellow CSA students Erika Lewis (

@ErikaCLewis) and Georgia Yorke (@georgialiannee) it was an amazing to say the least made some great contacts and even wrangled an article out of it not to shabby. 

This year’s Fete de L’anim proved to be an overwhelming success. The festival is based in the northern French towns of Lille and Tourcoing. The industrial buildings are over-run with animators from around the world, with an impressive line-up of guest speakers, screenings and workshops.

The international festival starts and finishes with the collective efforts of nineteen animation schools and one professional group, the teams come from across Europe including France, United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Eastern Europe were invited to take part in this fantastic challenge.

The Marathon

The excited young animators are gather together in La Teinturerie studio space to create 10 seconds of animation each, over a 48 hour period.

This is a massively collaborative project, which offered students a unique opportunity to experience both a creative challenge and to see a range of work from their peers across Europe. The studio was a hive of activity from 2pm on the 13^th March when the start image was unveiled (created by Belgium animator Raoul Servais) until 7pm on the 15^th March. Many of the teams worked through the night (one French team even slept on the floor) to create their animations. The stints are then edited together with sound and screened at the closing ceremony.

As well as this there was also a Graphic Battle; which encouraged students to pitch their skills against each other within two categories: a 2D digital drawn and 3D digital modelled (zbrush) competition, in a knock out round of talent!

The Master classes

Joanna Quinn, Serge Élissalde, Adriaan Lokman, Patrick Bouchard and Pixar animator Erick Oh all offered up their knowledge in these informative and incredibly intimate programs.

A heavily Pixar themed festival this year, with screenings of most of Pixar most loved feature films on show throughout the festival, master classes and screenings from the wonderful Erick Oh as well as the premiere of Oh’s exhibition His Chamber in Lille.

The master classes offered a fascinating insight in to each of the guests working practice. They discussed their films, storyboards and production photos, which left the audience of animation enthusiasts, students and experts alike far more knowledgeable on each of the speakers work, each presentation was followed by extensive and thought provoking Q&A session.

A personal favourite was the inspiring and charming master class by Mikey Please, in which he discussed his method of working, showing animatics and personal photos that inspired his BAFTA winning film The Eagleman Stag. The audience was given the amazing opportunity to see the ruff cut of his new filmMarilyn Myller, it received a great amount of accolade from the audience, a brilliant film from this amazing talent.

As well as this there was a range of activity for the younger audience in the Imaginarium. Which celebrated both Retro games (perhaps to co-inside with Disney’s Wreck-It-Ralph) but also offered workshops in stop-motion, storyboarding and much more, helping to make sense of the key principles of animation which will hopefully go on to inspire the next generation of animators.

And that’s not all from this jam-packed festival the 11pm to 4am duration of your visit offered Electro-animated night’s, with electronic music, digital art, dancing and drinking an energetic atmosphere was created, allowing for socialising and discussions to be made alongside the stimulating surroundings.

Screenings galore

As well as the Pixar films and each of the guest animators screening there was also The Best of Schoolscreening which showcased a selection of European best student films including the National Film and Television Schools Head over Heels and MOME’s Dipendenza. Through out the rest of the festival there was screenings from each school from the Marathons – which demonstrated diversity in style, influence/inspiration and teaching practices. Many contacts and friendships were made during and after these screenings.

There was full audience for the closing night which offered a fantastic selection of short films from top French directors including Amelie Harrault’s Mademoiselle KIKI et les montparnos and Bruno Collet’s Son Indochine, Michaela Pavlatova created a huge amount of laughter with the sensual short film Tram.  To night and festival was brought to a close with the premiere screening of the Marathon challenge film, the end result was a hugely varied melting pot of creative styles and ideas, often comical and surprising- but each stint was individually stunning. Each student represented there country with pride, and left inspired and ready to take on new work or continue their current course work with greater vitality.

Fete De L’anim had a distinctly student vibe to it, making it a great place for young animators to cut their teeth into the animation community. It also offered the guests, tutours and public a great opportunity to see new talent emerging, the future looks engorging for the animation industry.

List of competing groups for Marathon de L’anim 

France:  PÔLE 3D, Supinfocom, ESAAT, Encole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, E-Art Sup, Cellofan’-Lézards Hâchésb (pro team)

United Kingdom: National Film and Television School, Anglia Ruskin University, Southampton Solent University

Belgium: Howest, La Cambre, La KASK, Beaux-Arts Tournai, Haute Ecole Albert Jacquart.

The Netherlands: St Joost

Germany: Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen, Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln

Eastern Europe: FAMU, MOME

Happy World Mime Day

Happy world mime Day everyone, love form Rene

 

Another entry for the JS competition

Another Lino cut, with a favourite quote of mine. 

John Smith Bookshop

Here are a few designs i've been working on, i thought i'd enter them for John Smith bookshop stationery competition. I really like bugs and print so I did some Lino prints and digitally edited and cleaned them. There just a bit of fun really away from all the animation. 

Wired Arts paper cut workshop

Myself and fellow animator Erika Lewis, ran a paper cut animation workshop for wired arts, this is my second workshop working with the wonderful society at Cambridge school of art. 

It was a great evening and a good turn out...lots of fun. 

Workshop Partner Erika Lewis

and here is the final film edited together. enjoy:

Business cards...Finally!

I finally managed to get round to designing and printing my business cards, with a little help from my friend at CW9 Design 

There not exactly what I want after m degree, I hope to update them after completing my fmp. But the'll do for now. 

Huzzah! scholarship success

This is my happy face!

A little while ago I applied for a foundation scholarship through uni, I had to write a proposal for a self-directed educational trip. I'd been considering attending Stuttgart international animation festival as Barry Purves had mentioned he's be attending, also I love germany, so I thought id give the scholarship a go as the money wouldn't go a miss.

And to my surprise a letter arrived saying i'd been Successful...Great News so come April 23rd i'll be on my way to one of the biggest animation festivals in europe. I have to write a essay piece and give a few talks when I get back but i hope to be able to tie that in with some other work and hopefully be able to put it off until after hand in. But buzzing! now just to book the train, and hotel, and flight, and festival tickets, and.......o dear!

International VIVID conference Cambridge

Hello. So to begin this term, myself and fellow student Erika Lewis where approached by our tutor to create a welcoming animation for the VIVID International conference hosted by Anglia Ruskin Cambridge.

Erika is a good friend of mine as well as housemate-we go way back. So it seemed like a fun idea. We created the animation in around 3-4 days, so was nice quick turn around, with erika creating the hand drawn element and me handling the digital and composting side. 

Working late 2days before deadline.

VIVID is a great company that aims to create a networking environment between university, industry experts and companies mostly based in the UK and netherlands. I applied for  a scholarship with this company last year so I know a fair bit about it. 

The animation was played at the start of the conference on a double screen. 

It was a realy interesting day of lectures form all over the UK and netherlands. From educational and surgeon training games to interactive and inteligent materials, I even got to meet a local businessman with two 3D printers who's letting em come in and see them at some point. We even got a mention on there website  http://www.vivideurope.net/ which was pritty nice.

Was all in all a great day, brilliant brief, got to work with one of my best buds, made some contacts and even got a free lunch in the form of ridiculously good free canapés...not to shabby.

Though this did remind me, must get business cards...again!

I'll be away a while....

Hey cool cats, due to starting my Final Major Project I have begun a new blog, on tumbler *shudder* just trying to span all the social networks, so for my production diary on my new film follow this link: http://difficultydiary.tumblr.com/

but don't worry ill be updating here with other tit bits i'm doing thought out this term, workshops, quick briefs, festivals ect

First Show-reel

so to sum up this terms visual work, here is my final show-reel, tailored and geared for industry!

That's all folks!

I quite enjoy writing...surprising!

I'd just like to make a little mention about my Research Project/ Dissertation as it devoured allot of my time, but I have really enjoyed it. It's handed in now but I was about stereoscopic technology and Rapid Prototyping affect on Stop-motion animation, as I have mentioned in an earlier post about gaining an interview with Barry Purves's view on RP as well as this I also managed to ask the marvellous Jason walker (eye compositor behind the beautiful animation Madam Tutli-Putli) on his thoughts about a few things.

Research Projects and dissertations or essays for that matter are great contacts making opportunity...sorry if that sound really obvious, but i've enjoyed this process.

Rapid Prototyping or 3D printing has really lit a fire in me though, I have spent allot of time trying to contact local company in order to see one work in person to no avail...one day!

but a great source of knowledge and entertainment has been skwigly, there podcast are pitch perfect. I strongly suggest having a listen skwigly podcast!

All in all its been really interesting, extending writing has been really nice, I enjoyed research and reading and collecting the data...Rapid Prototyping is changing the face of stop-motion (pardon the pun) and it been incredibly insightful looking at it form all angles.

It's also been great to find that the animation community is insanely friendly!

Recycling animation complete

This was quite a nice little brief in the end, offered a collaboration with my tutor as a voice over, which was fun, and it was a nice break in style also.... I feel the timing is still a little of so I may change that later. But this will be a great way of working in the future especially on short commissions.

Here's the full film if you fancy a look

oh wait I need to animate to be an animator...right?

with all the rushing around, going here there and everywhere, as well as dissertation, website (oh yes we need a website this term) and show reel and maya training, i do still need to create a full piece of animation, better crack on with that then...

following on from some of the work I did over summer on photoshop, I decided to create a 1950's styled public health video, for the can recycling competition.

this is the style i'll be going for and it will be created on after effects, this will be quite a quick turn around as the hand in is looming...

a great time was had by...well me!

I was sent to manchester this term..no I didn't do anything bad. I was representing my course at a UCAS design your future fair. Manchester is a great city...there is so much to do and see, the music and cloths are partially great..vintage dress shops to rival any.

Jazz bar in the Northern quarter

Vintage shop of my dreams

But this trip was made insanely good by meeting an stop-motion animation god...know as Barry Purves. I think I held myself together rather well  despite melting inside. This visit was put together by a good friend of mine who had already previously met Mr. Purves at BAF film festival...It must be said that Barry Purves is an insanely lovely man, who shoed us around his studio gave us free reign to photograph and hold many of the puppet and props on his new children's TV series Toby's Traveling circus, which is stunning by the way!

however I don't think i'll ever live down the fact when asked if I wanted to know anything, I asked what the popcorn in the beautifully crafted old fashioned popper was made of and he replied "pop corn". doh!

But moving on from that, I managed a sneaky interview with him for my dissertation. He also signed my copy of his book 'the basic of stop-motion' which has been like my bible over the dissertation months of my life. This was a great visit, the city is perfection and there may be work there one day! and once again I REALLY NEED BUSINESS CARDS!

Stop-motion workshop by lil old me

I was asked earlier in this term to run a lecture / workshop in stop-motion through the wired arts society at Anglia Ruskin. I'd given a lecture last year on the ins and outs of stop-motion last year with a  friend that had a rather poor turn out...so I was expecting many attendees, maybe 5 ...ended up to be 25. I'd also lost my voice, i was a little underprepared, i turned up with a speech and a box of plastacine, but it worked out really well, everyone had fun. Hopefully more in the future. Below you can watch the video of all the attendees work in short showreel.

 

Stop -Trick Stop motion festival in Poland

Back in october I went to the international stop-trick festival in Poland, it was hosted in a small village just outside of Krakow, a fellow animator was having a screening over there so invited me to join.

The polish film circuit is crazy fun, there were some amazing animation playing there that were so inspiring and emotional, I spent one screening completely fixated, mouth wide open, they play with very intense subject matter so well. they don't steer away from anything. And they have a wicked sense of humour.

Made some great contacts other there....but i relay must get business cards, i was not prepared!

Back in the cupboared

first animation of term...

So this term we are developing are portfolio, its pretty much self directed, so my first animation this term is a lip sync exercise which will bookend my show reel eventually, using René (my mime puppet from last term).

which means I have been tackling x-sheet this week, which has been interesting...x-sheet or dope sheets  as the generally refereed to in this country, help creating accurate timing and are needed when creating detailed mouth movement for talking or singing.


my animation and thus showreel will be set to Louis Prima's "just a gigolo" this is a bit of an insiders joke with in my friendship group but it'll work and the words are quite clear, and suit the character very well.

LAIKA competition november.

I recently become aware of the Laika character design competition, so I designed this little guy for the Movember entry. He came 3rd and it was nice to get more model making work out there.