Animation Forum WM have teamed up with Dice Productions and Flip Festival to bring three separate programmes of screenings of the best UK animated films of 2010 and 2011 to Birmingham. The shorts will be screened on Thursday 9th, Friday 10th, and Saturday 11th February from 7pm each night at The Custard Factory Theatre and you can vote to help determine the Public Choice winners.
The film was commissioned by THSH, with the support of the DMC McDonald Foundation, and was created by animator Chris Randall at Second Home Studios to a poem by Symphony Hall’s poet-in-residence Julie Boden.
Jan Bowman’s book, This is Birmingham, has been given the animation promo treatment by Graham D Lock, an animation graduate from Wolverhampton. Very nice it is too:
‘Doing it the hard way: Setting up an Animation Studio Outside the Capital‘ is the follow-up to Animation Forum WM and BSeen‘s last event back in January.
The event is taking place tomorrow, 1 March, at The Studio, and is being presented bu Niel Bushnell, who runs award-winning Newcastle-based animation and VFX studio Qurios.
Niel will be sharing his experiences of establishing an animation business withpractical tips on how to set up an animation studio from scratch.
There’ll be opportunity to ask questions at the end of the talk, plus the chance to chat with fellow animators in the fantastic surroundings of the The Studio’s city centre bar and restaurant.Directions to the venue can be found here.
For more information, take a look at the Facebook event page, or sign up via Eventbrite – it’s also free to attend, open to animators and designers of all levels, or anyone interested in establishing a studio-based business, and includes free drinks.
The event takes place on 13 January 2011 from 7.00pm at The Studio, Birmingham, and is the first in a series of joint events with BSeen aiming to help student and graduate animators find their way into the industry.
Open to animators of all levels, this event is free and includes refreshments and a Q&A with Curtis Jobling. For more information, take a look at the Facebook event page.
Chris Stokes is a video artist in Birmingham, and has made this animation using a Sky Attack game, with music supplied by Creeping Jaw Society, consisting of manipulated sounds taken from samples of the game. Pretty cool.
Tate Movie Project will be stopping over at the Ikon on 2 & 3 December, joined by Wallace and Gromit creators, Aardman Animations, who’ll be giving pupils from Birmingham schools the chance to create an animation film by and for children to be broadcast on Blue Peter.
Pupils from St John’s CE Primary, St Catherine of Siena Catholic Primary, St George’s CE Primary and Woodview Primary, will have the opportunity to take part in the workshops, inspired by Ikon’s current Len Lye exhibition.
The results will be available to view on www.tatemovie.co.uk, where 5-13 year olds will be free to explore animation, scripting, editing and sound effects.
Take a look at his winning animation ‘The History of Denim’, created to retell the origin of denim for designer LUKE, which originated from the West Midlands.
Animating the West Midlands is a free event which will feature locally produced shorts from Flip 2010, and an introduction to Second Home Studios’ Viral Kitchen scheme. You’ll also have the chance to catch up with fellow animators in the iBar at Millenium point.
The event is open to non-members plus those without tickets to Flip. To reserve your place email info@light-house.co.uk with ‘Animating the West Midlands – RSVP’ in the subject line.
Flip Animation Festival is happening on 4 – 6 November in Wolverhampton. The festival is organised by Light House Media Centre and hosts a programme of educational workshops for young people, along with experimental animation for grown ups, plus industry led panels, feature film screenings, international showcases, retrospectives of short films and spotlights on animation studios.
While there are still plenty of events yet to be announced, here’s a peak at a few of the highlights announced so far;
Workshops in Introduction to Animation and Writing an Animated Comedy with The Brothers McLeod, both on 4 Nov.
Gaming themed workshops, including an Introduction to Building a Game with XNA and Big Screen Gaming on Halo: Reach, also on 4 Nov.
The Viral Kitchen pilot scheme is a unique development programme that utilises the facilities, knowledge and experience of Second Home Studios for the development of local animators and animation graduates.
The scheme will be free to 4 successful applicants and even provide a small bursary contribution towards costs and expenses
All Consuming Love (Man in a Cat) is one of the short films commissioned for Digishorts. Louis Hudson, who makes up Dice Productions‘ animation team, is now hard at work turning a preview/trailer into a fully fledged film.
Another batch of short films from Screen WM‘sDigishorts scheme are set to premiere next week, featuring a hefty wedge of local film talent. There’s a free screening event to see all six Digishorts films at Light House in Wolverhampton on Tuesday 12 January, 6.15 – 8pm, as part of Screen Forum.
The Moon Bird
Names that stick out for me are BAFTA-nominated The Brothers McLeod, who will be showing their dark animated fairytale ‘The Moon Bird‘, and Lewis Arnold, whose film ‘Stained’ is inspired by author Ronnie Thompson’s time served as a prison officer. After the screening there will be a Q&A with some of the filmmakers, so have your hand-raising and poser-posing hats on ready.
