Created in Birmingham

• American Independents Day comes to Birmingham
  “Ted Hope & Christine Vachon have produced over 120 independent movies between them (including Boys Don’t Cry, 21 Grams, American Splendor & Happiness).” They’ll be at the Spotted Dog in Digbeth on 7 April
• Using Film in Education – West Midlands Seminar
  At the Light House on 12 May
• Welcome to the human race — ELO-ke Night 2nd April
  Dirty Bristow are putting on a night of Electric Light Orchestra Karaoke on Saturday 2 April
• Arcane Magazine
  “We will bring you the latest news on Birmingham club nights, promotional drinks offers at bars, restaurant deals, music events, sporting events, dance shows, comedy nights – and so much more in between”
• Interview with Lee Kemp, Fullrange
  “I could genuinely count the number of useful creative networking events i’ve been to on the fingers of one hand shortly after I’d pulled that hand out of a blender”
• Due to Birmingham’s flourishing industry and…
  The Birmingham Stock Exchange building’s been sold for £8m. Cue musings about Sherlock Holmes’ story about a young stockbroker taking up a new job in the city
• Second Home Sketchbook | While the paint dries and the renders crawl…
  Chris Randall at Second Home Studios has got himself one of those blogs. Could be interesting.
• Interview with Will Grant, Buto
  He’s the Technology Director there.

The next Animation Forum event is to co-inside with Flip Animation Festival on 4 November at 7.30pm – 10pm, Millennium Point.

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.

For more information, visit Animation Forum or their Facebook page.

A new thing from Second Home Productions:

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

The Bullring has been recreated in Lego. It’s not the sort of thing that you might think was very ‘CiB’ but there’s something about it that appeals to me. More info here. This was spotted on the BiNS PR website (where there are more photos).

In possibly related news, I saw on Twitter that Chris Randall from Second Home Productions is working on a Lego-based project. Hmm.

I went along to the Animation Forum West Midlands event, Shorts On Walls, on Monday which was most enjoyable. The organisers were certainly pleased with how things went and have said so on their pleasingly blog-ish news page.

Also on that page is the evening’s screening schedule with links to the animators’ profiles. I understand they were trying their best to accept last minute submissions meaning giving out a running order on the night wasn’t possible, so it’s good to see it here.

It also helps me to pick out the films that I particularly enjoyed and give them an extra plug here.

First up, ‘Don’t Touch’ by Louis Hudson from Dice Productions.

The Nickolodeon-style anarchy of Pedro & Frankensheep from the Brothers McLeod was great and has apparently been picked up by CBBC.

A name that cropped up again and again was Natalie Ann Hinchley. She has a credit on Pedro & Frankensheep, her Second Home Productions outfit produced the jaw-dropping ‘The Animal Book’ (only the trailer here but it’s still a treat)

and, although I can’t find a video to embed, go and check out the Light House commissioned ‘Onions’ on Natalie’s website – animated bunnies are always a winner.

I’m at risk of just listing everyone here so I’ll finish with a few quick mentions:

• Although less polished, the video for Nyoto Ndogo’s track Dunia (remix) has a good energy about it and I like the song (presented by Andrew Burchell).
• ‘What If’ by Mat Parker’s Short Animations 4 Education was uncomfortable viewing for the right reasons (trailer only on the site).
• Steven Spencer describes ‘My Brown Friend‘ as a “dark exploration of addiction” which it is.
• Finally, the YouTube embedding has been disabled but I’ll forgive that (just about) to mention ex-BCU MA student Guillaume Weiss’s ‘4:51‘ which I thought was just incredible.