Saturday, March 22, 2008

ASIFA International film project

I am extremely excited to be delivering a very special animation workshop at the National Media Museum next week, during the Easter holidays.

Thanks to the support of the NMM and funding from First Light Movies, who fund and inspire young people, throughout the UK, to make films reflecting the diversity of their lives, I will delivering an animation workshop for ASIFA (the international association of animated film), founded in 1960 in Annecy (France) by the most famous animation artists of that time (Norman McLaren & many others).

The ASIFA Workshop Group is a global movement represented in 23 countries and on 3 continents. Every year a worldwide animation project, composed of several regional children animation workshops, is realised. The films created are presented at some of the world’s principle animation festivals.

This years theme is the Olympics. The young people in Bradford will be using animation to explore their "fantasies, ideas and messages on the Olympic Games or anything related to the games, freely within about 2 minutes." Their film will become part of an international compilation of animation, compiled in China and promises to provide a world stage for the young people to express themselves creatively. Through the process, young people will develop their drawing and animation skills, build confidence and have their aspirations raised in a fun and creative atmosphere.

There is a fascinating article of the history of the ASIFA workshop group on the ASIFA website.


I will be be publishing updates on this exciting project during the week.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

"Dreams" screeing at Leeds Young People's Film Festival

The animated film "Dreams", created by year year 6 pupils at schools in Rochdale, Salford and Liverpool for Verd de Gris visionary arts project Dreams has been selected to compete in the National Young Filmmakers' Award taking place on Saturday 29th March as part of Leeds Young People's Film Festival! Congratulations to all the children who helped make such a beautiful film.





"Dreams" is screening on Saturday 29th March 2008 Venue at Vue at Kirkstall, Cardigan Fields, Leeds in the under 14's programme.


Leeds Young Peoples Film Festival features original and unseen films from around the world made both by and for young people, as well as some wonderful classics from the archive vault. There's also a fantastic line-up of workshops and masterclasses in the Film Academy and this year features some very special guests from the world of cinema.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Migraine on a roll!

After working on shots that have taken literally months to animate with the time I've had available, I felt a strong need to pick up a simple shot.



Dr Sue Lipsombe, who uses drawings as part of her treatment process gave me this drawing from Oliver, who was aged 9 at the time. The drawings cried out to be animated and I finished the shot in one day... hurray! Animating with Olivers style of drawing using a slightly naive style of animation which felt appropriate, was fantastically liberating and gave great potential for expression. This shot, perhaps more than any other, captures the power of putting these drawings into the forth dimension of movement. This is the line test for the shot, the final composition in 16:9 will have the head bigger in frame.

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Animating with Year 1

I was back at Stepney last week working with Year 1 teacher Neil Cameron as part of the Creative Partenrships Hull learning programme, "Animated Learners". The theme was houses through the ages. The children transformed a dolls house into the most amazing Victorian, modern, and future house. Here Neil puts in pace the children's amazing designs of flying cars above the house for one of the shots.