Manchester Animation Festival Part 2

The talks I felt were he best part of the festival. I felt that about the Bradford Animation Festival but, to me this animation festival was better than Bradford and that overall as were the talks. There were just so many good speakers and every one of the speakers we had were really good and genuinely had a huge passion for animation. For example Tom Moore’s talk is one I enjoyed in particular when he spoke about bringing his second film Song of the Sea to the big screen.





The talk was fascinating as it not only made me go from being intrigued about the film to being absolutely have to see the film. He also really made me want to work for the company he makes films for; Cartoon Saloon. The animation company is one that particularly appeals to me because yes it is all traditional 2D animation, but even I am happy to admit a lot of 2D animation is fairly low quality, but the animation they produce at Cartoon Saloon is absolutely top quality. The style they bring to each of their animations is fresh and original, yet very accessible to all audiences.



Another great speaker we had was Brian Crosgrove who founded Cosgrove Hall. I feel slightly guilty admitting that I hadn't actually heard of Cosgrove Hall before this trip but as I said earlier, I have learnt a great deal through being at MAF and I can now say I feel I do now know quite a bit about Cosgrove Hall. I might not have heard of the production studios but I had definitely seen some of the animations that had been produced there, for example The Wind in the Willows, The BFG and Danger Mouse. The man himself, Brian Cosgrove was also a fascinating bloke who even though is clearly a legend in the animation world, he himself was happy to admit it didn't just happen overnight.

What was especially interesting about this is that he we were, receiving a talk from the man who brought the original Danger Mouse to the TV screen. And then the very next day we were receiving a talk from the creatives at the BBC who were remaking Danger Mouse for new audiences. I felt like my judgement of the new series would always be slightly bias towards the original but I have to say I enjoyed the new episode that they showed us a lot more than expected.

Original:



Remake:



At first glance I didn't really like the new slightly altered style of the characters and the general aesthetic, but once we were shown endless slides of concept art and background designs and extensive character design research I was won over as much of it looked pretty amazing.

Manchester Animation Festival Part 1

I am writing this on my way back from being at the Manchester Animation Festival for the past four days. It’s been a lot of fun but it has also been very informative and I feel like I have learnt a great deal from my visit.

Now, I have always thought that half of how we as animation students get better at animation and become better animators is simply down to watching animation. But when I've had a lot of work to do I have tended to not watch much movies or television shows, let alone animation which I feel is a major problem. This trip was exactly what I needed because even though it was still related to animation, it was definitely a break from the animation I was currently doing with so much of my spare time.

Of course throughout the festival I have seen a monumental amount of animation but there are a few in particular that have stuck in my mind, in particular the graduate film ‘MANOMAN’. I absolutely loved this animation and it did turn out to be my actual favourite of the lot. This is surprising to me because I have not always been the biggest fan of puppetry (besides The Muppets and Team America). And I proffered it to all the traditional 2D hand drawn animations of which is still my favourite medium in animation.



MANOMAN was a bizarre animation about letting your primal instinct run wild and take over. This well manured, somewhat pathetic character does exactly this and with the bad influence of his primal instinct (a small hairy naked man) he goes from being timid to running completely wild resulting in crazy and chaotic consequences. It was just really funny and very entertaining. It was proof that it doesn't really matter what medium an animation is presented in, be that 2D traditional, 3D CGI or stop motion, all that matters is good story and characters.



I have to say I was a little disappointed at the traditional 2D animations, mostly because there seemed to be a lack of them compared to 3D and stop motion. But of the 2D animations that were shown, my favourite was definitely the graduate film ‘Wolf Games’. Animation to me is never scary, not even slightly creepy, it just isn't. But I remember watching Wolf Games and feeling genuinely creeped out. The music was incredibly loud and ominous which added to the deeply unsettling tone. Not a lot happened in it and the character designs were incredibly basic yet it worked and definitely did it’s just of being something actually quite disturbing.





So I've mentioned my two favourites, but another animation, of which is probably my joint second favourite was the 3D animated graduate short film 'Chiaroscuro'. When this came on the screen I was positive I was not going to like it. I felt like it was going to look very nice with very impressively rendered 3D backgrounds but I just had a feeling I was going to fall asleep when I saw the main character was... a ball of fire, no facial expressions, nothing. But, I couldn't have been more wrong. The narrative basically went like a fire ball appears, precedes to get chased by an an assembly of morphing blocks through a concrete jungle. That is it. And yet I found myself getting hopelessly pulled in to what was going on on screen. I found myself rooting for this ball of fire that somehow had personality about it and wanting it to escape the cluster of black cubes that although was basically just a cluster of black cubes there was something quite ominous about it and it was definitely clear it was the antagonist of the animation. I also credit how well the animation works to the impressive score that perfectly compliments what is happening on screen.

Personal SWOT Analysis

In the PPP session we were basically asked to evaluate ourselves as individuals and figure out our strengths and weaknesses. Although I was able to figure these out in the session from a variety of peer evaluation and self evaluation, I have now been set the task of combating my weaknesses and figuring out how I will combat my weaknesses.

One of weaknesses that was established fairly early on in the session was timekeeping. I am very bad at managing my time and when it reaches the end of my briefs I have often found that I have had to rush to finish. How I am going to combat this issue is by creating lists as in daily/weekly to do lists so I can keep on top of my tasks and also set myself personal deadlines of when to get each part of the project finished.