As part on the Flip programme for Thursday, the wonderful Myles Mcloed of the esteemed Brothers McLeod ran a day long Scriptwriting For Animation Workshop with the view to creating a whole bunch of scripts that I could post up here for you lovely lot to animate as part of the Flip Animation Challenge. The other half of this dynamic duo Greg McLeod would then also choose one or maybe two to animate when he takes up the position of animator in residence on Friday.

Well I was hoping for a nice simple word document or maybe a downloadable PDF to post but instead I got given a pile of paper at the end of today, just before I was due to leave for home and was  asked to “put those online for everyone to see”. Now as much as I’d like to spend my Thursday evening typing up scripts I kind of already had important plans, so we came up with a solution…

Follow this link to Light House’s Flickr page and the “Script Writing” group where you will find hi-res images that you can download of the script of your choice. Click on one of the images,  then on the top of the screen choose view all sizes and taa daaa you can download it to read. Not the most conventional way of doing thingsI know….but it’s worked!

In addition to the scripts available over of Flickr we also had two further pieces sent into us by more conventional methods which you can find by following these links:

Dead White

The Fire Dragon

You have until 5pm on Saturday 7th November to post your finished animations online over on the vimeo group with all completed films being screen at 7pm on the 7th at the festival!!

Steph x

]]> http://flipfestival.co.uk/2009/11/05/flip-animation-challenge/feed/ 0 Steph boy-4 http://flipfestival.co.uk/2009/11/05/bostin-heroes-flip/ http://flipfestival.co.uk/2009/11/05/bostin-heroes-flip/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:07:17 +0000 Steph http://flipfestival.co.uk/?p=806 ]]>

Have you heard of Bostin Heroes, if not WHY NOT!!

Bostin Heroes whose aims are…

“Raising a positive and local regional pride, Bostin Heroes champions the Black Country and Birmingham through an online comic blog.”,

…and are based right here in the Black Country, home of all things Flip. They have a lovely about page over on their website which gives you a lot more information than I have time to here but you really should check them out.

If you already have tickets for, or are thinking of dropping by to this weekends festival you can catch the guys at their Bostin Heroes stand right here at Light House, Where you can see some of their work or just to say hi, or in true Black Country style – “Yam alroight!”- they’re a lovely bunch so I’m sure they don’t bite!

If the only think stopping you coming over is a worry about understanding our bostin’ Black Country dialect never fear I have done my research for you and you can bookmark this handy translator for use while in attendance… ‘Ow we spake do-wn ‘ere’ or read up on what the BBC has to say about the area here.

Steph x

Opening night tomorrow, We look forward to seeing you all here over the next 3 days!!

The portfolio review panel this year includes Carla Prada, Principal Animator at Rare Ltd, which is part of the Microsoft Games Division, and has over ten years of animation experience in the videogame and television industry. She hails from Niagara Falls, Canada and started her career at Ubisoft Montreal, Quebec. She then moved into children’s television and commercials before returning to video games. Some of the projects she has worked on are Angela Anaconda, Rayman, Killzone, Little Miss Spider, Banjo Kazooie and BBC Freeview commercials involving Aardman Animation. Trained in classical 2d animation Carla now works solely as a 3d animator.

Rare is famous for developing such games as Golden Eye, Diddy Kong Racing and Banjo Kazooie, to name just a few. Currently the company is working on exciting new innovative titles involving Microsoft’s Natal Camera technology.

Peter

Portfolio Review Sessions   6 November, 4.30

Flip is looking for animators to get their showreel reviewed at this year’s festival. We introduced this session last year for the first time and it went down very well. It’s a great opportunity to get your showreel seen by professionals, to get expert feedback and to open doors to new and valuable contacts. The idea (and the catch!) is that you present your showreel to a panel in front of a live audience who also receive the benefit of the panels’ wisdom. The session is supported by Business Link West Midlands. An adviser will provide all 6 animators at this session with creative business support and in addition Business Link West Midlands will also be available to offer advice and guidance to any creative business attending during the day.

 This is only open to animators based in the West Midlands. Interested? contact Peter McLuskie, peter@light-house.co.uk, 01902 716055

I’ll be at Flip this year running a mini-scriptwriting course. One of the things I’ll be talking about will be “thinking animated” which is a clumsy old phrase, but a useful one. It was something that the late script editor Jim Campbell started me and brother Greg thinking about many years ago when we were starting out.

Basically the basis of thinking animated is to ask yourself – why is this idea that I’ve come up with an animated idea? Could I make it in live action? If so, why am I going to the trouble of making it animated? If you’ve got talking heads, why animate them? If you have very little visual comedy in your idea – why is it in need of animating? If you’re planning on blowing up the moon, using a chainsaw to hack up kittens, or need a two headed man who disagrees with himself – okay… that sounds like a good candidate for animation (especially for the kittens one – live action could get you into trouble).

Of course like any rule it’s not a hard and fast thing. One enjoyable exception that springs to mind is from the Depict! scheme – Operator by Matthew Walker.

Operator (2007) from Matthew Walker on Vimeo.

Light House, the official home of Flip isn’t just a nice place to come when we’ve animation events on.  It’s not just the ONLY independent cinema in Wolverhampton and it’s not just a building with a lovely café that serves a decent cup of fairtrade coffee. It is also a thriving photography gallery with 3 exhibition spaces and a media training centre, who in our opinion offer some of the best Media training around.

This September they are offering three 10 week courses and one of them is :

Introduction to Traditional Animation, Cost £190 + VAT

Starting Monday 28th September, 6pm – 9pm, and running every Monday for 10 weeks. Animator and tutor Steve Poultney will focus on different aspects of traditional animation techniques e.g hand drawn, montage, Stop Motion and digital 2D techniques. The course will enable you to access specialist animation kit including computer software Toon Boom and animation tablets. Steve will also cover timing, movement and sound.

Even if you are more interested in digital 3D animation this course is a great starting point to pick up the basics and for anyone looking to learn a few animation techniques, even if you have had no experience what so ever!

They are also offering:

Introduction to Film Studies – The Essentials, Cost £100 + VAT

Start Tuesday 29th September, 6pm – 9pm, and runs every Tuesday for 10 weeks Led by Canadian born Film Studies Lecturer, Kimberly Forlini-Softley, Introduction to Film Studies – The Essentials explores the basic areas of film covering genre, narrative, the history of cinema, the basics of cinematography, editing, sound and mis en scene. This course will provide you with a good grounding in becoming more ‘film literate’ as well as offering the opportunity to discuss and debate film form.

Introduction to Video Production Techniques, Cost £190 + VAT

Starts Thursday 1st October, 6pm – 9pm, and runs every Thursday for 10 weeks Delivered by our in-house Video Production tutor, Jon Turner, this course is ideal for those wanting to learn the basics of video production e.g. camera operation and functions, storyboarding, basic script development, sound recording, basic lighting techniques, post production and exploring the different roles within video production.

Even better if you are unemployed, a senior citizens or NUS members you will be eligible for a 10% concession, or if none of these apply but 2 or more courses are booked together then they will give you a 10% discount on both courses.

All 3 courses are open to beginners with no prior knowledge required but an appreciation and interest in the subjects will be a bonus.

Flip is delighting to be able to welcome director and producer Sarah Cox, from the award winning ArthurCox studio into our programme.

Originally started by Sally Arthur and Sarah Cox in 2002, the Bristol based studio has since grown in size and diversity and has become a home to many other award winning directors and animators, including: Matthew Walker,  ‘John and Karen’ (Cartoon d’Or nominee 08); Sally Arthur, ‘A-Z’ (Best Documentary Rushes festival 08); Felix Massie  ‘Keith Reynolds Can’t Make it Tonight’; Mark Simon Hewis, ‘The Life Size Zoetrope’ and Fig Roll, ‘Little Face’.

Flip will launch with a screening of work by the studio including short films, broadcast and commercial work, followed by an ‘in conversation’ discussion chaired by Greg McLeod, from the Brother’s McLeod.

Wednesday, 30th September 2009, 6.30pm
The Victoria ,

48 John Bright Street,
Birmingham, B1 1BN

Shorts on Screens is the latest chance for Animation Forum WM members to mingle, share an after-work drink and share their animation from 6.30pm on Wednesday 30th September at The Victoria, Birmingham .

Rather than submit animated shorts in advance for a sit-down screening, simply bring along a mobile phone, mp3 player or laptop pre-loaded with your best animated work, and share it with fellow animators over a drink.

Animated work can mean short films, commercial work, experiments, showreels; anything you think would be of interest to others AFWM members. If you don’t have such snazzy mobile technology, simply bring along a USB stick or DVD and play it on one of the many laptops we’ll have setup around the room. If you decide to do the latter, please ensure that you bring the animation as a rendered (compressed) video (e.g. avi, mov, flv , etc), not as an enormous uncompressed video file or with a rare and unusual codec, as these are unlikely to work. Don’t have anything to show? Then feel free just to turn up and chew the fat with AFWM members, be they animators, scriptwriters, producers or voice-actors, you never know what might happen.

Entry is free and to attend simply RSVP using the Facebook Event page or to david.luke.allen@bcu.ac.uk.

Shorts on Screens will take place in the upstairs room of The Victoria (where Shorts on Walls @ Flatpack was held last March ). Directions can be found on Google Maps.

Some programme news: on the 5 November, 10 – 4pm, we will be running a one–day workshop, run in conjunction with Script and Animation Forum West Midlands, which will explore the particularities of animation production and writing, leading to an individual 60 second script which will then be submitted to the Flip Animation Challenge (more to come on this) with the opportunity to be produced by animators in residence during the festival and screened on the final day of the festival

The workshop is led by Myles McLeod, one half of BAFTA nominated The Brothers McLeod. They are known for their screenwriting and animations as seen on BBC, MTV, Channel 4 and elsewhere and direct commercials for internationally famous studio Aardman Animations. Myles holds a Masters in Screenwriting and writes for television, short film and computer games.

 This 5 hour workshop will include:

• Creating characters
• Three act structure
• Scene structure
• Getting inspired
• Thinking animated
• Taking criticism
• Writing a 60 second script

 Cost £25/£20. Tickets available now from Light House box office, info@light-house.co.uk, 01902 716055

 A full festival programme will be posted on the website by the end of the month