Off to Gobelins

A couple of weeks ago I received the amazing news that I have been accepted onto the Gobelins Character Animation Summer School in Paris!

For those of you who are unaware of Gobelins l’ecole de l’image – it is an incredible arts college in the middle of Paris that has been churning out award-winning animation students for the past 30 years. Their 2007 students short film “Oktapodi” was nominated for a 2009 Academy Award!
For the past four years Gobelins have been running a Summer School for animation graduates and professionals. The course is an intensive insight into the world of professional character animation & professional studio pipelines through a host of highly skilled industry instructors from the likes of Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Disney, Weta Digital, and Dreamworks.
So you can understand why I’m so excited to be attending the Summer School!

And I have just heard that Screen South have agreed to support me on this course.

I’m heading out to Paris on June 29th to start the course & hope to keep an up-to-date blog on how the course is going whilst I am out there (hopefully with videos of the animation work I have been doing during the workshops).

I can’t wait!

Big & Small nominated for a FITC award!

Recently I have been working on the 3D Papervision assets for the CBeebies Big & Small online interactive game alongside Plug-in Media and Kindle Entertainment.

We’ve just heard the amazing news that the Big & Small game has been nominated for a Flash In The Can (FITC) Award in their 3D Flash category!

You can vote for the game at the FITC People’s Choice Award under the 3D Flash category.

March BANG event – A Night on the Red Carpet

I’ve been organising the March meet up for the Brighton Animators Networking Group. Here are a few details about it -

Award fever is in the air! So we’ve pulled out all the stops (and the red carpet) with the next BANG event on Monday 9th March.

Expect an A-List evening packed full of entertainment, glitz & glamour (without the tears and tantrums) as we screen some of this year’s BAFTA and Oscar nominated animated short films (and few of the old favourites for good measure).

Our guest speaker is none other than the acclaimed director Alan Smith; half of the famous animation directing team Smith & Foulkes – who’s animated short film “This Way Up” has been nominated at this years Oscars! His credits include many well-known projects such as the BBC animated comedy series Monkey Dust, the film credit sequence for Thunderbirds, and an animated film within Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events. He has also created commercial work for Coca Cola, Volkswagen, Robinsons (their recent TV advert with the little characters playing in puddles), Honda (the beautiful “Hate Something, Change Something” TV advert) and Orange. Alan is going to show us how his projects have evolved from their original concept drawings, storyboards and animatics, through to the final animated piece.

Find out more about “This Way Up” HERE

When?

Monday 9th March ‘09 – doors open at 7pm, screenings start promptly at 7:30 until 10:30pm. So please make sure you arrive on time.

Where?

Lighthouse Digital Screening Lounge, 28 Kensington Street, Brighton BN1 4AJ (behind Wagamama).

How much?

£5 per person payable on the door to cover the venue hire costs.

Registration?

HERE

I hope to see you there!

Sarah

Papervision & Maya training in Brighton – March 2nd-4th

On 4th March, I will be running a masterclass in Maya 3D modelling specific to creating Papervision 3D assets (which enables you to create 3D websites). Recently, I have been working on a number of Papervision 3D projects for clients such as CBBC/CBeebies and MLB (Major League Baseball) – as a result, I have become quite familiar with creating 3D assets for Papervision-made websites.

My Maya workshop is aimed at developers without any 3D modelling experience or 3D artists who want to know exactly how to get their models to look good in Papervision3D.

The morning will cover the basics of 3D modelling in Maya, covering primitives, materials cameras and lighting.

After lunch we’ll learn more Papervision specific techniques :

* Making low poly models look good
* Exporting for Papervision
* Baking textures
* Making your models accessible to actionscript
* Animating Collada files

On 2nd & 3rd March, Seb Lee-Delisle from Plugin Media will be doing workshops on how to create Papervision 3D sites from a developers point of view, and my Maya workshop will be following on from this.

Both workshops are being held at Lighthouse in Brighton, UK.

More information about the workshops & registration can be found HERE.

Big & Small goes live on CBeebies website

I have been working on the 3D Papervision assets for the new Big & Small Cbeebies game recently with Plug-in Media – which went live on the CBeebies website recently.

Play the game

Outside the house

Inside the house - the lounge

Playing the Band Game

Playing the Hand Painting Game

Big & Small is a new CBeebies TV show created by Kindle Entertainment. The preschool series is about two friends who couldn’t be more different is voiced by Lenny Henry and Imelda Staunton.

Cinecity events coming up

Lighthouse and Cinecity are hosting a couple of great animation events this month -

Barry Purves – Artist in Motion
Sunday 23rd November 2008

Acclaimed British animation director and writer Barry Purves is giving a talk at Lighthouse from 3pm.

Cineville – An Animated Euro-Vision
Monday 24th November 2008

Industry experts and filmmakers from the UK and abroad will discuss the challenges and benefits of animation co-production, taking a look at how British writers, producers and directors are working with international partners, the reasons why and the results of these collaborations.

Paper Bagski – Full of Eastern (European) Promise
Tuesday 25th November 2008

Eastern European animation screenings from 6:30pm at The Brunswick in Hove.

Find out more here

Update – November

I have to apologise – I last updated this blog in May! But things have been very busy recently & there have been lots of changes!

Firstly – my little piece of good news…I have been shortlisted for DiMA award. I’m down to one of 3 shortlisted finalists for Freelancer of the Year.

The DiMA awards are being held on 27th November.

Secondly – AnimNation are now affiliated with Brown & Sticky Productions – a company set up to develop children’s television content. Talented children’s script writer, Jayne Kirkham and I have been working on a new kid’s TV series, Adrian’s Wall. Which we were fortunate enough to present at the recent Cartoon Forum conference, where we had to pitch the show idea and a 45-second animated trailer to potential broadcasters and investors. The project also took us off to Cannes to Mipcom Junior.

I’ve been busy working on a number of projects since May. One of which was a successful advertising campaign for Westminster Kingsway College – creating a 30-second 3D animated television advertisement that was recently aired on Trouble TV and creating 3D imagery and animations for print, online and mobile campaigns to promote their latest enrolment drive.

“The project commissioned to AnimNation was an integral part of our marketing strategy. They listened and responded to our exact needs and created something that we are extremely proud to have as part of the Westminster Kingsway College brand. The finished product surpassed all of our expectations and we look forward to working with AnimNation again in the future.” – Westminster Kingsway College

I have also been working with web community Netmums on creating assets for a new section of their website – more information about that to come.

And creating 2D and 3D animated graphics for an educational CD for geophysical and geoscience exploration company, IAGC.

I’ve also been creating a number of 3D assets for Plug-in Media:

Using the revolutionary new piece of Flash based software, Papervision (which enables 3D models to be viewed in Flash – the user can interactively move around the model in realtime), we created a 3D baseball player for the Major League Baseball’s Game Day section of their site. The aim was to create an interactive way of viewing baseball game data.

Plug-in Media also required a 3D storybook for their latest Museum of London game – Tales of London.

And most recently I have been creating 3D papervision assets for a new CBeebies show with Plug-in Media. More information about that to come.

So it has been a busy few months! And with more exciting projects on the horizon, I’m hoping that 2009 will be another exciting year for AnimNation!

Thanks for reading

Sarah

April/May Update

So much has happened at AnimNation since the last blog post about winning a Gold Award at the New York Film and Video Festival.

One of the big pieces of news is that AnimNation are now affiliated with Brown & Sticky Productions – set up to concentrate on developing children’s animated television series. Our animated series currently in development has just been accepted into the Cartoon Forum conference in Germany in September – where we have to pitch the series idea to a whole host of European broadcasters and investors. Quite a scary prospect – but a very exciting time in moving both AnimNation and Brown & Sticky Productions forward onto bigger projects. More information on the series later.

Over the last few months we’ve been working on a whole host of projects :-

3D assets for a new feature on the Major League Baseball site (which led to a trip to New York to meet the clients!)

3D assets and animation for the Museum of London site

2D and 3D animations for a corporate video on marine environmental issues

Illustrations on the dress code at Ascot that was featured in the Spring 2008 Square Meal magazine

Illustrated assets for the revamped Netmums website *coming soon*

A television advert for a London-based college that will be broadcast on MTV, E4 etc. *coming soon*

Director, Sarah Bird, was also featured in a recent edition of The Argus newspaper.

AnimNation win an award!

I have just heard the amazing news that AnimNation have won a gold award at the New York International Film and Video Festival!

I produced a 10 minute 2D animation with Hove-based production company Supernova Learning on the issue of age discrimination in the workplace, “As Old As You Feel”.

Here’s the press release -

Age Diversity Video strikes gold in New York

Hove-based video producer Supernova has won a Gold Award at this
year’s New York International Film and Video Festival. The Awards
Ceremony took place last Thursday 30th January at Manhattan’s Tribeca
Rooftop. The Annual Festival attracted entries from 31 countries.
Supernova won the award in the human relations category with As Old
as You Feel. The 10 min cartoon, with a commentary by Woman’s Hour’s
Jenni Murray, promotes a positive approach to age in the workplace.
Supernova teamed up with Brighton-based AnimNation to make the video.
It was written and produced by Supernova’s Vincent Thompson, with
animation by AnimNation’s Sarah Bird.
Supernova director Vincent Thompson commented “I’m delighted that our
DVD has received this recognition. Age discrimination at work is a problem
for both young and old. We’ve set out to raise awareness and promote
good practice in a witty way without being patronising”.
More information and video clip at:
http://www.supernovalearning.com/catalogue_08_age.htm

January Update

Happy New Year!

Since the last post was about the BANG/Flash Brighton Carnival O Fun back in December – I thought it was about time I updated this blog!

Things have been going great at AnimNation over the last couple of months. Business is booming – I’ve got some very exciting projects happening at the moment & some more on the cards for this year. I was very happy to create the VisitBrighton Christmas animated e-card back in December. I have also been working on a number of 3D projects for Brighton based Flash game gurus Plug-in Media. I am currently working on some informative animations for an international company.

I received some great news this morning that I may have won an award for my animation work – but more news about that later.

Development on my kids TV series idea with the very talented script writer Jayne Kirkham is going incredibly well. We’ve had some amazing feedback from a selection of very reputable children’s broadcasters! The plan at the start of this year is to get some development funds together to make the project possible.

On 10th January I was asked by Wired Sussex to be a panel member at one of the Creative Catapult evenings. I had to give a talk about my career and running AnimNation to a selection of students and graduates. I’ve had some lovely feedback since – so I’m delighted that the evening was useful.